Heads up, Georgia voters

Could this be why Trump's "election integrity" commission decided to destroy all its data before shutting down?

President Donald Trump’s election fraud commission asked every state and the District for detailed voter registration data, but in Texas’s case it took an additional step: it asked to see Texas records that identify all voters with Hispanic surnames, newly released documents show. In buying nearly 50 million records from the state with the nation’s second largest Hispanic population, a researcher for the White House panel checked a box on two Texas public voter data request forms explicitly asking for the “Hispanic surname flag notation,” to be included in information sent to the commission, according to copies of the signed and notarized state forms.

[...]

Commission member Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap (D), who has sued the panel to disclose records that he says were not provided to him, said the selection of Hispanic names appeared improper and could explain why the panel has sought to act in secret.

[...]

“It’s all speculation because they haven’t disclosed anything, but if they are breaking things down along racial and ethnic lines,’ Dunlap said, it indicates why they are guarding this information like hungry dogs cornered in a trap.”

[...]

White House and Texas officials said the Texas voter data was never delivered because a lawsuit brought by Texas voting rights advocates after the request last year temporarily stopped any data handoff.

The commission was disbanded Jan. 3 after Trump cited a host of ongoing state and federal lawsuits and resistance from state officials over the sweeping pursuit of information about more than 150 million voters across the country. The commission said it would destroy all voter data it had gathered, without detailing any data purchases.

[...]

The commission vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris W. Kobach (R) who launched the drive to collect data from every state, said “at no time did the commission request any state to flag surnames by ethnicity or race. It’s a complete surprise to me.”

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Such “information does not, did not advance the commission’s inquiry in any way, and this is the first I’ve heard the Texas files included that,” Kobach said Friday.

  WaPo

Riiiiiiight.

Who knew they were buying records in the first place?

The documents appear to show for the first time that the Trump commission paid for the processing and release of records from 10 states in September. Earlier, voting rights groups had identified 20 states that turned over information voluntarily.

I hope those ten states are suing to get their money back.

The commission faces lawsuits by at least 10 voting and public accountability groups, seeking information on what other data the panel may have assembled, if any analysis was done and whether information has been shared outside the White House.

[...]

“There was never a request made to flag people based on their ethnicity,” the White House official said Friday. “That was never asked for, nor is that what this [Texas] response is saying, though I can see why some could read it that way,” the official said.

Can you now?

Records of the Texas data purchase were disclosed after Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) on Nov. 13 requested information about interactions between the U.S. General Services Administration and the commission.

Good for Claire. She's been working hard lately. She tried to get military pay exempted from the government shutdown, but was shot down by that mean old fossil McConnell. But she did let us down by voting to extend the NSA surveilance recently, so I can't give her a clean bill of health.

UPDATE:

She also just voted to let the Democrats be played for fools by the Republicans again on the government shutdown, where they should have been holding out for a DACA deal.

UPDATE:

Oh, lord.

On Monday, the Washington Post reported that the panel had purchased Texas election records that flagged all registered voters with Hispanic last names. Kris Kobach, who led the commission, claims he was unaware of that acquisition, which was made by a researcher who was recently arrested on child pornography charges.

  Slate

Somebody must have asked how this story could be worse.

According to Kobach, it was Ronald Williams II, a policy adviser on the commission, who bought the data. “Mr. Williams did not ask any member of the commission whether he should check that box or not,” Kobach asserted, “so it certainly wasn’t a committee decision.”

I'm guessing Kobach decided that Williams was already persona non grata, so why not lay the blame on him?

In October, Williams was arrested and charged with the possession and distribution of child pornography. (He has pleaded not guilty.) While the Post was not able to reach Williams for comment, the available evidence does bear out Kobach’s version of the events. Only Williams’ name appears on the invoice, and he indeed merely had to check a box to request the Hispanic voter data. The records also indicate Williams handled these kind of requests with virtually no oversight.

