No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - BONUS EPISODE: Pro-Trump election officials poised to PREVENT 2024 certification

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

Amid major outcry over a Rolling Stone article written by Justin Glawe about pro-Trump election officials preparing to refuse certification of the 2024 election in swing states, Brian sat down with Justin Glawe, the author of the article, and voting rights attorney Marc Elias, to discuss where we stand on this issue right now.Rolling Stone article: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-swing-state-officials-election-deniers-1235069692/Shop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we've got a bonus episode, and it's spurred on by a segment on Rachel Maddow that went very viral, wherein Trump has signaled that he's not even interested in garnering votes anymore, and that's largely owed to the fact that there are already election deniers in positions of power who can refuse to certify elections across the country. There has probably never been a segment that's led to more outcry, more emails, more requests for me to dig in. So I sat down with Justin Glaw, the author of the Rolling Stone article on which Maddow's entire segment was based, and with voting rights attorney Mark Elias, who served as a primary source for Justin. So I've compiled both of these discussions for you here again in this special episode of No Lie. By now, you've all seen the Rolling Stone article, the one that inspired that chilling clip from Rachel Maddow titled, These Swing State Election Officials are pro-Trump election deniers. But I said there's a lot going on at the surface level in terms of donors and campaign positions and campaign strategy

and the way they're behaving in public, there's a lot that is weird about this campaign thus far. But there is one last thing in terms of the weirdness of this campaign that I think is actually quite serious. You probably heard this weekend that Donald Trump told an audience on Friday night

that if they vote for him this November, if he's voted back into office this November, they will never have to vote again. He told an audience on Friday to, quote, get out and vote just this time. He said, after this time, quote, you won't have to do it anymore. You won't have to vote anymore.

He said, quote, in four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good, and you're not going to have to vote. Now, this is not the first time Trump has told a campaign audience that they will never have to vote again once they vote him back in this time. And that is as alarming as it sounds for all the reasons that you immediately think it is, right? I mean, he's positing this like, this is a happy thing. Oh, joy, never having the burden of voting. again, right? The point of democracy is that we vote all the time. And we like it. That's how

we decide what happens in our country. He's promising his followers that he'll end all of that. And it just, it's exactly what you think it is. We've got the author of that piece with us today. Justin Glaw, Justin, thanks so much for taking the time. Thanks for having me. So you wrote that very sobering article outlining the fact that at least 70 pro-Trump election conspiracy theorists are right now working as county election officials, people who've doubted the election results in the past, with some of them outright having already refused to certify elections, to what extent does it feel like their refusal to certify anything other than a Trump win, a Republican win in November, is inevitable? Yeah, I mean, I think that's the game

plan. I don't think that they would say it that way. I don't think that they would. And in fact, some of these people that I've talked to have said, oh, well, you know, no, we don't plan to, you know, refuse to certify, but, you know, I think that we have clues to that based off of what's already happened in places like Washoe County, Nevada and Fulton County, Georgia, where under pressure in Washoe County from election deniers, even a moderate Republican briefly said, no, I'm not going to certify these results, right, based off of really questionable fraud claims. So, yeah, I mean, I think that is a very real possibility that anything that is not a obvious Trump win, they're going to say, well, we can't certify these results because there was all this fraud, right?

Is there a sense among these people that it doesn't even matter what happens with the actual votes because these administration officials themselves serve as a kind of stopgap for the Republicans to ultimately just get what they want anyway? Right. I think like there is no, there is no situation. in which these officials in particular would accept election results unless every single person who's in charge of every vote, counting every vote, every person involved in every election system in the country is a full-throated Trump-supporting person who believes that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election. Only then, really, would most of these people say, okay, you know what?

Yes, Trump lost or, you know, somebody else won. But without having all of that in place, they're not going to buy it at all. Do you think that they actually believe there's fraud, or is this just, you know, that they recognize that refusing to certify is the avenue that they'll inevitably have to take because winning at any cost is the whole ballgame here? I think that these people in particular, because let's be clear here about who these people are, these are local county election officials, like this is a part-time job. You know, some of these people, they may not even be getting paid for all I know.

