How a North Carolina judge is using the GOP playbook to steal an election

 

Wednesday, March 26 In North Carolina, losing state Supreme Court nominee Jefferson Griffin is using the exact same playbook the GOP used to try and steal the 2020 election. Also in this issue of Eye On The Right: Breaking down the GOP’s war on lawyers, law firms, judges and courts, and how Pam Bondi is using the GOP to punish Elon Musk’s enemies. As always, thanks for reading. — Matt Cohen, Senior Staff Writer At Democracy Docket, we prioritize our readers in everything we do. Help support our pro-democracy news outlet as we continue to hold the Trump administration accountable. Join us in the fight for a stronger, more transparent democracy. How a North Carolina judge is using the GOP playbook to steal an election Last week, a panel of judges heard arguments from lawyers representing a Republican candidate who narrowly lost his most recent election — only to challenge those results, ask for tens of thousands of legal ballots to be tossed out, and have himself declared the winner. If this sounds familiar to you, it should: Jefferson Griffin, the losing North Carolina Supreme Court candidate, is using the exact same GOP playbook that President Donald Trump used in 2020 to try and steal that election. In November, Griffin lost his election for a seat on the state’s highest court to incumbent Justice Allison Riggs (D) and did what’s becoming an increasingly common tactic for losing GOP candidates: Fight tooth and nail in the courts to have the election overturned. After two recounts, Griffin launched a massive legal effort challenging the North Carolina State Board of Election’s (NCSBE) decision to count 65,000 ballots from voters that he claims were ineligible to cast ballots, because they didn’t provide their driver’s license or Social Security number when they registered to vote — as it wasn’t required of them at the time. After a number of twists and turns, the fate of the election is now in the hands of a three-judge panel in the North Carolina Court of Appeals — the very court that Griffin is currently a judge for. During the hearing last week, Griffin’s lawyer, Craig Schauer, argued that allowing such ballots cast by voters who did not provide photo ID opens the state to the possibility of voter fraud. “Now the right to vote is not absolute,” he said. “The North Carolina Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court made clear that the right to vote is subject to the state’s need to protect the integrity of the elections.” It’s an argument that rings familiar to anyone that’s followed Trump’s comments on “election integrity” over the years. That catchphrase has become the cornerstone of the GOP and Trump administration’s effort to disenfranchise voters: The vague notion that the integrity of our elections are somehow compromised (they’re not) and thus the need to restrict access to the ballot in order to ensure they’re secure. And Trump is using it to further disenfranchise voters, issuing an executive order this week to vastly reshape the elections system. It’s an argument that Trump lost in courts all over the country in 2020 — preserving democracy in the process. And now, democracy is on the line in North Carolina: should the appeals court rule for Griffin, it would fundamentally rob 65,000-plus voters, who did nothing wrong, of their vote. The GOP’s war on law On Saturday, the White House issued a chilling memorandum. The memo, titled “Preventing Abuses of the Legal System and the Federal Court,” targets all lawyers and law firms that, in intentionally vague terms, “engage in actions that violate the laws of the United States.” The memo outlines how it plans to punish attorneys and law firms who “threatens our national security, homeland security, public safety, or election integrity” by revoking security clearances, sanctions and, more ominously, directing “other disciplinary actions.” And the memo singles out Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias. “Recent examples of grossly unethical misconduct are far too common,” the memo reads before attacking Marc and his firm, Elias Law Group LLP, as an example of the kinds of firms and attorneys the administration has in its sights. The memo is the latest escalation in the Trump administration — and the broader GOP — war on law and the courts. And while it’s unclear exactly what the ramifications of this memo are, what is clear is that the Trump administration is using every tool at its disposal to go after its political enemies. Classic authoritarianism. But it’s not just an assault on lawyers and law firms. A few weeks ago I wrote about the MAGA attack on justices who were ruling against the Trump administration in the litany of lawsuits challenging executive orders. Trump was losing and the reaction from people like Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance was to call for justices to be impeached. But the GOP doesn’t just want to impeach judges whose ruling they don’t agree with — they want to get rid of the courts entirely. Earlier this week, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced a bill to limit the authority of district courts, banning their ability to issue nationwide injunctions. And House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) threatened to eliminate specific courts altogether. "We do have authority over the federal courts. As you know, we can, we can eliminate an entire district court,” he said this week. "We have power, funding over the courts and all these other things. But desperate times call for desperate measures and Congress is going to act so stay tuned for that." It’s hard to tell where all this is heading. In MAGA’s perfect world, the only judges and courts would be Trump-appointed judges in Trump-friendly district courts that would never rule against him or any of his allies. I want to say that reality is something that could only exist in some far-flung dystopian fiction, but so much of what the Trump administration is doing these days seemed unfeasible not too long ago. All I can say is that Trump’s war on the judiciary is just beginning. Pam Bondi is using the DOJ to punish people who don’t like the richest man on the planet Since its founding in 1870, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has had one mission: enforce federal laws and the administration of justice in the United States. But under Attorney General Pam Bondi’s supervision, the DOJ is no longer a federal agency concerned with just enforcing federal laws but rather punishing people who don’t like billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk, who may or may not be running the federal government. In recent weeks there’s been a spate of nonviolent protests at Tesla dealerships — as well as a few reported cases of vandalism — in response to Musk’s key role in dismantling the federal government with his Department of Government Efficiency. In response, Bondi announced that she’s throwing the full weight of the DOJ into punishing the few people who set some Teslas on fire: “The swarm of violent attacks on Tesla property is nothing short of domestic terrorism,” she said in a statement. “The Department of Justice has already charged several perpetrators with that in mind, including in cases that involve charges with five-year mandatory minimum sentences. We will continue investigations that impose severe consequences on those involved in these attacks, including those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.” The reality is that, although there've been a few instances of arson at Tesla dealerships in recent weeks, the vast majority of actions have been non-violent protests and organizing efforts to make Tesla’s stock plummet. In other words: peaceful protests, a cornerstone of the First Amendment. And Bondi is using the DOJ to not just spread disinformation about the actual reality of what’s happening with these Tesla protests, but using fearmongering tactics to actively intimidate people from participating in peaceful demonstrations. She made that abundantly clear in a recent interview with Fox Business when she issued a vague threat to Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Tx.), in response to her participation in a nonviolent anti-Tesla demonstration: “She needs to tread very carefully.”