Fox News host Howard Kurtz at The Hill, Extra And The Embassy Of Canada Celebrate The White House Correspondents' Dinner Weekend at the Embassy of Canada on April 24, 2015 in Washington, DC. Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images Redeem now Internal messages show how Fox News anchors privately mocked 2020 election conspiracy theories. Fox News' Howard Kurtz said on Sunday that the company has barred coverage of the messages. As of Sunday, there were zero stories on Fox News' website covering the messages. Top editors give you the stories you want — delivered right to your inbox each weekday. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. .inline-newsletter-signup.loading { width: 100%; max-width: 640px; margin: 0 auto; visibility: hidden; } A top Fox News anchor said his company has barred coverage of the Dominion lawsuit, which recently received renewed attention after a 200-page motion showed private texts between Fox stars and executives dismissing the 2020 election conspiracy theories peddled by Donald Trump and his supporters.During his Sunday segment on MediaBuzz, host Howard Kurtz acknowledged viewers who were wondering why Fox had not covered the ongoing lawsuit."Some of you have been asking why I'm not covering the Dominion Voting Machines lawsuit against Fox involving the unproven claims of election fraud in 2020, and it's absolutely a fair question," he said. "I believe I should be covering it. It's a major media story, given my role here at Fox. But the company has decided that, as part of the organization being sued, I can't talk about it or write about it — at least for now. I strongly disagree with that decision, but as an employee, I have to abide by it. And if that changes, I'll let you know."—PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) February 26, 2023Dominion, an elections technology company, filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News in March 2021, accusing the media company of spreading conspiracy theories that claimed Dominion helped rig the 2020 election results. The result of those theories cost the elections technology company $600 million in potential profits in addition to $1 billion in potential value, Dominion wrote in its filing. The company also said employees' lives were threatened."As a result of the false accusations broadcast by Fox into millions of American homes, Dominion has suffered unprecedented harm and its employees' lives have been put in danger," Dominion's attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.The company is seeking $1.6 billion in damages.Last week, a 200-page motion filed by Dominion was made public and contained a cache of internal communications between some of Fox News' top brass, including Fox Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch, host Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, and Carlson's producer Alex Pfeiffer, among others. "[T]he software shit is absurd," Carlson said in a text on November 7, 2020."It's dangerously insane these conspiracy theories," Fox reporter Lucas Tomlinson said to Bret Baier, host of Special Report.The network has largely been silent about the internal messages. A search through FoxNews.com turns up zero recent stories regarding the Dominion lawsuit. Most stories date back to 2020 and are related to the claims against Dominion or Dominion's response to the allegations.Fox previously said in a statement that Dominion had "cherry-pick[ed]" quotes and taken them out of context. "There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan," the statement said.—Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) February 19, 2023Though Kurtz suggested the reason why he is not discussing the Dominion lawsuit is that the network is a defendant in an ongoing legal battle, this has not stopped other Fox anchors from disparaging electronic voting machines or mentioning Dominion.On the night of the 2022 midterm elections, more than a year since Dominion filed its lawsuit, Carlson mentioned claims about electronic voting machines not allowing people to vote in Maricopa County of Arizona, a state that has continued to fuel Trump's false election fraud claims."That is an actual threat to democracy and it points up the core problem which is we're not really very serious about democracy if we're using electronic voting machines," Carlson said. —John Whitehouse+ (@existentialfish) February 26, 2023A Fox News Media spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. .content-lock-lock .hidden { display: none; } Sign up for notifications from Insider! 