But if they are getting paid, it's a very small amount of money. These are appointed positions mostly. So these are not elected officials. So, yes, this is always the big question with election denialism. Do people actually believe this? Or is this a politically expedient thing for them to do to, like, rise in the ranks? And, you know, for people in Congress, I think we know the answer to that. Many of them probably don't believe it, but they know that it's going to get clicks, that it's going to get hits, that it's going to get them reelect.

but for these people like these are the true believers they don't really have they're not making money off of this really they are not you know getting a state senate seat or something like that some of them are but for the most part these are people who are if you've ever been to a local election board meeting like these are the same people who are on your your your local school board or you know your local uh whatever the board is that deals with like county ordinance and stuff like that so i don't that Like I said, I think these are like the true believers. These are the foot soldiers.

Well, presumably these people do have access to every minutia of data, which should make them better in forms than your average conspiracy theorists. So does the fact that they have that data at their disposal count for nothing that they would still just fall for these blatant conspiracy theories? Yeah, that's a really good question. You know, in some instances, I talked to one of these people in Alabama, or sorry, Arkansas, which I did a lot of research on these folks in Arkansas and Mississippi that was not included in the story. But this guy was interesting because like he was like, oh, 2020 stolen from

Trump. I became an election official to fix the system. And he's one of these guys who kind of then got in there and was like, oh, actually, you know, there's not really any major fraud that's happening, right? But it came with a caveat, right? He said, I know there's not fraud in whatever county he was in in Arkansas that I can't remember the name of. But I can't say the same for all these Democrat cities in these Democrat states because those are the places the Democrats run. And so there could be widespread cheating there. So that's one example. But as far as a lot of the other people who have access to this minutia of information that you're talking about and still believe this stuff, I have no explanation for it other than that a lot

of these people are on the older side and that there's a lot of very technical information and data that's involved here that also involves a lot of sort of computer technology. And I think that it's difficult to understand even for people who are very in the know about this stuff. So I think there's just, it's just almost like sort of an ignorance thing to a certain extent. For the election official in Arkansas, for example, we said, okay, well, it looks okay here, But what about all those corrupt Democrat cities? For those people, does what they do in their little, you know, in their office in Arkansas,

does that feel like a way to push back against what they perceive as clear certain corruption happening in those Democrat cities? And so they feel an obligation to compensate for them. Right. Yeah. So it's a mindset of, you know, there may be cheating elsewhere. You know, these people may be cheating in Atlanta and Detroit and places like that. but they're not going to cheat here in Lee County, Mississippi or whatever. And that's because we are in charge here and we are for election integrity. When in reality, I mean, as you well know, like the rules and the systems in place are really not very different across, across states in terms of things that can catch something like widespread voter fraud. You know what I'm saying? Like those systems and those rules, you're going to catch, if somebody actually, you know, used a mule to input a thousand fake ballots, whether it's in Lee County, Mississippi, or Detroit, Michigan, they're probably going to get caught. I'm certain that the question you got more than anything as the result of this

is folks reaching out to you and asking what the legal recourse is. So do you have, what do you say to those people? So the legal recourse for refusing or denying or delaying certification of election results is essentially lawsuits, but also there have been instances in Arizona, for instance, in Cochee's County, there were two officials who refused to certify results. They have been charged criminally for sort of like dereliction of duty type stuff. In other places, Democrat groups and the party has filed lawsuits against officials who have refused to do that. In Washoe County recently, like I was talking about, that moderate official who reversed on a previous decision to certify and said, actually, there's too many potential problems here.

I'm actually not going to certify my own election win, is what she said earlier in July. In that instance, the county attorney and the secretary of state came and they kind of told them like, hey guys, this is your duty to do this. Like, this is not really up to your discretion to certify. You have a legal obligation to certify these results. And oh, wouldn't you know that she again changed her mind along with another Republican on that county commission and said, okay, we give, we'll certify these results. But however, there was one Republican still that refused to certify.

