(TheLibertyRevolution.com)- Explosive testimony reveals Democrat governor’s office colluded with left-wing activists to secure millions of dollars in private money to run get-out-the-vote efforts in blue counties in the swing state in 2020. Pennsylvania legislature heard this testimony backed up by email evidence on Tuesday.
The Pennsylvania House and Senate are holding hearings on bills that ban dark money from elections.
Pennsylvania investigative journalist Todd Shepherd revealed to lawmakers that consultants working for leftist organizations coordinated with local election officials and Gov. Tom Wolf’s office to lobby five blue counties to apply for grants. The grants originated with the nominally non-partisan Center for Tech and Civic Life, or CSME. CSME was later infused with $350 million in cash by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan.
CSME is not a 501(c)3 but rather a fiscally sponsored project of the New Venture Fund, and Shepherd told Pennsylvania lawmakers. Arabella Advisors’ parent company is part of what’s been called “The Massive Progressive Dark-Money Group You’ve Never Heard Of.” In January, The New York Times called out the group in its article headlined, Democrats Decried Dark Money. Then they Won with it in 2020.
The CSME was not the only left-wing organization lobbying blue counties to obtain grants. Emails indicate that The Voter Project played a prominent role in this targeted cash giveaway. A July 2020 email exposes the beginning of these efforts, with Delaware County’s Christine Reuther introduced to CSME’s David Solomon.
Other emails show the governor’s office reaching out to additional blue counties in August.
Right-to-know requests revealed the targeted lobbying of blue counties. But emails show no outreach to core Republican counties until after September 1, 2020. When the summer-time targeting of Democratic strongholds took place, the Zuckbucks cash infusion to CTCL had not yet been announced.
The emails show the state’s collaboration with left-wing political activists to lobby Democrat-only counties. This evidence raises constitutional concerns under the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Pennsylvania’s experience matches the growing evidence seen in other states that the Zuckbucks funded state-run get-out-the-vote efforts.
The Equal Protection clause requires that the right to vote be granted on equal terms. The emails suggest that such “arbitrary and disparate treatment” occurred in 2020. Delaware County spent some $600,000 on “Bluecrest mail sorting equipment,” one witness stressed.
Delaware and Philadelphia County bought high-tech equipment to sort mail-in ballots ahead of the 2016 election. The equipment was part of an illegal pre-canvasing effort by Democrats to determine if voters had enclosed the ballot in a “sleeve” as required by law. Election workers in Philadelphia and other select counties provided campaign workers with a list of defective ballots.
Sorting equipment used in Philadelphia and Delaware County can detect which ballots are defective based on their thickness or weight. But smaller counties without that sophisticated equipment could not conduct such pre-canvas inspections, which violate the state’s election code.
In Delaware County, mail-in voting was ten times the number of drop boxes planned in Montgomery County. Whistleblower videos have exposed extensive evidence of systemic problems with the 2020 election. Yet, Delaware County council member Christine Reuther declared it “debunked” even with this video evidence.
Reuther is the same council member involved in the early lobbying for Delaware County to apply for private grants.
This evidence should be enough for the Pennsylvania legislature to recognize a real problem when private money and private actors collaborate with election officials, primarily when they target select counties. But Tuesday’s hearing suggests Democrats don’t care, with one witness opposing the new legislation by framing the bills as part of “the big lie” that Trump won the election.
Without Democrats on board, the bill will be doomed even if it passes the legislature, as last year, Wolf vetoed a similar ban on outside money. And we may now know why.
One witness argued that the bills were part of “the big lie” that Donald Trump won the election.