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Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) slammed DeKalb County for accepting $2 million in private money for election administration — or "Zuckerbucks" — in "violation" of state law while suggesting a legislative remedy to prevent counties from directly receiving such funds.The DeKalb County Board of Voter Registration & Elections accepted $2 million from a nonprofit linked to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.  DeKalb's acceptance of the private funds "is a violation of S.B. 202," Raffensperger told Just the News on Thursday, referring to Georgia's 2021 election reform law. "The legislative intent of S.B. 202 was to preclude any outside organizations from sending, directly, money to counties for election purposes," the state's top election official said, noting "the wording of S.B. 202 is the money should be sent to the secretary of state's office," then dispensed to the counties. The rationale for dispensing the funds this way was so that "every county was treated uniformly throughout the state," benefiting smaller counties as well as larger counties, he explained. The county was awarded the funds under the Centers for Election Excellence program of the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, a project of the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL). CTCL poured nearly $350 million into local elections offices managing the 2020 election, with most of the funds donated to the nonprofit by Zuckerberg.  CTCL has claimed its 2020 election grants — colloquially known as "Zuckerbucks" — were allocated without partisan preference to make voting safer amid the pandemic. Critics of the unprecedented level of private funding injected into election administration offices in 2020 argue the grants were awarded disproportionately to boost voter participation in swing state Democratic strongholds. A House Republican investigation found that less than 1% of the funds were spent on personal protective equipment. In 2021, Georgia enacted Senate Bill 202, an election integrity bill which explicitly prohibits private funding of elections, stipulating: "No superintendent shall take or accept any funding, grants, or gifts from any source other than from the governing authority of the county or municipality, the State of Georgia, or the federal government." DeKalb County Board of Elections Chair Dele Lowman Smith told local Georgia news outlet Decaturish.com last month that because election offices are prohibited from directly receiving grants, the county's finance department applied for the grant. Former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R) called for investigation into DeKalb, saying the county "is blatantly skirting that law to get the same money, while undermining trust and fairness in our electoral process." In response to Loeffler's comment, Lowman Smith said in a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the former senator's "baldly partisan accusations do not reflect an accurate reading of state law and undermine the work of already overburdened, underpaid public servants." Lowman Smith later added, "The DeKalb County Finance Department applied for the grant in accordance with state law, and our county attorneys conducted a diligent review to ensure the grant award met the letter of the law. "While the General Assembly has a lot to say about how counties should run elections, they provide no funding to us to meet these legislative burdens," she continued. "To then try and restrict counties from pursuing the funding necessary to meet our legal obligations — a longstanding practice for many government services besides elections — is a slap in the face and seems to indicate that their intention is to hamstring election administration entirely." Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE) filed a legal complaint with the Georgia State Election Board against DeKalb, saying the county "was willing to violate state law to secure millions from a progressive dark money organization." According to CTCL's 2020 Form 990 report, DeKalb County received $9,625,041 in grants from the nonprofit during the presidential election year. Meanwhile, Early County, Ga., received $37,109. DeKalb's population was 762,009 in 2020, meaning that CTCL awarded the county  $12.63 per capita. However, Early, with a population of 10,037 at the time, received only $3.70 per capita from CTCL. DeKalb voted for Biden 83.1% to Trump's 15.7% in 2020, whereas Early voted for Trump 52.2% to Biden's 47.2%. While acknowledging that DeKalb has a "different reading of SB 202," Raffensperger said the state's General Assembly can ensure "that there's no question about what legislative intent was" by adopting a "legislative remedy" in the current legislative session. Such a remedy would require that outside funds be channeled through the secretary of state's office to either distribute on a per capita basis or parcel out evenly among the state's 159 counties. There are "several election bills" that have