Bush’s New US Attorney a Criminal?(Voter Fraud)

[John Gallagher]

http://www.gregpalast.com/bushs-new-us-attorney-a-criminal/#more-1586

Bush’s New US Attorney a Criminal?
Published March 7th, 2007 in Articles 
BBC Television had exposed 2004 voter attack scheme
by appointee Griffin, a Rove aide.
Black soldiers and the homeless targeted.
by Greg Palast

March 7, 2007.

There’s only one thing worse than sacking an honest
prosecutor. That’s replacing an honest prosecutor with
a criminal.

There was one big hoohah in Washington yesterday as
House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers pulled down the
pants on George Bush’s firing of US Attorneys to
expose a scheme to punish prosecutors who wouldn’t
bend to political pressure.

But the Committee missed a big one: Timothy Griffin,
Karl Rove’s assistant, the President’s pick as US
Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
Griffin, according to BBC Television, was the hidden
hand behind a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of
70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election.

Key voters on Griffin’s hit list: Black soldiers and
homeless men and women. Nice guy, eh? Naughty or nice,
however, is not the issue. Targeting voters where race
is a factor is a felony crime under the Voting Rights
Act of 1965.

In October 2004, our investigations team at BBC
Newsnight received a series of astonishing emails from
Mr. Griffin, then Research Director for the Republican
National Committee. He didn’t mean to send them to us.
They were highly confidential memos meant only for RNC
honchos.

However, Griffin made a wee mistake. Instead of
sending the emails — potential evidence of a crime —
to email addresses ending with the domain name
“@GeorgeWBush.com” he sent them to “@GeorgeWBush.ORG.”
A website run by prankster John Wooden who owns
“GeorgeWBush.org.” When Wooden got the treasure trove
of Rove-ian ravings, he sent them to us.

And we dug in, decoding, and mapping the voters on
what Griffin called, “Caging” lists, spreadsheets with
70,000 names of voters marked for challenge.
Overwhelmingly, these were Black and Hispanic voters
from Democratic precincts.

The Griffin scheme was sickly brilliant. We learned
that the RNC sent first-class letters to new voters in
minority precincts marked, “Do not forward.” Several
sheets contained nothing but soldiers, other sheets,
homeless shelters. Targets included the Jacksonville
Naval Air Station in Florida and that city’s State
Street Rescue Mission. Another target, Edward Waters
College, a school for African-Americans.

If these voters were not currently at their home
voting address, they were tagged as “suspect” and
their registration wiped out or their ballot
challenged and not counted. Of course, these ‘cages’
captured thousands of students, the homeless and those
in the military though they are legitimate voters.
We telephoned those on the hit list, including one
Randall Prausa. His wife admitted he wasn’t living at
his voting address: Randall was a soldier shipped
overseas.

Randall and other soldiers like him who sent in
absentee ballots, when challenged, would lose their
vote. And they wouldn’t even know it.

And by the way, it’s not illegal for soldiers to vote
from overseas — even if they’re Black.

But it is illegal to challenge voters en masse where
race is an element in the targeting. So several
lawyers told us, including Ralph Neas, famed civil
rights attorney with People for the American Way.

Griffin himself ducked our cameras, but his RNC team
tried to sell us the notion that the caging sheets
were, in fact, not illegal voter hit lists, but a
roster of donors to the Bush-Cheney reelection
campaign. Republican donors at homeless shelters?

Over the past weeks, Griffin has said he would step
down if he had to face Congressional confirmation.
However, the President appointed Griffin to the law
enforcement post using an odd little provision of the
USA Patriot Act that could allow Griffin to skip
Congressional questioning altogether.

Therefore, I have a suggestion for Judiciary members.
Voting law expert Neas will be testifying today before
Conyers’ Committee on the topic of illegal voter
“disenfranchisement” — the fancy word for stealing
elections by denying voters’ civil rights.

Maybe Conyers should hold a line-up of suspected vote
thieves and let Neas identify the perpetrators. That
should be easy in the case of the Caging List
Criminal. He’d only have to look for the guy wearing a
new shiny lawman’s badge.
******

Read the full story, “Caging Lists: Great White
Republicans Take Voters Captive” in Greg Palast’s
Armed Madhouse: Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales from
a White House Gone Wild. The new edition, with a new
chapter on Theft of the Election, will be released
April 24th (by Penguin/Plume in paperback).

Catch our original BBC Television story here - on
Palast’s brand new YouTube channel 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkvWkwv7UVo




 
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