Transcription
This is Democracy Watch. Mark, we have some chilling news here at the hands of the DOJ as it relates to voting rights. This is something that we've spoken about quite a bit. Now, they are carrying out a plan. Can you explain what the DOJ is doing?
Yeah, the Department of Justice is systematically going state by state and trying to access and collect individual voter uh data on every voter in the state. This is not a fire. This is a five alarm fire. I mean, I know that there are a lot of other things going on in the world of democracy right now, but nothing is as worrisome to me as someone who has spent their career fighting against voter suppression, election subversion, than the fact that Pam Bondi's Department of Justice has been weaponized, that they are going to these individual states and they want the voter records of you, of your neighbor, of your family, of your friends, of your community, your entire state. They want this on a comprehensive basis uh from state from in all 50 states.
This is something Democracy Docket, the news outlet I founded. We broke this news. We knew it was going on in one state or another state uh here and there. But while the legacy media was sleeping on this, Democracy Docket went out and confirmed it is taking place in all 50 states and we need to all be aware of this and figure out not just what is going on, but we need to discuss what we do to fight back.
Okay. Well, first and foremost, this is usually where I would ask you if this is legal. But the reality is even if it's not legal, the agency that would be tasked with enforcing the legality of it is the DOJ itself. And so what do you do in the instance where the DOJ is executing a plan that does infringe on on voting rights or or election rights, right?
So let's be clear, the Department of Justice is using federal prosecutors. You know, the people who are supposed to be prosecuting drug kingpins for bringing fentanyl into this country. Yeah. You know, the people who are, which I seem to remember being a being a thing when they were in the minority that seemed to be a top priority of theirs, but now they're now that they actually have power are perfectly content to to redirect those folks, right? Is are supposed to be going after, you know, corporate uh corporate uh malfeasants, which they also don't do anymore, right? They're using federal prosecutors to go to these state election officials, secretaries of state some places, election boards other places to try to get this information. And they're doing it by letter. They're doing it by request. We have not yet seen them use uh grand jury subpoenas. Right now, they are doing it through these other more informal methods.
But remember, it is not, you know, we're still a year and a half from the election. And the question that we all need to be putting to the Trump administration, the question that Pam Bondi should be required to ask, you know, if you're a Sunday talk show host on one of these fancy networks or on cable news, how about you ask the Trump administration the next time they put one of their liars on your air, why are they collecting this information? What are they using it for? Because there's no good reason for it. The Department of Justice doesn't have, and the certainly the criminal division doesn't have a legitimate role in the way in which we run elections. In fact, they're supposed to stay out. Remember, we all talk, you know, Donald Trump was famous for saying, you know, I'm a candidate, so they can't even, you know, investigate me or prosecute me criminally for stuff I did in in January of 2021. Remember that? Well, that principle of staying out of elections uh uh certainly should extend here. And and they don't have a role. The the the role of of running elections is to the states and the localities subject only to legislation enacted by Congress. Congress has not enacted legislation here that would be applicable. And the fact is that this is part and parcel in my view Donald Trump's predicate laying the groundwork to try to undermine free and fair elections and the results of free and fair elections in 2026.
I have two questions here. One is will your firm or another firm be suing? Do we have any indication as to whether a lawsuit will come forward? And the second question is what does the Trump administration in your estimation want to do with this information?
Yeah. So, look, I'm watching this like a hawk. I mean, I'm watching this uh as the partner and the founder of my law firm, and I can promise everyone if they do something that can result in litigation, we will bring it. If they start to sue states that are refusing to give the data, we may very well intervene to defend those states to help, you know, to help ensure protect the right of the voters because after all, it's the voters's information that is going to be exposed here. So, I can assure Donald Trump and Pam Bondi and Harit Dylan and the criminal division, you know, the the um Todd Blanches of the world, you know, that we will fight them every step of the way.
Now, what are they looking for? So there's kind of there's kind of like a continuum of bad things, you know, that they're doing with this data. At the least bad, they are going to use it to make political points. You know, they're looking for this data so that they can perpetuate false claims of fraud where none exists. They are going to use it so they can demonize um uh naturalized citizens. They're going to use it to try to criticize blue cities and blue states. You know, they'll they'll they'll find a way to to misuse or misinterpret the data to, for example, you know, claim that Gavin Newsom or JB Pritzker or some other blue state governor are are not doing their job. Right? So, that's that's actually, believe it or not, the better of the possibilities.