been filed, read, and/or assigned to committees, he noted. On Thursday, the Senate Ethics Committee debated Senate Bill 222, which would tighten the restrictions on private funds going to election administration. Specifically, the bill would "provide that all costs and expenses relating to election administration are paid for with lawfully appropriate public funds" and "prohibit certain local governments and persons from soliciting or accepting donations or other things of value to support the performance of election administration." "We have to ensure the funding of our elections comes from lawfully appropriated public funds," said Senate Ethics Chairman Max Burns (R), according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "The intent is to prohibit third parties' selective funding of elections." Despite the legislative remedy, Raffensperger praised S.B. 202 for how it standardized voter ID across all forms of voting in the state and added early voting days and allowed people to vote on Saturday. He noted that the state had "record registration" and "record turnout" in its midterm elections last year. When S.B. 202 was enacted, Major League Baseball moved its All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver, citing President Biden's claim that the law would "restrict voting access for residents of the state." Biden blasted the law as an "atrocity," likening it to "Jim Crow in the 21st century," as corporations such as Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines publicly decried the law despite its broad support among Georgia voters. DeKalb County didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

US-POLITICS-TRUMP-TRANSPORT-ACCIDENT-VISIT - Credit: AFP via Getty ImagesAttorneys representing former President Donald Trump claimed that the Georgia investigation into his attempts to overturn the 2020 election has been “compromised” and that any indictments stemming from it would likely be “faulty” due to recent remarks made by a member of the special grand jury in the case.“We absolutely do not believe that our client did anything wrong, and if any indictments were to come down, those are faulty indictments. We will absolutely fight anything tooth and nail,” Trump attorney Jennifer Little said in an interview with Robert Costa that aired on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. The former president is being investigated for trying to pressure then-Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to “find” votes for Trump after the 2020 election had concluded.More from Rolling StoneThe lawyers pointed to recent comments to multiple media outlets by the foreperson on the special grand jury probe, Emily Kohrs, who hinted that Trump and a dozen of his allies were recommended for indictments. A special purpose grand jury can only recommend indictments, but its recommendations can lead to a criminal grand jury, which could issue indictments. So far, Fulton County Prosecutor Fani T. Willis has not moved to charge Trump.Attorney Drew Findling, who is also on Trump’s defense team, said the team has “lost 100 percent confidence in this process” and feels the process “has been compromised.” Kohrs’ remarks, Findling claimed, “made us aware that every suspicion we had as to this questionable process was in fact a reality.”Costas noted, however, that by the time Kohrs spoke to the media, the grand jury process had ended, and that she did not break any rules. Findling responded that when Kohrs used the word “we” in her remarks about the process, he believes that indicates “they lost perspective over keeping separation between prosecuting attorneys and members of the grand jury.”“When the foreperson uses the word ‘we,’ that lets you know there was a relationship there,” the lawyer said (although it seems plausible Kohrs’ “we” was referring to herself and the other grand jury members).Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury, said that jurors could not discuss deliberations publicly, but they could speak about the final report the grand jury issued. “What witnesses said, what you put in your report, those are not off-limits,” McBurney said to CNN.Legal experts have also said that Korhs’ comments are unlikely to affect the prosecution. “Emily Kohrs’s pursuit of her fifteen minutes is not likely to preclude anyone indicted and convicted from serving their term of years,” MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin tweeted.Former federal prosecutor Amy Lee Copeland also doubted Kohrs’ interviews would interfere with prosecutors, though her comments may be inconvenient for them. “Is this a headache that is grinding the machine to a halt? It’s not. It’s just one of the many frustrations that attends the practice of law,” Copeland told the AP.Best of Rolling StoneClick here to read the full article.

