National Roundup

Georgia
Judge: Voter challenges before 2021 runoff didn’t violate Voting Rights Act
ATLANTA (AP) — A conservative group did not violate the Voting Rights Act when it announced it was challenging the eligibility of more than 360,000 Georgia voters just before a 2021 runoff election for two pivotal U.S. Senate seats, a judge ruled Tuesday. But he expressed concerns about the group’s methods.

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones issued a 145-page decision in favor of Texas-based nonprofit True the Vote. Fair Fight, a group founded by former Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, had sued True the Vote and several individuals, alleging that their actions violated a section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that prohibits voter intimidation.

The evidence presented at trial did not show that the actions of True the Vote “caused (or attempted to cause) any voter to be intimidated, coerced, or threatened in voting,” Jones concluded. But he wrote that the list of voters to be challenged compiled by the group “utterly lacked reliability” and “verges on recklessness.”

“The Court has heard no testimony and seen no evidence of any significant quality control efforts, or any expertise guiding the data process,” he wrote.

In the weeks after the November 2020 general election, then-President Donald Trump and his supporters were promoting false claims of widespread voter fraud that had cost him the election. In Georgia, two U.S. Senate races that would ultimately decide control of the Senate were headed for an early January runoff election.

True the Vote announced the voter challenges just after early in-person voting began for that runoff. The group said it had good reason to believe the voters no longer lived in the districts where they were registered and were ineligible to vote there.

Georgia election officials rejected only a few dozen ballots cast in the runoff, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The two Democratic challengers went on to beat the Republican incumbents by ten of thousands of votes, securing control of the Senate for their party.

Jones wrote that to succeed in proving a violation of the Voting Rights Act, Fair Fight and the individual voters who sued along with it would have had to show that True the Vote’s actions caused or could have caused someone to be “intimidated, threatened, or coerced” from voting or trying to vote.

Fair Fight’s arguments “suggest that any mass challenge of voters near an election (especially if negligently or recklessly made) constitutes intimidation or an attempt to intimidate,” Jones wrote, adding that he disagreed. He noted that county election boards ultimately decide whether someone is eligible once a challenge is filed. The law doesn’t limit the number of voter challenges or their proximity to an election, he wrote.

“In making this conclusion, the Court, in no way, is condoning TTV’s actions in facilitating a mass number of seemingly frivolous challenges,” Jones wrote in a footnote. “The Court, however, cannot under the operative legal framework say that these actions were contrary to Georgia law (which is unchallenged by Plaintiffs).”

Fair Fight had argued that public statements True the Vote made about the challenges amounted to voter intimidation. But Jones disagreed, pointing out that the statements were not aimed at any particular voter and none of the challenged voters who testified said they had seen the statements.

True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht celebrated the ruling, saying in an emailed statement that it “sends a clear message to those who would attempt to control the course of our nation through lawfare and intimidation.”

Fair Fight Executive Director Cianti Stewart-Reid expressed disappointment, saying in an emailed statement that in the past two years other groups have drawn “from True the Vote’s anti-voter playbook to launch their own mass voter challenge efforts that continue to this day.” She vowed that Fair Fight would continue to push back against the challenges.

New York
Court: Cohen can’t hold Trump liable for retaliatory imprisonment
NEW YORK (AP) — Michael Cohen can’t hold his former boss, ex-president Donald Trump, liable because he was jailed for what he claimed was retaliation for writing a tell-all memoir, an appeals court said Tuesday.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said in an order that it would not revive a lawsuit that a lower-court judge had tossed out because the law did not seem to provide a damages remedy for most claims that someone was jailed in retaliation for their criticisms of a president.

A three-judge panel concluded Cohen already obtained relief by getting a judge to order his release from imprisonment to home confinement several weeks after he was abruptly put behind bars when the government claimed he violated severe restrictions on his public communications. It said the law did not provide an outlet for more relief than that.

Cohen served over a year of a three-year sentence in federal prison after pleading guilty in 2018 to tax evasion, campaign finance charges and lying to Congress, saying Trump directed him to arrange the payment of hush money to a porn actor to fend off damage to his 2016 presidential bid.

Freed early to home confinement as authorities worked to contain the coronavirus outbreak in federal prisons, Cohen was returned to prison weeks later when authorities claimed he failed to accept certain terms of his release.

At the time, Cohen said he had merely sought clarification on a condition forbidding him from speaking with the media and publishing his book.

After serving 16 days in solitary confinement that Cohen said left him with shortness of breath, severe headaches and anxiety, he was eventually freed on the orders of a judge who said he’d been jailed in retaliation for his desire to publish a book critical of the president and to discuss it on social media.

Cohen sued Trump and then Attorney General William P. Barr, along with various prison and probation officials.

In a statement, Cohen said Tuesday that he’ll appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The outcome is wrong if democracy is to prevail. A writ of habeas corpus cannot be the only consequence to stop a rogue president from weaponizing the Department of Justice from locking up his/her critics in prison because they refuse to waive their First Amendment right,” he said.

Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, said in a statement: “We are very pleased with today’s ruling. Mr. Cohen’s lawsuit was doomed from its inception. We will continue to fight against any frivolous suits aimed at our client.”