Less than a week after the Republican National Committee unveiled a “historic” fresh program to monitor elections for fraud, a top lawyer for the committee was among those charged in an alleged plot to overturn Arizona’s presidential election results using false claims of fraud.
In fact, attorney Christina Bobb, senior counsel for election integrity at the RNC, was scheduled to appear at an online meeting on April 25 to recruit activists for the GOP’s election monitoring efforts, but she didn’t show up. The meeting was organized by fringe conspiracy theorists who, like Bobb, have helped spread lies about illegal voting.
Kris Mayes, Arizona Attorney General announced The Accuse on April 24 against 18 people, seven of whose names were blacked out. Several News Organizations used details in the indictment to identify Bobb and the other six. Mayes on Friday confirmed Bobb’s accusation.
The confluence of events involving Bobb, the RNC and a loose network of anti-fraud activists underscores how the Trump-controlled GOP appears to be laying the groundwork to compete in this year’s election by pushing the same false claims about Illegal elections – and even some of them – used the same metrics as in 2020.
When asked for comment about Bobb’s announced indictment and whether she remained employed by the RNC, an RNC spokesman declined to respond on the record.
Bobb did not respond to an inquiry about her no-show at the April 25 event.
The Republicans’ “historic” vote surveillance program
The Arizona charges came less than a week after the Trump campaign and the RNC announced a “historic, 100,000-strong” effort to closely monitor the voting process, calling it “the largest and most monumental election integrity program in the history of the country.” .
“Whenever a ballot is cast or counted, Republican election observers will monitor the process and report any irregularities,” the RNC said in a statement Press release.
The committee called the initiative “a historic collaboration between the RNC, the Trump campaign and passionate grassroots coalitions deeply committed to combating voter fraud.” That appeared to be a nod to the party’s outreach to anti-fraud activists like them to be at Thursday’s meeting – many of whom have adopted lies about the 2020 election.
Multiple lawsuits in 2020 found no evidence of systematic or widespread fraud.
The RNC’s vote monitoring efforts were supported by Lara Trump, former President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, who took over as RNC co-chair in behind schedule February. Bobb was soon announced as the RNC’s election integrity advocate.
Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president in 2024.
Lara Trump warned on April 23rd interview that the vote monitoring program will include “individuals capable of physically handling ballots” at polling stations on Election Day. Rules for partisan poll watchers vary from state to state.
17 people charged with voter fraud schemes
Bobb’s failure to attend Thursday’s online meeting after organizers announced her appearance in advance may be because she has more pressing matters on her mind.
The Accuse The lawsuits filed in Arizona allege a conspiracy to operate imitation voters to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election.
The 11 people named in the indictment are themselves Arizona bogus voters, all Trump allies. The other seven people whose names were redacted were identified by news outlets, including CNN and that New York Timesas Bobb, as well as Trump allies Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Mike Roman and Boris Epshteyn.
One of the seven, the indictment says, “was an attorney for the Trump campaign” and “made false claims of widespread voter fraud in Arizona and six other states.” This person also “encouraged the Arizona Legislature to change the outcome of the election” and “encouraged (Vice President Mike) Pence to accept the false votes of Arizona’s Republican electors on January 6, 2021,” the indictment states.
Bobb joined the Trump campaign as a lawyer after the 2020 vote and was among the campaign officials led by Giuliani who orchestrated a scheme that used false claims of fraud as justification for submitting imitation voters in seven states that Trump lost , including Arizona, CNN has reported.
Bob too tweeted on January 6, 2021: “@VP @Mike_Pence can now resolve this issue by sending it back to the legislature.”
The indictment lists Trump – unnamed but described as “a former president of the United States who spread false claims of voter fraud after the 2020 election” – as an unindicted co-conspirator.
The indictment alleges that the phony electors voted for Trump as part of the scheme to obtain Arizona’s electoral votes and “falsely represented the duly elected and qualified electors for the office of President and Vice President of the United States.” “Being at Arizona State.”
“The defendants deceived the citizens of Arizona by falsely representing that these votes were contingent only on a legal challenge that would change the outcome of the election,” the indictment continues. “In reality, defendants intended that their false Trump-Pence votes would encourage Pence to reject the Biden-Harris votes on January 6, 2021, regardless of the outcome of the legal challenge.”