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WASHINGTON — There’s an old joke that senators look in the mirror and see a president. These days, a whole lot of mirrors in the chamber seem to be broken.Republicans have an open presidential primary in 2024, and the Senate is packed with hyper-ambitious and self-confident politicians, many with national followings and barely concealed presidential aspirations. Yet nearly all of them are taking a pass at a White House bid next year after former President Donald Trump launched his attempted comeback campaign in November.“This cycle is shaping up to be very different from every cycle since 2000, where it seemed half the Senate was campaigning for president,” said Alex Conant, who worked for Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida in his Senate office and then his 2016 presidential campaign.That year, the GOP field was so crowded with senators — Rubio, Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — that Conant recalled a candidate forum in New Hampshire where a crop of candidates took part from a Capitol Hill studio. None of them have expressed interest in running this cycle.Feb. 1, 202304:40Now, a newer group of Republican senators rumored to have higher aspirations — Rick Scott of Florida, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Joni Ernst of Iowa — are also bowing out or sitting on the sidelines.“Every senator has a different reason,” Conant said. “A lot of them are young and have the luxury to wait. In 2024, you’re running against an incumbent president and a former president, so historically it’s a big hill to climb. This isn’t like 2016 when there was an open White House and wide-open GOP race.”Cruz, Hawley and Rick Scott, whose seats are up in 2024, have chosen to seek re-election rather than roll the dice on a White House run.“I’ve never said I was going to run for president,” said Hawley, 43, who has been steadily raising his national profile with foreign policy speeches and headline-grabbing legislation. “I have not visited Iowa or any of those places. So I hope to run for re-election” in the Senate, he said.Rick Scott said simply, “I’m running for the Senate.” When asked if that means he’s definitely not running for another office in 2024, he replied, “Right.”One exception to the Senate trend is Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who is inching toward a 2024 presidential run but hasn’t announced a final decision yet.Cruz, the runner-up to Trump in the 2016 contest, crisscrossed the country during the 2022 midterm election cycle, stumping for fellow Republicans and building up chits. But in recent weeks, he has made clear he plans to run for another term in the Senate and help his party win back control of the chamber. “It’ll be an interesting year. I suspect it’s going to be a wild and wooly race,” Cruz, 52, said when asked about former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley jumping into the race. “I look forward to supporting the Republican nominee.”Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2008 and 2012, has no plans to run again.Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images fileBack in 2016, Cruz, Paul and Rubio were freshman senators. Today all three have fancier titles as the ranking members on important committees — Cruz on the Commerce Committee, Paul on the Homeland Security Committee and Rubio on the Intelligence Committee. Graham, who won a fourth term in 2020, is the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee.And the sting of getting clobbered by Trump that year lingers. Despite losing re-election in 2020 and stirring up the mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump retains a passionate following on the right, leads the field in most GOP polls and is racking up endorsements in Congress. “President Trump is the undisputed leader of the Republican Party and uniquely positioned to defeat Joe Biden, so it only makes sense that so many Senators are backing his campaign rather than running themselves,” Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said. “We expect the impressive list of senators endorsing President Trump to grow in the coming weeks and we’re thankful for their support.”On the Democratic side, senators are also taking a pass on 2024. Just four years ago, seven sitting senators ran for president. All of them lost to a former senator and one of them became his vice president. With President Joe Biden all but certain to run again, his former Senate rivals are backing his re-election.Republican elites who want a viable alternative to Trump have largely looked outside Washington to his protégé, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who many believe will run for president.Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to challenge former President Donald Trump in 2024.Joe Raedle / Getty ImagesOther big names with access to deep-pocketed donors, like former Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, also appear to be gearing up for a launch.“Everybody has to have a lane. In the primary, if you can’t find your lane, then you can’t find your path to get there. Because everybody’s got to separate themselves but also get a bloc of voters,” said freshman Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., who has endorsed Trump.“His voters are his voters — they are going to stay there. They are not gonna move," Mullin said. "So I just don’t see where anybody else’s path to get there is.”Not everyone subscribes to that view. In Iowa on Wednesday, Tim Scott gave a preview of what his potential presidential campaign might look like, making a "Faith in America" listening tour stop at Drake University and delivering a keynote address at the Polk County GOP’s Lincoln Dinner.Tim Scott, the Senate’s sole Black Republican, outlined what he called Democrats’ “blueprint to ruin America” — out-of-control spending and inflation, open borders, an opioid epidemic, and critical race theory in schools — but he also spoke at length about his family’s inspiring story “from cotton to Congress.”“I’m here because my family chose faith over anger, responsibility over resentment, and patriotism over pity. My granddaddy taught me I could be bitter or better. Not both. My mom said we could be victims or victors. She chose victorious. I am living proof that our Founding Fathers were geniuses we should celebrate, not cancel,” Tim Scott said at Drake University in Des Moines.Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., recently went to Iowa ahead of a possible presidential run.Win McNamee / Getty Images file“We are indeed the land of opportunity, not a land of oppression. This is just my American story.”Like Mullin, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., has thrown his support behind Trump; he was expected to play golf with the former president at Mar-a-Lago this week. The former Auburn University football coach said the way for the GOP to develop a deep bench of leaders is for younger candidates to run and gain experience. “It’s called perseverance. Before I became a head coach, I kept interviewing and interviewing, finally worked my way in. That’s how you do it — just jumping in there,” Tuberville said.But he added that it’d be “a grind” for some of his Senate colleagues to run this cycle and be away from their young families, especially with Trump, and possibly DeSantis, dominating the field. One senator who knows something about the demands of a presidential campaign is Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who ran for the White House in 2008 and became the GOP nominee in 2012.“It is enormously energy consuming, financially consuming, but it’s a great thrill. You come away more optimistic about the country because you meet people who are not making the news but the people who are making lives and driving our economy,” Romney said in an interview. “If you get the chance to run for president, make sure you do it.”Asked if he had any plans to run for president a third time, Romney replied with a one-word answer: “Nope.”