I think the the worst possibility, the more to me the more concerning but not at all out of the question possibility is that they're going to use this data when they don't like the results of elections when they want to say the federal government needs to step in because Gavin Newsom isn't doing a good job because JB Pritzker has allowed ballots to be counted that they don't think should be counted because Kathy Hochul in New York, like pick your pick your state or for that matter Fulton County, Georgia or, you know, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, right? We have seen this playbook before and everyone needs to wake up to this. This is the playbook that Donald Trump tried to run in 2020. This is what they tried to do when Jeffrey Clark in the Department of Justice tried to get the acting attorney general Jeff Rosen to send a bogus letter to Fulton County, Georgia, and to the state of Georgia claiming irregularities. Like this is the playbook that Donald Trump has wanted to run ever since he failed to overturn the results of the free and fair elections in 2020. And he was prepared to run this in 2024 if he had to. He didn't because he won that election. Uh but I got to tell you, he is now going to use the Department of Justice, your taxpayers employees. He's using them to collect this data for bad, bad reasons. And we all need to pay paying attention and we all need to be ready to stand up and fight back.
And and in in my opinion, this is a small part of a larger hole. And and we've spoken about how now that Donald Trump got permission to be able to send the military into cities, now he has enforcers to carry out whatever plan he needs to do. So he got the green light from the courts to be able to send uh the National Guard and the Marines into Los Angeles. Well, the the Marines and the National Guard coming to Los Angeles, they didn't need to do anything. But that doesn't matter because what matters is now Donald Trump knows that he has the green light to be able to do it and to be able to do it where he wants to do it. And so if that means Fulton County, Georgia, if that means Milwaukee, Wisconsin, if that means Detroit, Michigan, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, any of these population centers where Democrats uh Democratic voters carry Democrats to victory in these states, then not only can he offer up some bogus pretense to be able to say that, you know, the the election was rigged because of whatever reason, you know, errant synapse fires in his brain and falls out of his face. But if he needs to do something like seize the voting machines, which he literally tried to do in 2020, now not only does he have the the backing in the DOJ, which he didn't have before, because remember Bill Barr called that scheme. So now, of course, he's got Pam Bondi. She's she's an appendage of Trump. She'll do whatever he says. But he's also got the muscle to be able to carry out these plans because he knows he can just send the Marines or the National Guard into whatever city he wants. And he tells them what to do, they're going to do it, right?
And let's not forget, by the way, you know, Cash Patel and Dan Bongino seem awfully quiet these days. I don't know. Is there something that happened maybe in the news that they all of a sudden has have gone quiet? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Jeffrey Epstein. Okay. But in all seriousness, these guys were like loud election directors. Cash Patel like, you know, was all in on the big lie. And it's not just the military. You're absolutely right. He has he has he has done a proof of concept in his ability to deploy uh the National Guard and the US military, but he also has not just the Department of Justice with Pam Bondi, he also has the FBI, right? And the ability to send FBI agents, not, you know, and I'm sure by the time we get around to the elections, you know, there will be proof of life uh from Bongino and Cash Patel that from the bunker that they're hiding from the Epstein files uh right now and they will be on board with this. I mean, maybe maybe what we need to do is put a copy of the Epstein files at every polling place and it'll be like to scare them off and then the then like, you know, the Trump administration would be like, we don't even know there is a polling place. That's right. The only way to scare off Cash Patel and Dan Bongino is to have some is to have some indication that Epstein is involved and that'll that'll keep them away.
Um, with that said, I know that you have been on this beat uh and in fact it was Democracy Docket your news outlet that broke this story. So, um, highly recommend for everybody watching, if you want to stay on top of breaking legal news from, uh, uh, a team of people who are completely fearless when it comes to this stuff, please subscribe to Democracy Docket. I'm going to put the link to their YouTube channel right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. It doesn't cost anything to subscribe. These are the voices that we need to elevate. I'm Brian Teller-Cohen. I'm Mark Elias. This is Democracy Watch.