So those are basically the recourses that are available at this point. Justin, you gleaned a lot of these people's political. beliefs just by kind of scouring their Facebook pages. Did it scare you to see how susceptible these people in positions of power actually are to disinformation? Yes. I mean, these Facebook pages, some of them are quite something. I'm sure they're just a treat. And look, it's not just like, you know, some of these people like there was a handful, there was only a couple of posts, right? But like that's enough for me to know that like they believe in this stuff you know yeah but for other people i mean it was just prolific and not just about election fraud but like every right wing

culture war issues that you can think of uh anti vaccine stuff anti-lgbtq stuff um you know the groomers like just everything that you can possibly imagine and i'm not talking about like oh they made like four posts in a year i'm talking like all day every day and like if that's that you're that's what it looks like for me on the public facing side of what their Facebook looks like. I can only imagine what it looks like inside their own heads as they're consuming this massive volume of misinformation and culture war outrage stuff. And in some cases, like it became concerning to me because obviously we know that misinformation like this really, really gets some people fired up. And, you know, there's trying to mess around with elections and then there

is the possibility of political violence. And like these people are consuming the same stuff that leads down that road. Like that is what their diet consists of. It's a you are what you eat type thing. Right. And for some of these people, I think that is a concern for most of them. They're just just like our crazy uncle on Facebook, kind of. But isn't this by design? Like, when you have the Steve Bannons of the world who specifically work to recruit exactly these kinds of people, people who he himself radicalized,

isn't that exactly what the Republicans are looking for to fill the ranks of these jobs, these openings, these positions with exactly the kind of people who can gum up the works because they themselves have been radicalized by, you know, these bad actors on the right? Right. And, you know, tying the existence,

of these people in these positions up the food chain of Republican politics is something that I've really tried to do over the last few years as I've been researching this stuff. And I have not yet found any like major evidence that like these people were being sort of put into place by the Republican National Committee or the Trump campaign or whatever. But it's but it's more of like sort of a decentralized network. Like I said, they're all consuming the same material, the same content. They're all believing in this, you know, this lie of widespread election fraud in 2020. So in a way, you know, the powers that be within the Republican Party, they don't even need to sort of put these apparatchiks into place in all these, in all these local election

bodies because those apparatchiks sort of already exists. Now, what I will say is that there have been lots of cases where, like I said, many of these officials are appointed, right? So in Spalding County, Georgia, you know, the Democrats get two, the Republicans get two. So like, they get a pick. They're people who are on the election board. And in a lot of places, what I've seen is that the more moderate voices are getting pushed out in favor of the more full-throated election denier people, you know, so that those people can be in place on the election boards to look over election integrity. So I guess the issue for me, and I know this isn't your job to do this, but I guess what comes next? I mean, your job that you executed beautifully, I think, with this piece was kind of, you know, shining a spotlight on exactly what's happening. And your job isn't supposed to be what's next, but I feel like I feel like I should still ask, at least for your opinion on the question of what's next. It's a good question, and it's one that has been posed to me a lot in recent days in the wake of this story coming. coming out. And I'm glad that people are starting to ask it because when I started down this path,

um, you know, my whole idea was like, these people believe in lies. Like this, there is, there is no proof that there was, there is such a thing as widespread election fraud. Therefore, all of the actions that follow that are not based in reality. And, and my thought was the best thing to sort of alleviate this problem is sunlight. And that the more that I, could show people, here's who these people are. Because let's be very frank about what happens at a county election board meeting. At a county election board meeting, you know, the person who's on this list that's in my story is not coming out and saying, Joe Biden stole the 2020 election. That language is never really used. It's used on their Facebook pages a lot of times,

which is how I caught a lot of these people. But it's sort of in between the lines, right? And So I've always thought if I can just expose these people for their true beliefs, then locally it will raise awareness among Democrats or liberals or whatever you want to call it or just regular people who understand that there's no such thing as widespread election fraud and that these people would sort of like, for lack of a better term, to be shamed out of office or something like that, right? Like sunlight brings pressure. Yeah. And unfortunately in a lot of cases, especially in Spalding County, Georgia, which I've written a lot about, that has not happened. That putting sunlight on these folks has not resulted. But I think maybe that is starting to change, especially as people start understanding more about the issue of certification. And I hope that's the case. Yeah. Finally, let's finish off with this. You yourself are pretty steeped in some of the worst doom and gloom in the U.S. and what our politics really has to offer.

