J. Christian Adams, a former lawyer for the Department of Justice Civil Rights division, stood in front of a Council for National Policy meeting and told them, “Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor, you’re a racist and so forth.”
In videos obtained by the Washington Post, conservative lackeys praised conspiracy theories, voter suppression tactics and encouraged actions conservatives claim to despise like vote harvesting.
The truly scary thing is that a CNP delegation meets every Wednesday morning with staff from the Trump White House.
The president of Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton, claimed that Democrats were planning on blocking vote tallies until after January 20, 2021 so Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi would be sworn in as president. Judicial Watch is legally established as a tax-exempt charity.
“This is kind of like crazy talk” among political people, Fitton said. But he added: “This is not an insignificant concern.” (Fitton did not mention that the CNP were the ones promoting the “crazy talk.”)
Fitton went on about the dangers of mail-in voting. “We need to stop those ballots from going out, and I want the lawyers here to tell us what to do,” said Fitton. “But this is a crisis that we’re not prepared for. I mean, our side is not prepared for.”
Conservative gadfly Charlie Kirk urged CNP members to encourage colleges to shut down college campuses due to the coronavirus, a policy fought by the Trump Administration.
“So, please keep the campuses closed,” Kirk said in August as the audience cheered, noting that would discourage half a million college students from voting in conservative areas. “Like, it’s a great thing.”
Brett Bozell, whose Media Research Center is also a tax-exempt charity, told attendees that these voter suppression tactics are needed to ensure American democracy survives.
“And if they get away with that, what happens?” he said. “Democracy is finished because they usher in totalitarianism.”
Ralph Reed, head of the tax-exempt Faith & Freedom Coalition, said the group should help whites vote because they will vote in the way conservatives want, as will some Hispanic and Asian churches. Reed was implicated in the Jack Abramoff scandals during the GW Bush Administration, illegally funnelling money from various groups to his non-profits as well as lobbying for gambling interests as he led the Christian Coalition, another non-profit.
“And so our organization is going to be harvesting ballots in churches,” he said. “We’re going to be specifically going in not only to white evangelical churches, but into Hispanic and Asian churches, and collecting those ballots.”