POLITICO and CNN Previously Justified ‘False Electors’ Using Hawaii’s 1960 Precedent – Politico Edited That Part Out Six Months Later, After TGP Cited It

Earlier this week, 11 Presidential electors in Arizona from the 2020 Election were indicted after a grand jury.  The Gateway Pundit reported on this weaponization of the “attorney general” in Arizona.  This is in addition to the criminal cases being brought in Georgia and Michigan, but also the lesser-known criminal and civil cases in Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and a settlement in Wisconsin. 

It is worth noting that while it seems easy to bring charges against these electors, it was infinitely more difficult to litigate the election claims themselves.  Most cases were dismissed on procedural grounds rather than merit.  See a list of lawsuits and their outcomes here.

Kris Mayes “won” the Attorney General race against Republican Abe Hamadeh by 280 votes, despite a major discrepancy in Maricopa County that disproportionately impacted predominantly Republican precincts when the Ballot-On-Demand printers printed 19″ ballots on 20″ paper.  This caused massive delays as voters tried to feed ballots through the tabulators over and over as the machines rejected them.  In addition to voters being forced to place their ballots in “Door #3” to (hopefully) be properly counted later in the evening, lines also began to wrap around buildings and parking lots filled up as delays began to surpass an hour to cast a ballot.  Many voters attested that they had to leave because they had other obligations and couldn’t wait in an hours-long line to vote.

Just In,

Katie Hobbs on behalf of the 2022 Maricopa County General Election recommends adjudicating the 2023 South Carolina Primary,

Just drop it to box 3 or slide it into a trash can, pic.twitter.com/2cDYRSuPl7

— RealRobert (@Real_RobN) February 24, 2024

Here is the problem w/ what happened in Maricopa County on Election Day. This is Anthem, north of Phoenix at about 1:15 pm. Ruby red district of about 30K people. Only one polling location. Ballot tabulators not working in the morning. 2 hr wait to vote midday and still at 6 pm. pic.twitter.com/CY35yQWwq5

— Randy DeSoto (@RandyDeSoto) November 14, 2022

In July 2023, The Gateway Pundit published an article about lawfare being used against the alternate electors in the states with contested elections, specifically Georgia, as those electors were the ones being indicted at the time.  The article originally was to focus around the declaration of Professor Todd Zywicki, the George Mason Foundation Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University.  Zywicki is a well-accomplished legal scholar with several published academic papers specifically on laws governing presidential elections and transitions.

However, there were at least two articles from Mockingbird Media outlets that reinforced the position Professor Zywicki was taking regarding sending an alternate slate of electors in a contested election.  One was from CNN, before the days-long counting process ensued and Biden ‘prevailed’.  Around the same time we all went to bed on November 3rd with President Trump in a commanding lead in Pennsylvania (Trump up by 600,000 votes, or 11 points), Georgia (Trump up by 117,000 votes), and Michigan (Trump up by 6 points in Michigan at 4:50am, according to NPR).

In a November 4th, 2020 article, CNN’s Van Jones and Lawrences Lessig tried to show that Biden “still has a path to victory” and stated that:

The key – and this is the critical fact for 2020 as well  –  is that the Democratic slate [of electors] had also met on December 19 [1960], and had also cast their ballots in the manner specified by the Constitution. When they voted, no one knew whether their votes would matter. But at least someone recognized that the only way their votes could matter was if they were cast on the day that Congress had set.

The other outlet, Politico, was a little more researched in their reporting.  The 2022 article titled “See the 1960 Electoral College Certificates That the False Trump Electors Say Justify Their Gambit” claims that the difference between 1960 Hawaii alternate electors and the 2020 alternates was that election challenges in Hawaii 1960 were successful:

“Although the three Democratic electors in Hawaii took the same action — signing false certificates — it does not appear they ever faced similar scrutiny, in part because of what happened next.  Namely, that Hawaii’s recount ultimately did reverse the state’s election outcome.“

I guess ‘criminality’ is ‘outcome-determinative’.

However, this is where it gets interesting.  Politico went on to write:

One crucial feature of the 1960 episode is that a state court weighed in on Jan. 4, 1961, two days before Nixon (then vice-president) oversaw the electoral vote count.

In that case, Judge Ronald Jamieson agreed that the certified Kennedy electors were legitimate. But, more significantly, Jamieson said it was important that those electors met and gathered on Dec. 19, 1960, as prescribed by the Electoral Count Act.

Rather than suggest the Democratic electors committed fraud, the judge pointed to their meeting as a key step that preserved their ability to be counted after the recount showed Kennedy had actually won the state.

The highlighted portions would unequivocally suggest that President Trump’s electors were justified in their actions based on past precedent.  However, those highlighted portions no longer exist in the current form of the Politico article that can be found here.  But the internet is forever and those quotes remain on the Wayback Machine archives that can be found here.

Sometime in the month following The Gateway Pundit publishing this piece that cited the above quote specifically, as well as Professor Zywicki’s expert declaration, Politico edited their article to remove (or edit) the highlighted segments.

At the bottom of the article, they write:

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly indicated that Jamieson acknowledged the unofficial slate of Democratic electors when he ruled that Kennedy had prevailed in the recount. He made no mention of the “contingent” slate in his ruling or judgment. The story also gave the incorrect date of Jamieson’s ruling. It was Dec. 30, 1960.

The author, Kyle Cheney, wrote on X:

Updating the story was also an opportunity to add a whole range of new primary source documents from 1960 that we obtained from NARA. They include Hawaii judge, Ronald Jamieson’s actual ruling and findings.

And then posted this screenshot, purportedly of the judgement from Judge Ronald B. Jamieson:

Politico also removed the last sentence The Gateway Pundit cited (“Rather than suggest the Democratic electors committed fraud…”) despite a strikingly similar citation being made in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and credited to Holly Pierson, counsel for defendant David Shafer and others:

“Rather than suggest the uncertified Democratic electors had committed crimes, Judge Jamieson hailed them as heroes, describing their meeting as a critically important step that preserved their ability for their presidential ballots to be counted after the Democrats prevailed in their election contest and the Governor certified the Democratic contingent presidential electors as having been elected,” Pierson and Gillen said.

The above-referenced quote comes from a letter that was sent to Fulton County DA Fani Willis’s office on March 26th, 2023 from Holly Pierson, counsel for David Shafer.  In the letter, in a footnote on page 4, it states:

In so holding, Judge Ronald Jamieson specifically noted that it was important that the uncertified Democrat presidential electors had met on Dec. 19, 1960, as prescribed by the Electoral Count Act, to cast their ballots. Rather than suggest the uncertified Democratic electors had committed crimes, Judge Jamieson hailed them as heroes, describing their meeting as a critically important step that preserved their ability for their presidential ballots to be counted after the Democrats prevailed in their election contest and the Governor certified the Democratic contingent presidential electors as having been elected.

We’ve reached out to Pierson as well as Professor Zywicki for more information regarding the footnote from the letter to DA Willis.

Either way, the declaration (below) from Prof. Zywicki in and of itself is a thorough explanation to the necessity of sending alternate electors in a contested election, especially electors that claim they are alternates, as was done in 2020.  He also points out that Democrats did the same thing on December 14th, 2020 in the contested Presidential Election of Bush v. Gore.

Zywicki Declaration by CannCon

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