offer. How are you holding up personally? And beyond that, what gives you hope right now? That's a doomed question right there? No, no, it's not. It's not. I have lots of things that give me hope. I mean, I'm holding up, honestly, fine. I just think I'm just kind of like maybe I'm a little sick or something. Like, I just enjoy this work, you know? I just spent two weeks on the road. Sounds like somebody that works in political media. Right. Yeah, exactly.

I feel like I'm a little sick. Yeah, that sounds about right. That checks out. The thing that gives me hope is that, you know, I think, look, I think that, you know, you mentioned the legal recourses for all of this stuff. Like, I don't know. It's possible that there could be on mass certification refusals in November. And then now we're going up to the Supreme Court and we got like major, major problems.

But I think one of the things that gives me. me hope is that I think that courts and, you know, sort of the adults in the room in a lot of these places are going to look at certification, be like, no, you cannot stop this. You cannot stop certifying results in Wayne County, Michigan because some Yahoo came up here to an election board meeting talking about Venezuelan election fraud in Dominion voting machines. Like, you can't do that. And I think that, like, the realities of all of this, that my whole, hope is that reason prevails. And that's the thing that gives me hope right now. Well, that sounds good. We'll leave it there. Justin, where can my viewers and listeners see and

hear more from you? American dash doom.com. It's a newsletter on Substack, and that's where I publish this stuff all the time. So they can go there. Justin, thank you so much for the work that you're doing, especially and for taking the time today. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Mark, we have all seen the Rachel Maddow clip that myself have gotten hundreds of emails about exactly this issue. There is a lot of concern that Donald Trump won't even need votes in the November election because he's already got election officials in swing states who will simply refuse to certify the election results.

So first off, so as not to bury the lead here, how realistic is this and what can be done about it? So we have been talking about this. for more than a year. And it is because this is very serious. This is something that everyone who cares about free and fair elections cares about ensuring that we have the process in the post-election move smoothly and orderly should be worried about. Like, we saw this in 2020. The fact is that Donald Trump in 2020 tried to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power through litigation, ultimately through January 6th. But in between that, he tried to get in the state of Michigan the

Wayne County Board Republicans to refuse to certify the election results and then tried to get the Republicans on the statewide board to refuse to certify the election results. So this is something we ought to be very, very worried about. We saw it again in 2022 in places, and I expect we will see it again in 2024. And as to what we can all do about it, look, my legal team is in court as we speak trying to protect against this, but there is something for everyone to do. You know, you and I have been speaking out about it. And I wish more members of the media would be speaking out. Kudos to Rachel Maddow, but really kudos, frankly, to you, Brian, because you have been talking about this much longer. But we also need everyday Americans to be focused on this and to be paying

attention and to be calling this out in their communities. So because of their structure or who the officials in charge are, what specific states, for example, are especially worrisome for you? Like Michigan has a Democratic trifecta, so is it safe to assume that there's less risk than a place like Nevada, which now has a Republican governor? I wish I could say that, you know, that we don't have to worry about states like Michigan. But the fact is that the certification process, just to back up, starts at the municipal or county level, depending on the state. And these are oftentimes bipartisan boards, right? The idea historically has been that this is part of the celebration of democracy. part of the pageantry of democracy, as I've called it,

where after the elections results are, after people have voted, and the unofficial election results have been called in by the polling places that on a bipartisan basis, Democrats and Republicans sit down and agree that the numbers add up to what they add up to. They are then put on a form, and both Democrats and Republicans sign off on those.