The evidence in a recent 159-page filing by Dominion Voting Systems in its lawsuit against Fox News for its role in 2020 election disinformation is so voluminous and blatant that Fox will have a tough time defending itself from a judgment, where Dominion is seeking a payment of $1.6 billion. Yet whether or not it loses, this case is beyond the point.Even if Fox had not defamed anyone who could turn around and sue, and it had simply engaged in First Amendment-protected speech repeating more broad stolen election falsities, it must be held accountable for the damage it caused in undermining a free and fair national vote and stoking an insurrection that sacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. It’s not about having a conservative or liberal bent, but subverting democracy itself.Messages, internal conversations, and depositions obtained from Fox in discovery make clear that executives and high-profile hosts were fully aware that people like President Donald Trump attorney Sidney Powell were fabulists engaged in a dangerous effort to sow distrust in and overturn the 2020 election — an effort whose success would literally mean the death of American democracy — and chose to give them megaphones and stop their own reporters from fact-checking them.We’re not talking about eye roll-worthy but ultimately largely harmless hand-wringing about wokeness in M&Ms here. This was a moment at which the survival of the American project of peaceful representative governance hung in the balance, and an organization that bills itself as a news network acted in furtherance of its own business interests and against the preservation of democracy, all in the fear that “our side,” as one Tucker Carlson producer put it, would stop watching or turn to harder-right rival channel Newsmax.Make up all the stuff you want about conspiracies involving chocolate candies, but don’t spin lies that put the fate of the country at risk. Viewers, advertisers and profits are all fine objectives, but the Constitution protects the right of the free press for what we would think is a higher calling: the truth. ADVERTISEMENT — New York Daily News Editorial Board ( nydailynews.com )

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, reportedly ordered an ethics probe into the state’s former Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich into his handling of 2020 election fraud allegations. "Recent reporting and documents released by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office has exposed what is likely unethical conduct by former Attorney General Mark Brnovich," Hobbs’ general counsel, Bo Dul, wrote to Chief Bar Counsel Maret Vessella in a letter Friday obtained by The Washington Post. "This conduct – which is harmful to our democracy, our State, and the legal profession itself – appears to have coincided with the time in which Mr. Brnovich and other attorneys in his Office were actively negotiating and then participating in a diversion agreement with the State Bar in regard to File No. 20-2188 and related matters," the letter says. Dul urges the State Bar to "carefully review" files published on the state attorney general’s website and "take any appropriate action." On Wednesday, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat who narrowly defeated Republican Abraham Hamadeh after a recount of votes in December in one of the closest elections in state history, released documents related to the investigations into the handling of the 2020 election.ARIZONA RANCHER GEORGE ALAN KELLY POSTS $1 MILLION BOND, RELEASED FROM CUSTODY Former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has defended his office's handling of 2020 election fraud allegations.  (AP Photo/Bob Christie, File)"The results of this exhaustive and extensive investigation show what we have suspected for over two years – the 2020 election in Arizona was conducted fairly and accurately by elections officials," Attorney Mayes said in a statement. "The ten thousand plus hours spent diligently investigating every conspiracy theory under the sun distracted this office from its core mission of protecting the people of Arizona from real crime and fraud."The Post reported that such documents showed Brnovich kept a March 2022 report stating that "virtually all claims of error and malfeasance were unfounded" private. Then in April, while running in the GOP primary for a U.S. Senate seat, he released an interim report claiming his office discovered "serious vulnerabilities," allegedly leaving out edits from his own investigators refuting those claims.  "Katie Hobbs is wrong," Brnovich said in a statement, dismissing the allegations.  "This is another misguided attempt by her to defame and cancel a political opponent instead of addressing the serious issues facing our state." Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs' general counsel sent a letter to the State Bar asking for an ethics review into former Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich.  (Rob Schumacher/The Arizona Republic via AP, Pool)Mayes said despite her office spending over 10,000 hours investigating voting irregularities and "alleged instances of illegal voting by high-profile election deniers," a September 2022 summary prepared by the Arizona Attorney General Office (AAGO) Special Investigations Section stated: "In each instance and in each matter, the aforementioned parties did not provide any evidence to support their allegations. The information that was provided was speculative in many instances and when investigated by our agents and support staff, was found to be inaccurate."Mayes said complaints and allegations submitted to the Arizona Attorney General’s office by members of the public "were also largely unsupported by factual evidence or found to be mischaracterizations when researched by agents and support staff." Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes released documents alleging her Republican predecessor sat on a report debunking 2020 election fraud claims.  (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)"These allegations included the counting of duplicate votes, satellites controlled by the Italian military changing votes to favor President Biden, bamboo ballots, and dead people voting in numbers that affected the outcome of the election, among others," her office said. "And while a small number of cases were submitted for prosecution review due to these investigations, these numbers align with historical trends. They do not indicate widespread fraud or conspiracy related to the 2020 election." CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP"Voter fraud is rare, and instances should be handled according to applicable laws when they do occur," Mayes added Wednesday. "But it is time to work together to defend American democracy and uphold the rule of law. It’s time for the divisiveness to stop, and it’s time for our country to heal."The Post reported that the state bar, which has the power to reprimand or disbar its lawyers, received at least eight complaints about Brnovich regarding his office’s investigation into the 2020 election. 

PARKER, Colo (AP) — In a basement event space in the Denver suburb of Parker, Tina Peters surveyed a crowd of Colorado Republicans last week and made an unusual pitch for why she should become chair of their beleaguered party: “There’s no way a jury of 12 people is going to put me in prison.” Peters was referring to her upcoming trial on seven felony charges related to her role in allegedly accessing confidential voting machine data while she was clerk in western Colorado’s Mesa County. The incident made her a hero to election conspiracy theorists but unpopular with all but her party’s hardest-core voters. Peters, who condemns the charges as politically motivated, finished second in last year’s GOP primary for secretary of state, Colorado’s top elections position. Now Peters has become part of a wave of election deniers who, unable to succeed at the polls, have targeted the one post — state party chair — that depends entirely on those hardest-core Republicans. Embracing election conspiracy theories was a political albatross for Republicans in states that weren’t completely red last year, with deniers losing every statewide bid in the swing states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But the movement has focused on GOP state party chairs — positions that usually are selected by only dedicated activists and have the power to influence the party’s presidential nominating contest and some aspects of election operations, such as recruiting poll watchers. “The rise of this dangerous ideology nationwide and the rise within party machinery are ominous,” said Norm Eisen, a prominent Washington lawyer and former ambassador who is executive chair of States United Democracy Center, which tracks election deniers. “It’s an outrageous phenomenon.” Kristina Karamo, a former community college instructor who lost her bid last fall to become Michigan’s secretary of state by 14 percentage points, won the chair of the Michigan Republican Party a week ago. She beat a fellow election denier, failed attorney general candidate Matthew DePerno. In Kansas, Mike Brown, a conspiracy theorist who lost his primary bid for secretary of state, was named chair of the state party. Peters is just one of multiple candidates for the Colorado position who have repeated former President Donald Trump’s lies that President Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election. WATCH: How powerful conservatives pushed the ‘Big Lie’ that the 2020 election was fraudulent “We can’t just say, ‘Oh, it’s time to get over 2020 and be done with