RNC throws conspiracy theorists and election deniers to court
The meeting at which Bobb was scheduled to appear on Thursday was organized by two Florida activists with ties to leading election deniers, including MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, and included hundreds of grassroots anti-fraud activists from across the country.
A similar April 4th follows Event, in which RNC Election Integrity Program Director Christina Norton explained to activists how they can get involved in the party’s vote monitoring program. The States Newsroom attended both virtual meetings.
The April 25 meeting featured a parade of speakers, including former Democratic aide Naomi Wolf, who made claims about illegal elections in 2020 and 2022, predicted this year’s vote will be similarly rigged, and galvanized supporters to action called out.
“The current situation is that President Trump will win the presidential election again, just like he did in 2020,” said one of the speakers, Greg Stenstrom, a Pennsylvania-based conspiracy theorist and co-author of the book Book “The Parallel Election: A Blueprint for Deception,, which alleged massive fraud in voting in that state in 2020.
“But it will be taken away from him and all of us if we do not restore fair and honest elections in the short time we have until November. He can’t keep the presidency if we don’t act.”
Instead of Bobb appearing live, Steve Stern, one of the call’s organizers, played an interview he recently did with her for his podcast.
In the interview, Stern asked Bobb what could be done about President Joe Biden’s plan to add “a million illegal aliens” to the voter rolls. (There are no proof that Biden has such a plan, despite regular similar claims from the far right.)
Bobb agreed that there is a “concerted effort to enable the illegals to cast ballots,” adding, “This time it’s a very, very serious issue and that’s something we’re looking into…It is.” something that law enforcement has to do because there may be a criminal component to it?”
“As far as voting illegally,” Bobb continued, “once they register, it’s very difficult to reverse that process. Because the registration is considered valid.”
Studies have repeatedly shown that the number of non-citizen voters is infinitesimally compact. A Brennan Center from 2017 analysis found that presumed – unproven – votes from non-citizens accounted for only 0.0001 percent of all votes cast in the 2016 election.
Other connections
In addition to these two meetings, there have been other recent cases in which RNC staff courted right-wing activists who had spread election disinformation.
bob spoken last month with far-right podcaster Breanna Morello. And she recently took part in a conference call with several Trump-aligned groups that had spread lies about 2020, according to the Guardian reported.
Both the April 25 and April 4 meetings were organized by Stern and Raj Doraisamy, two far-right activists from Florida and Lindell allies who have helped spread false claims about illegal voting.
Last month, Stern spoke with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to promote the April 4 meeting. “We have so many illegal immigrants in this country,” Stern said. “They want to vote. We have to stop them.”
Doraisamy was allegedly They rallied outside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and subsequently formed a group called “Defend Florida” that went door-to-door to collect thousands of “affidavits” from Floridians to show that the 2020 election in the state were influenced by massive corruption fraud.
In 2022 Event At the event organized by the group, Doraisamy thanked Lindell for his aid with the door-to-door effort.
Also speaking on the April 25 call was Joe Hoft, whose Gateway Pundit website was co-founded with Hoft’s brother Jim Key vector for spreading false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, the Covid vaccine and more.
Joe Hoft’s self-published book “The Steal” is described this way on Google Books Page: “It’s early on the morning of November 4th, President Trump was well ahead in swing states, but he warned that ballots would be out at 4 a.m. He was right again. When Americans woke up later that morning, the election had been stolen.”
Another speaker at the meeting, Jay Valentine, used Lindell’s initial funding to develop voter data monitoring software.
Accordingly Documents Valentine, obtained by the progressive group American Oversight, has worked closely with Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, a key figure in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, to persuade lawmakers in Wisconsin and other states to approve his “fractal programming technology.” operate to detect mass fraud.
“Voter fraud is a nationwide crime committed locally primarily by Democrats,” Valentine said wrote separately, promoting the idea of a national voter fraud database. “We cannot combat industrial, governmental, large-scale voter fraud with reports, press releases and webinars.”
Note: This story was updated after Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced Friday the names of those whose names were originally redacted when charges were announced earlier this week.