Those are then sent to the counties, counties to the state. ultimately the state to the governor. Governor signs a big certificate on a big calligraphy that goes to Congress and the National Archives in the case of presidential elections. And it was those certificates on January 6th that were threatened by the insurrectionists, right? That's what they were trying to prevent. But before you get to the governor signing this, you have a whole bunch of these sort of celebrations

of democracy at the local and statewide level, and those are oftentimes bipartisan, as I mentioned, bipartisan board. So in Arizona, we saw Cochise County, Arizona, refusing to certify to try to prevent the state of Arizona certifying the election results in 2022. So it's, it's a lot of states. It's Michigan. It's Wisconsin. It's Arizona. It's Georgia. In Georgia, the Republicans are actually trying to pass a rule to make it more discretion for election deniers to not certify election. So it's in every one of our communities we need to pay attention to this. Well, are there any legal ramifications for people who corruptly refuse to certify or who refused to actually do their jobs by virtue of not certifying when their job is to certify?

Absolutely. So in Arizona, I mentioned in Cochise County after 2022 when the, that county's Republicans were refusing to certify. My law firm, we brought a lawsuit. We sued. We won. And then after that, there were actually indictments of the Cochise County officials by the state of Arizona because they are, as you point out, in violation of the state law. You know, they are in violation of their obligation. And they, and the ultimate, you know, we talk, we, we throw around terms like election denialism or election subversion, election interference. What is more subversive than refusing to allow the election results to?

to be certified? What is more denial than that? And what is more interfering with the outcome of elections than trying to block the peaceful transfer of power or the peaceful election certification process? So these are very, very serious. They are crimes in many places and they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Mark, to what extent can the refusal to certify one small county, for example, prevent the state certification from actually moving forward. Yeah, of course, that's the big worry, right? So in 2020, Donald Trump and Ronna McDaniels found themselves on the phone with the Wayne County Republican Canvas Board members.

I mean, just think about how breathtaking that is, that you are like on this local board. Now, Wayne County is a big county, right? It's Detroit. But you are on this board, and the president of the United States is calling you, along with the chair of the R&C telling you, oh, don't worry, don't do it. We'll get you lawyers. Remember that? Remember that piece of it, Brian? But in 2022, we saw them sort of moved to an even more extreme position in that you had these rural red counties like in Cochise County, Arizona. I mean, there's nothing wrong. I'm very fond of Cochise County. I think good people live there.

It's a great place to live. But, you know, it's not Maricopa, right? It's not a large county. but you started to see these smaller counties think that they could hold up the entire state by refusing to certify. So, you know, I worry a lot that it is not just the large counties, but it will be these small counties. And if you're a secretary of state, if you're the secretary of state of Michigan or Wisconsin or Nevada or Pennsylvania or Georgia, what do you do if you don't have all the results? You know, like you can say, well, it didn't really affect the outcome, but that's not right.

right like in the end you need all of the counties in your state uh to participate and it is just an absolute crime i mean i mean that literally and figuratively that that that republicans are spreading this hate and these lies in ways that undermine what is ultimately the thing that that makes this country great which is free and fair elections and and the coming together after the elections behind the winners. So I just want to drill into this for a moment because I really want to understand what we should expect to be done. Is it just that, first of all, in different states, there are different rules, so we're going to see scattershot decisions regardless, and that ultimately all of these are going to be left up to basically litigation in each state's respective

courts or the way that each state has to litigate these issues as it relates to the Supreme Court and certification with the governor and all that. Is this just scattershot rulings depending on the jurisdiction? So we hope that going into elections, that election officials will realize that their paramount obligation is to the people of their state, to the law, and to the Constitution. But we can't be sure that that's going to be the case. And increasingly, Donald Trump is making clear he doesn't want that to be the case. I mean, think about what Donald Trump has said about get out the vote. He has said, don't worry about getting out the vote. Just worry about election in an aisle. He has said, we're not going to have to worry about elections at all in four

years. So we have to be clear-eyed that despite the best hope we have, that people will do the right thing, that people won't do the right thing. And then, yes, Brian, it is left to the court system in a somewhat scattershot fashion. Maybe there is a way to consolidate across counties in a particular state, but it is going to have to be fought county by county, state by state, to force accurate certification of elections. And that is a tragedy for our democracy, that it may come to that again in 2024. It came to that in 2022. And we all need to be ready. Mark, for posterity here, is certifying elections in any way optional? And what is your message to these county election officials, you know, who do refuse to cert cert certify election results? If you are a Republican