that,’” said Aaron Wood, a self-described Christian conservative father also running for Colorado GOP chair, who organized a slate of candidates to take over the party’s top posts. “Until I have 100 percent confidence that the election has integrity, I will not be done with that.” The wave of election deniers follows a push by Trump during his administration to stock the roster of party chairs with loyalists, several of whom supported his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and remain in the White House. Of those, Kelli Ward, the chair of the Arizona GOP, did not run again and was replaced by another Trump loyalist, former state Treasurer Jeff DeWitt. In Georgia, chairman David Shafer has announced he won’t seek another term this June, amid scrutiny over whether he could be indicted for efforts to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. As in most states, the new Georgia party head will be selected by leaders of local county parties. Many of those are Trump loyalists who also backed Shafer’s bid to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss in the state. But Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who defied Trump’s request and easily beat a primary challenger last year backed by Shafer, has marginalized the state party, creating a parallel structure to raise money and turn out voters. That’s an example of how the once powerful post of state party chair has changed. “It used to be adjacent to public service, to be the state party chair, and now it’s something where you get to dunk on Democrats on Twitter,” said Robert Jones, a Republican pollster in Idaho. In that state, Dorothy Moon, an election denier and former state representative who made an unsuccessful primary run for secretary of state, became the Idaho GOP chair last year. Still, Eisen noted that state parties have important roles in appointing poll workers and poll watchers in many states. A perennial fear has been that conspiracists could fill those positions and disrupt elections, though that did not happen in 2022 despite a prominent conservative effort to find more poll watchers. “Maybe the Karamos and the Browns and the Moons will implode,” Eisen said. “There is a kind of incompetence that goes with this ideology. But it’s a concerning trend given the power these state parties have.” Parties also have a major role in structuring their primaries. In Michigan, the party apparatus that Karamo now leads has the power to move its nominating contest to a closed convention, where activists select the winner. WATCH: Election deniers hold critical positions in Republican politics despite national rejection “Donald Trump would love there to be a convention for Michigan’s delegates,” Jason Roe, the former executive director of the state party, said in an interview. Ironically, Trump had endorsed DePerno, a lawyer who unsuccessfully sued to force a new count in 2020. Instead, Karamo, whom the former president had supported in her secretary of state race, won. She has described abortion as “child sacrifice” and Democrats as having a “Satanic agenda.” Kristina Karamo, a candidate for the Michigan Republican Party’s state party chair, speaks to delegates ahead of their vote on the key party leadership position, in Lansing, Michigan, Feb. 18, 2023. Photo by Nathan Layne/REUTERS Last week, on the podcast of Trump adviser Steve Bannon last week, Karamo said Michigan was “ground zero for the globalist takeover of the United States of America.” In Colorado, many Republican strategists say they are prepared for Peters or another election denier to win the party chair position next month. “People seem almost resigned that the party is going to fall into the hands of this crowd for the next two years,” said Sage Naumann, one of the operatives, who said usually a chair’s impact on elections is “neutral,” but that could change. “If they’re constantly making controversial statements, then they can be detrimental,” Naumann said. The insurgent candidates running for Colorado’s chair argue things can’t get worse for the GOP in the state. Republicans lost every statewide race by double digits in November and have their smallest share of seats in the Legislature in state history. The candidates for party chair claim the Colorado GOP has been too timid and needs to be more outspoken and conservative — a risky bid in a state that has been rapidly moving to the left. As part of that, they seek to restrict the primary to only registered Republicans, shutting out voters not affiliated with any party who have been eligible to participate. That would require overturning a voter-approved ballot measure, which activists failed to do in a lawsuit last year. They hope to have a better shot with the party chair’s support. At the debate last week in Parker, former state Rep. Dave Williams said: “It’s