How Meet the Press Harms Our Democracy
by John D. O’Connor
The following is an article originally published on American Greatness. Read it HERE.
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We should all be concerned about serious problems with our elections, the heart of our democracy. But we can’t fix problems that we refuse to face.
There was no better example of the head-in-the-sand attitude than what was recently demonstrated by Kristen Welker of NBC’s prestigious Meet the Press, as she held forth with House Speaker Mike Johnson in February, regarding, among other topics, the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
In the wake of the Trump administration’s FBI seizure of 2020 Georgia election records, Welker barked at Johnson that raising questions about the validity of the 2020 election is dangerous to our democracy.
Let’s stop right there. Even if the Georgia election turns out to have been spotless (against all indications), is there harm from examining whether it truly was so, especially if many citizens in good faith believe otherwise? In other words, is it a good disposition to be closed-minded about such serious matters? After all, if historians still write about the Andrew Jackson/John Quincy Adams election of 1824, and the Rutherford B. Hayes/Samuel Tilden election of 1876, why can’t we have an open discussion about an election which, rightly or wrongly, occurred only recently, and is considered by many to be riddled with fraud?
Welker has a large staff and had days to prepare for her invited guest, Johnson. Yet she was ready not to hear what questions the Speaker thought relevant, but only to barrage him with pre-packaged talking points, clearly meant to assure her audience that nothing had been amiss in Georgia. After this extensive preparation, what did Welker offer as irrefutable evidence of propriety? “[t]here are really no questions about election integrity from 2020 that have not been asked and answered . . .”
“State and federal officials” had declared this “the most secure election in our country’s history,” according to Welker. “Moreover, there had been two statewide recounts.” She continued, “Even the Republican Governor had said that ‘it’s been years and no one has come forward under oath with evidence of fraud in Georgia.’”
Let’s examine Welker’s claims, starting with the easiest. The “most secure” tag clearly referred only to electronic systems’ security, not to fraudulent voting injected into the system by paper ballots. Likewise, two recounts—or a thousand recounts—would simply recount fraudulent votes. No one has doubted the counting, but only, and seriously, the validity of the ballots cast and counted.
Another straw man defeated by Welker—and she is not here alone—is the unsuccessful court challenges that have been “asked and answered, litigated and relitigated.” As we have opined on numerous occasions, absent highly particularized questions such as the one raised before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, elections are not designed to be settled in court. The system simply cannot take, and does not seek, calling millions of witnesses in the post-election wake. That is precisely why we need conclusive integrity at our polling places.
But what about Kemp’s claim that there has been “no evidence” of fraud? Like many people, Kemp confuses, perhaps intentionally, direct evidence (“I swear I committed fraud”) from circumstantial evidence (“I saw hundreds of toner-printed, uncreased ballots”). All the evidence, for example, in the O.J. Simpson case was circumstantial, and often the strongest evidence—fingerprints, DNA, hair fibers, shell casings—is circumstantial. So, Kemp’s claim is at best jejune, at worst dishonest.
Why would a Republican like Kemp wish to mislead? One clear motive would be that he approved the disastrous voluntary settlement, procured through hapless Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, of litigation brought by Democrat activist Stacey Abrams. This settlement made invalidation of signatures virtually impossible. Even worse, the settlement allowed verification of a signature on a ballot if it matched, not both, but one of two other signatures, on either the application or the registration. So, if a signature on a fraudulent application matched (as it would) the signature on a fraudulent ballot, that was considered a valid vote under the settlement. And the same fraudster could apply ten times for a ballot, and the signature on each of them would be valid under this execrable settlement.
Historically, Georgia had disqualified 3 percent of all votes, 6 percent in urban Fulton County, and 6.4 percent in all absentee balloting. After the Abrams/Raffensperger settlement, only 0.05 percent of votes were disqualified in Fulton County, 1/128 of historical norms. Oh, yes, 15,700 voters who had moved out of state (reduced for possible excuse to 10,729), and 1401 who gave no residence address, had been reported as voting. 35,000 voted in a county other than as registered. Vote harvesting was extensive in an election decided by 11,000 votes.
While Raffensperger assured reporters that this was an honest, fair election, what he did not reveal was that his own expert monitor, Carter Jones, had prepared a devastating 29-page report (still officially unpublished) detailing, convincingly, double voting and massive chain of custody shortcomings in Fulton County.
Let’s stop here. How many readers of this article have heard of the report of Carter Jones, confidentially sourced by reporter John Solomon? Why would you learn of it first here?
Another public record is the Favorito litigation in Georgia, brought by a retired citizen election activist who was concerned when he saw Trump suddenly lose 1,000 votes while Biden quickly gained 20,000. The plaintiff, contrary to Kemp’s jejune claim, documented serious evidence of fraud. A veteran poll monitor, Susan Voyles, swore under oath to identically marked, slick-papered, uncreased ballots, all seemingly for Biden, presented late at night.
Affidavits under oath showed Robin Hull, a hand-count monitor, alleged that three boxes contained identically marked, unfolded 100 percent Biden votes. Another hand-count auditor, Julie Aube, saw three boxes with 98 percent Biden votes. Auditors Barbara Hartman and poll watchers Gordon Rolle and Sonia Francis-Rolle, along with several other witnesses, noticed ballots with no creases, seemingly on different textured paper and not presented in mailing envelopes. The paper appeared identically marked with toner rather than writing implements, apparently photocopied.
After reviewing these affidavits, as Judge Brian Amero was poised to allow Garland Favorito to proceed with the case, Raffensperger, previously uninterested, convinced the court that he would handle this officially, and Judge Amero agreed, but only after Raffensperger recounted for the court his view that historically there has been massive fraud in Fulton County, an admission Kristen Welker and staff apparently overlooked.
But, of course, the promised audit never happened, and Raffensperger did nothing with the strong evidence he had been given.
There was abundant evidence not only of fraud in Georgia, but also in Arizona and Wisconsin. These three states, decided by 40,000 votes, would have produced a 269–269 tie, leaving the Republican House to decide the 2020 election.
Our brief here is not to prove conclusively outcome-determinative fraud in Georgia or elsewhere, but only to highlight not only highly serious anomalies that have not been debunked but also what our supposed media watchdogs choose to bury. Accordingly, we ask why none of the above has been mooted for discussion on major media outlets like Meet the Press.
Did Meet the Press simply overlook the Carter Jones report? Did it miss the Favorito allegations made under penalty of perjury, which consisted—yes, Kristen—of evidence of fraud? So, we reverse the question which Welker so cluelessly put forth: Isn’t this questioning harmful to our democracy? Instead, we ask: Isn’t Welker’s lack of questioning harmful to our democracy?
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John D. O’Connor is a former federal prosecutor and the San Francisco attorney who represented W. Mark Felt during his revelation as Deep Throat in 2005. O’Connor is the author of the books The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened and Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate and Began Today’s Partisan Advocacy Journalism.