County official, do your job. If you're not prepared to do your job, to administer fair elections, to certify accurate results, now is the time to resign. Get out of office. Don't be sitting in the chair you're sitting. You're just, you're not cut out for the job that you have been given. If you cannot celebrate democracy and the outcome of free and fair elections, regardless of whether the candidate you support won or lost, you're in the wrong business. Leave the election business. and go do something else. But if you stay in this job, if you choose to be in a position

to administer elections and to certify the election results, and you don't do your job, you're going to get sued, and you're going to lose. And you are going to go down in history as one of the villains in American history. And that is true for the county election officials.

It is true for the state election officials. And by the way, it is true for those Republican members of Congress listening. If you can't accept the outcome of free and fair elections, shame on you. Go find another line of work. The cynical read of this is that those people view themselves as being there as a bulwark to what they believe is rampant corruption on the Democrats side because they've been fed a lot of disinformation by the folks on the right, like Steve Bannon, who exists to spread

this kind of disinformation. And so they view themselves as part of an operation. to push back against what they see as fraud on the left. And so what do you say to those people, for example, who are there as part of like a broader push enabled by the Steve Bannons of the world to write what they might think is a wrong? So I have a certain measure of sympathy

for the rank and file Republicans who have been lied to by Donald Trump in their party now for eight plus years. Okay. I feel badly that you have been lied to. I feel terrible that you have come to believe something that is simply not true. You have come to believe that voting is not secure in this country. You have come to believe that the 2020 election results were not accurate.

And, you know, to those people, you have my sympathies to a point. I mean, at some point, you have that personal responsibility and learn the truth. But for the election officials, for the people who are in position of responsibility, for the Republican electeds, for the members of the media, whether they be Steve Bannon or Fox News, shame on you, shame on you because you are spreading the lie. You are perpetuating the big lie. You know that what Donald Trump is saying is wrong. You know that he lost in 2020. And you are responsible for defending the worst in this country, which is the undermining of free and fair elections, the justification of an insurrection on January 6th.

And for you, I have nothing but words of contempt. Stop it. Stop the lies. We need to have free and fair elections. And the work you are doing for Donald Trump in spreading his malicious, malignant, narcissistic bile, there is nothing but contempt for you. Let's finish off with this. And I ask this question as the result of, again, the raft of emails that I received,

It's probably more emails on this topic than I'd ever gotten on any other topic. And to your earlier point, we have been beating this drum, but I think, you know, in the aftermath of Rachel Maddow covering this on her show, it's really coming into the zeitgeist in a way that it hasn't before. But what do you say to people who are rightfully scared about what they view as what may feel like a foregone conclusion in that people will cast their ballots and we will just wait for the inevitability that is watching these election denialist election work. workers refuse to certify because they're not happy with the outcome. Absolutely not. Don't give up. I mean, don't give up hope and don't give up your plan to vote. I mean, the most important thing you can do is make sure you are registered, make sure your friends and family are registered, and that you vote. You have a plan to vote and that you vote, and you have confidence that your vote will count it. I can tell you that from my, my standpoint,

I have, I have dedicated my career to protecting your right to vote. And I do it every day in court with my team. We do it on this on this series in speaking out. In 2020, I was proud to represent President Biden and the DNC in defeating these efforts. In 2022, I was proud to be fighting these efforts in states like Arizona and Pennsylvania and we won. And Republicans hate me because I fight so hard, but when we fight, we win. And I promise you, whether it is, whether you are in Arizona or in Pennsylvania, whether in Wisconsin or in Georgia or Nevada, or in Minnesota or New York or Florida, there are lawyers who are out there fighting for your rights. And whether it is me and my team, or it is the many other great lawyers as part of this efforts, we will fight for you

to make sure that we have accurate election results. We will fight for free and fair elections and Republicans will lose. Thanks again to Mark and Justin, and we'll be back on Sunday with our regularly scheduled episode. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating in a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to Brian Tyler Cohen.com to learn more.