time we had a warlike leader who is going to go toe-to-toe” with Democrats. Williams later added: “Joe Biden is not a legitimate president.” Only one candidate, Erik Aadland, a military veteran who unsuccessfully ran for Congress last year, cautioned about the election denier rhetoric. He noted that Democrats effectively used a tape of him questioning the validity of the 2020 election against him in his race. In an interview, he said specifically that he worried about Peters’ candidacy. “It’s not healthy, the words we’re using, the rhetoric we’ve been using,” Aadland said. And, he added, “I don’t think it’d be healthy to have a chairwoman under seven indictments.” Peters, however, reveled in her national profile. She noted that she had just started a podcast that had 60,000 downloads on its first day and that she raised $250,000 to fund a recount in three days after the 2022 primary —a recount that confirmed her loss. During a separate debate Saturday, she demonstrated the appeal of her message to voters whose beliefs are increasingly unpopular in a liberal state. “It’s not your fault that we lost this election in 2022. It’s not my fault that we lost this election in 2022,” she told another crowd of Republican voters at a suburban pizzeria. “It’s because of the machines.” Cappelletti reported from Lansing, Michigan. Associated Press writers Jeff Amy in Atlanta and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.

Attorneys representing former President Donald Trump claimed that the Georgia investigation into his attempts to overturn the 2020 election has been “compromised” and that any indictments stemming from it would likely be “faulty” due to recent remarks made by a member of the special grand jury in the case. “We absolutely do not believe that our client did anything wrong, and if any indictments were to come down, those are faulty indictments. We will absolutely fight anything tooth and nail,” Trump attorney Jennifer Little said in an interview with Robert Costa that aired on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. The former president is being investigated for trying to pressure then-Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to “find” votes for Trump after the 2020 election had concluded. Defense attorneys for former Pres. Trump claim they will fight "tooth and nail" if District Attorney Willis charges Trump in the Fulton Co., Georgia investigation:"If any indictments were to come down, those are faulty indictments," Jennifer Little tells @costareports. pic.twitter.com/lr7NnsMSss— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) February 26, 2023 The lawyers pointed to recent comments to multiple media outlets by the foreperson on the special grand jury probe, Emily Kohrs, who hinted that Trump and a dozen of his allies were recommended for indictments. A special purpose grand jury can only recommend indictments, but its recommendations can lead to a criminal grand jury, which could issue indictments. So far, Fulton County Prosecutor Fani T. Willis has not moved to charge Trump. Attorney Drew Findling, who is also on Trump’s defense team, said the team has “lost 100 percent confidence in this process” and feels the process “has been compromised.” Kohrs’ remarks, Findling claimed, “made us aware that every suspicion we had as to this questionable process was in fact a reality.” Costas noted, however, that by the time Kohrs spoke to the media, the grand jury process had ended, and that she did not break any rules. Findling responded that when Kohrs used the word “we” in her remarks about the process, he believes that indicates “they lost perspective over keeping separation between prosecuting attorneys and members of the grand jury.” “When the foreperson uses the word ‘we,’ that lets you know there was a relationship there,” the lawyer said (although it seems plausible Kohrs’ “we” was referring to herself and the other grand jury members). Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury, said that jurors could not discuss deliberations publicly, but they could speak about the final report the grand jury issued. “What witnesses said, what you put in your report, those are not off-limits,” McBurney said to CNN. Legal experts have also said that Korhs’ comments are unlikely to affect the prosecution. “Emily Kohrs’s pursuit of her fifteen minutes is not likely to preclude anyone indicted and convicted from serving their term of years,” MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin tweeted. Trending Former federal prosecutor Amy Lee Copeland also doubted Kohrs’ interviews would interfere with prosecutors, though her comments may be inconvenient for them. “Is this a headache that is grinding the machine to a halt? It’s not. It’s just one of the many frustrations that attends the practice of law,” Copeland told the AP.