President Donald Trump announced last week that he is disbanding the controversial commission studying alleged voter fraud that faced resistance from states claiming overreach and became embroiled in multiple federal lawsuits.
The president said he now will move the voter ID probe of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to the Department of Homeland Security "to review its initial findings and determine next courses of action."
The irony in this is rich.
The same president who labels as a "hoax" the Russian meddling in our 2016 presidential election - swinging support with fake news to him and hacking into dozens of our state election systems - instead created this panel to prove his own false claims that he lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton because of millions of illegally cast ballots.
Trump's administration for nearly a year has done nothing to probe or counter Russian cyber meddling, but wasted thousands or more in taxpayer dollars in this Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, led by conspiracy theorist and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.
With his disbanding announcement, Trump tweeted: "Many mostly Democrat States refused to hand over data from the 2016 Election to the Commission On Voter Fraud. They fought hard that the Commission not see their records or methods because they know that many people are voting illegally. System is rigged, must go to Voter I.D."
Sadly, our president trusts the Russians, but not us. And he seems not to understand that we already have voter ID - in some states, overly strict voter ID.
Even one of the 11 commissioners on the Kobach panel sued the very commission on which he served. Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, a Democrat, said in November that he was kept in the dark about the panel's operations, making his participation "essentially meaningless."
A federal judge agreed with Dunlap, citing three instances when Dunlap was not given adequate access to information needed to participate in the panel's deliberations. The judge said Dunlap should have been informed about and seen a draft of a controversial request asking states to submit their voter rolls and other sensitive, but publicly available, information about voters. The judge also said Dunlap should have been told about proposals related to the location, speakers and content of the group's September meeting. You think?
That September meeting was the last one, and suddenly, now that the panel must share information with a dreaded Democrat, the group is disbanded and the review moves behind closed doors inside the administration.
Dunlap, rightly, is again worried.
"I think people who are saying 'the witch is dead' should be very alarmed by this move," he said. "I think that's very dangerous."
In an op-ed in Sunday's Washington Post, Dunlap pointed to a Kobach editorial in Breitbart News in September, before the panel's last meeting. In the Breitbart piece, Kobach claimed "proof" of "voter fraud" in New Hampshire, based on the premise that 5,526 people - mostly college students who had registered to vote and who voted on Election Day in 2016 - still had not obtained New Hampshire driver's licenses 10 months later.
Dunlap said Kobach, once again, was wrong. Under New Hampshire law, students have a special carve-out. They could use their out-of-state credentials to register and vote - thereby declaring domicile - without establishing legal, permanent residency, which would otherwise carry obligations such as converting driver's licenses.
Dunlap said he and Kobach obviously use the word "fraud" in different ways.
"I would define "fraud" as voter misconduct; but in indicting New Hampshire law - which he clearly regarded as illegitimate - Kobach twisted the word to further his political agenda, which has historically meant making it harder for minorities, students, the poor and anyone else possibly sympathetic toward Democrats to vote."
Trump does the same thing.
He falsely posits that Russians hacking our voting records and deploying cyber bots to create fake news in his favor comprise "a hoax," yet he, with GOP cover, continues to scour the corners for U.S. voter fraud that demonstrably is extremely rare.
Who needs Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury" book to understand that Donald Trump has serious instability troubles?
All one needs to read is the president's own Twitter posts.
"My button is bigger" [than yours, Kim Jong Un], "and it works."
Over the weekend, Trump was telling and tweeting to us - over and over as usual - that he's "a very stable genius."
"Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence
... Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star ...
... to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius ... and a very stable genius at that!"
Heaven help us.