Washington
Feds concerned about armed people at Arizona ballot boxes
WASHINGTON (AP) — Reports of people watching ballot boxes in Arizona, sometimes armed or wearing ballistic vests, raise serious concerns about voter intimidation, the Justice Department said Monday as it stepped into a lawsuit over the monitoring.
The statement from the Justice Department comes days after a federal judge refused to bar a group from monitoring the outdoor drop boxes in the suburbs of Phoenix.
Threats, intimidation and coercion are illegal under the federal Voting Rights Act, even if they doesn’t succeed, the government’s attorneys wrote. While lawful poll watching can support transparency, “ballot security forces” present a significant risk of voter intimidation, the court documents state.
“While the First Amendment protects expressive conduct and peaceable assembly generally, it affords no protection for threats of harm directed at voters,” U.S. government attorneys wrote.
The filing runs counter to a judge’s order Friday. U.S. District Court Judge Michael Liburdi found the allegations present “serious questions” but it wasn’t clear they were a “true threat” to specific people or groups and barring them could violate the watchers’ freedom of speech.
Liburdi is a Trump appointee and a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization. The Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans is appealing the order in the swing state with several closely contested races this year.
The group sued a group calling itself Clean Elections USA after reports that people were watching 24-hour ballot boxes in Maricopa County, including some who were masked and armed. A separate suit was filed in rural Yavapai County, where the League of Women Voters alleges voters have been intimidated by three groups, including one associated with the far-right anti-government group Oath Keepers.
The two cases were merged and the Justice Department filed a statement of interest Monday. Attorneys for Clean Elections USA did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Complaints that people were watching the boxes, taking photos and videos, and following voters alarmed local and federal law enforcement. Sheriff’s deputies began providing security around two outdoor drop boxes in Maricopa County after a pair of people carrying guns and wearing bulletproof vests showed up at a box in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa. Another 24-hour outdoor drop box in downtown Phoenix is now surrounded by a chain link fence.
The law doesn’t specifically list which activities are prohibited near polling places, but video recording and photographing voters has been recognized as a concerns for decades and was named in a 1994 Justice Department letter on potential violations of the Voting Rights Act, federal attorneys wrote.
As of last week, Arizona’s secretary of state said her office has referred six cases of potential voter intimidation to the state attorney general and the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as a threatening email sent to the state elections director. Arizona law states electioneers and monitors must remain 75 feet (23 meters) from a voting location.
Groups around the United States have embraced a film that has been discredited called “2000 Mules” that claimed people were paid to travel among drop boxes and stuff them with fraudulent ballots during the 2020 presidential vote.
There’s no evidence for the notion that a network of Democrat-associated ballot “mules” has conspired to collect and deliver ballots to drop boxes, either in the 2020 presidential vote or in the upcoming midterm elections.
Tennessee
Authorities: Suspect in abortion clinic fire died in August
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A man accused of intentionally setting fire to a Tennessee Planned Parenthood clinic and of firing shots later at a federal courthouse died months ago, officials announced Monday in disclosing both the man’s death and the allegations.
Federal court documents indicate that the man, Mark Thomas Reno, 64, died on Aug. 15. Yet many of the documents in his case were sealed until this week, including records showing he had been arrested in connection with the Planned Parenthood arson fire.
“The government’s investigation has revealed that (Reno) engaged in a series of violent acts of property destruction in Knoxville since early 2021,” a newly unsealed complaint stated.
The complaint states that Reno fired a shotgun at the clinic’s doors in early 2021, shattering glass and leaving holes in the reception area. Reno then set the clinic ablaze in December 2021, the document says.
The building was unoccupied during the fire but had to be closed for months to undergo an $2.2 million renovation.
Other court documents show that the FBI began surveillance of Reno in April of this year after he told an undercover agent he belonged to a group with a mission to resist actions opposed to Catholic orthodoxy. The agent was secretly recording Reno, who said that his group had “plenty of targets,” according to the documents.
Reno also told the undercover agent that he was at the U.S. Capitol riot in January 2021. The agent said authorities examined footage from the day and saw he was present but that there was no evidence he broke any laws.
By July, Reno was accused of firing at a federal building in Knoxville and damaging three windows, according to the court documents.
Court documents show that Reno had been detained since July but had been temporarily released to receive medical treatment in August. The cause of death was not immediately disclosed.
“The man who was arrested in this case is not the only one who holds responsibility,” said — Ashley Coffield, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi, in a statement. “When politicians use hateful rhetoric against abortion providers and support extreme laws, like the total abortion ban we have in Tennessee, it shouldn’t surprise us that some people believe real-world violence is justified.”
Coffield and others have criticized Republican Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee for not condemning the attack on Planned Parenthood’s clinic. Over the summer, the governor instead condemned vandalism at a crisis pregnancy center that aims to dissuade people from getting an abortion.
Tennessee is among the several states that had enacted so-called trigger laws banning almost all abortions once the U.S. Supreme Court revoked the constitutional right to the procedure. Under the law, Planned Parenthood and other health clinics across the state have stopped providing abortions.
A spokesperson for U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee said their office would have a statement Tuesday.
