Thought Indicting Trump Was The Only Way The DOJ Interferes In Elections? Think Again
After indicting former President Donald Trump earlier this month for claiming the 2020 election was rigged, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is now fighting to schedule the trial right before the 2024 GOP presidential primary.
It’s fairly obvious what the DOJ is doing. By having the trial set in early 2024, the agency can try to kneecap Trump right before the Iowa caucuses and ultimately the 2024 general election, should he be the Republican presidential nominee. Meanwhile, the DOJ also plans to drag Trump into court over a separate set of charges, related to his handling of classified documents, in a trial that’s been scheduled for May of 2024.
As nefarious as it is, the DOJ’s targeting of the former president is hardly the only way the corrupt federal law enforcement apparatus seeks to benefit Democrats ahead of the 2024 contest. Over the past several years, the DOJ has made a habit of filing and joining leftist-backed lawsuits against Republican states’ election integrity laws.
The strategy is reminiscent of the left’s legal bombardment against election integrity laws leading up to the 2020 election, in which Democrat-backed legal groups filed a bevy of lawsuits aimed at altering state election laws in their favor. Whether it was ballot signature verification or voter ID requirements, no commonsense provisions were safe from Democrats’ legal assault.
Now, with Joe Biden in the White House, the DOJ has been able to further Democrats’ election interference by piling on the legal jihad against Republican-backed election laws at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer.
The Laws and Cases
Following a chaotic and messy 2020 election, Georgia’s Republican-controlled legislature and governor implemented SB 202, a benign law designed to enhance the integrity of Georgia’s electoral process. Included in the measure were voter ID requirements for absentee voting — a provision the majority of Americans support — and safeguards on giving voters gifts or money while in line to vote or within 150 feet of a polling place.
Despite the temperate nature of SB 202, Democrats and their legacy media allies began baselessly smearing the law as a GOP-orchestrated effort to “suppress” nonwhite voters. President Joe Biden grossly referred to SB 202 as “Jim Crow on steroids” and called on Major League Baseball to relocate its 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta in protest. The MLB ultimately acquiesced, condemning the law and relocating the event to Colorado. The move cost the Peach State an estimated $100 million in revenue.
Contrary to Democrats’ claims the law would suppress Georgians’ ability to vote, the state saw record early voter turnout for the 2022 midterms and the state’s subsequent Senate runoff election. A poll conducted after the midterms further revealed that zero percent of black Georgia voters said they had a “poor” experience voting in the 2022 contest.
But the Democrats’ propaganda blitz had already served its purpose. With the groundwork laid by their political and media allies, the DOJ had the justification it needed to launch a lawsuit against SB 202 in June 2021, in which the agency parroted the lie that Georgia’s election law was designed to “deny[] or abridg[e]” nonwhite Americans’ right to vote.
“[T]he cumulative and discriminatory effect of these laws—particularly on Black voters—was known to lawmakers and that lawmakers adopted the law despite this,” the agency baselessly alleged in a press release. The lawsuit prompted the Republican National Committee (RNC) and National Republican Senatorial Committee to intervene in the case to defend the law not long after.
[READ: The Left’s Election Litigation Racket Abuses Democracy To Line Their Own Pockets]
But Georgia was just the beginning of the DOJ’s legal crusade against Republican-backed election laws. In September 2021, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed SB 1, a measure that expanded poll watcher access, mandated voter ID requirements for mail-in voting, and banned paid ballot harvesting in Texas elections. The law also included provisions ensuring only citizens are included on the state’s voter rolls, banning “drive-thru” voting, and prohibiting Texas from “sending out mail ballot applications to people who did not request them from election officials.”
Predictably, Democrats vilified SB 1 as “Jim Crow 2.0,” prompting the DOJ to file suit against Texas in November 2021. As in the DOJ’s lawfare against Georgia’s SB 202, the RNC and other conservative groups intervened to uphold the statute.
A federal district court judge issued a preliminary ruling in the case last week, claiming the provision of SB 1 “requiring that mail voters provide the same identification number they used when they registered to vote” violated the Civil Rights Act, according to NBC News. A final decision on the case is expected in the coming weeks.
The DOJ also joined a Democrat-backed lawsuit last month against a recently enacted election law passed by Florida Republicans.
The 2020 Playbook with a Twist
Contrary to its claims, the DOJ’s election lawfare has nothing to do with “protecting democracy” and everything to do with inserting itself into elections to benefit the Democrat Party. It’s an obvious strategy aimed at undercutting widely supported election safeguards that ensure a fair and transparent process in which all eligible voters can participate.
Of course, Democrat partisans have never cared about transparency. The only thing they value is acquiring government power and doing whatever it takes to maintain it.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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