Yeah, OK. Why wouldn't Kobach give the commission's data to commission members? Why did Matthew Dunlap have to sue to get access to documents on a commission he was part of?

A judge ruled in Dunlap’s favor, but Kobach, through the Department of Justice, still refuses to turn over the requested records. “Perhaps the only surprising aspect of the Department of Justice response,” Dunlap said in response, “is their rich blend of arrogance and contempt for the rule of law.”

Unbelievable.

Deeper and Deeper

Investigators at the House and Senate Intelligence committees and the Justice Department are examining whether the Trump campaign’s digital operation – overseen by Jared Kushner – helped guide Russia’s sophisticated voter targeting and fake news attacks on Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Congressional and Justice Department investigators are focusing on whether Trump’s campaign pointed Russian cyber operatives to certain voting jurisdictions in key states – areas where Trump’s digital team and Republican operatives were spotting unexpected weakness in voter support for Hillary Clinton, according to several people familiar with the parallel inquiries.

[...]

By Election Day, an automated Kremlin cyberattack of unprecedented scale and sophistication had delivered critical and phony news [including a story in the final days of the campaign accusing her of running a pedophile ring at a Washington pizzeria] about the Democratic presidential nominee to the Twitter and Facebook accounts of millions of voters, many in swing states, even in key precincts.

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Schiff said he wants the House panel to determine whether Trump aides helped Russia time its cyberattacks or target certain voters and whether there was “any exchange of information, any financial support funneled to organizations that were doing this kind of work.”

  McClatchy

[Kushner's] real estate finances and December meetings with Russia’s ambassador and the head of a sanctioned, state-controlled bank are also being examined.

[...]

Mike Carpenter, who in January left a senior Pentagon post where he worked on Russia matters, also has suspicions about collaboration between the campaign and Russia’s cyber operatives.

“There appears to have been significant cooperation between Russia’s online propaganda machine and individuals in the United States who were knowledgeable about where to target the disinformation,” he said, without naming any American suspects.

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The Russians targeted women and African-Americans in two of the three decisive states, Wisconsin and Michigan, “where the Democrats were too brain dead to realize those states were even in play,” [Senate Intel co-chair Mark] Warner said.

[...]

It started even before Trump locked up the nomination. Throughout the Republican primary elections in early 2016, Russia sent armies of bots carrying pro-Trump messages and deployed human “trolls” to comment in his favor on Internet stories and in social media, former FBI special agent Clint Watts told Congress weeks ago.

Watts, now a cybersecurity specialist with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said the targets included former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.

[...]

Kushner’s pivotal role in the Trump cyber effort was underscored by his hiring in 2015 of Brad Parscale, a Texas-based digital guru who previously had done work for the Trump Organization, said two GOP operatives familiar with the campaign.

Parscale’s company raked in about $90 million for work targeting many states with paid advertisements, social media messages and other cyber tools.

[...]

CNN quoted him last month as dismissing suggestions that Russian-directed online bots would have been effective in swinging votes to Trump. He said the campaign did not find Twitter -- where those bots mainly functioned – to be an effective tool.

  McClatchy

He's joking, right? Over and over and over Trump has railed about how they're not going to get him off Twitter because that's how he communicates with his base and talks directly to "the people."

All of the sources [that] spoke on condition of anonymity [did so] because the investigation, led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, is confidential.

And the sources don't give a shit, do they?

I thought the Mueller investigation would have a tighter lid.

Washington attorney Abbe Lowell, who was recently hired to be Kushner’s chief defense counsel and has “a reputation as a guy you hire if you're going to do battle with the government,” according to one former federal prosecutor, declined to comment on the Russia inquiries facing Kushner.

More hints that Jared is going solo. And may well be informing on the others even as we speak.

If it comes down to choosing between daddy and her husband, which way will Ivanka go?

UPDATE 7/16:

Parscale is questioned and says he's "unaware of any Russian involvement."   It's becoming clear that the best position you can take in this affair is ignorance.  And hope no one has evidence otherwise.