In Case You Missed It, new reporting states that corrupt politician Adam Laxalt continued working to overturn the 2020 election for Donald Trump deep into his campaign for U.S. Senate, using his platform to pressure a rural county official to launch a new audit and boost the defeated former president.
Laxalt’s involvement alarmed the local official, who said she was “baffled” that a former attorney general would pursue illegal action and have such a limited understanding of the law. Referring to Laxalt, the email added, “I believe next year ALL candidates will be running on ‘election integrity’ as a platform without a basic understanding of what the law requires.”
Laxalt was the co-chair of Donald Trump’s campaign and is the “face of” the Big Lie in Nevada, having orchestrated failed lawsuit after failed lawsuit to stop a peaceful transfer of power. He has centered his campaign around his allegiance to Trump and old lies about the 2020 election, and employs an insurrectionist as a senior campaign operative. Throughout his campaign, Laxalt has doubled down on his plans to launch legal action to overturn the 2022 election, long before any votes have been cast.
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Nevada Independent: Email: Laxalt pushed for 2020 election audit in Douglas County after launching Senate bid
Jacob Solis // 8.30.22
As late as last September, former attorney general and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Adam Laxalt had urged a rural county election official to pursue an audit of the 2020 presidential election results, according to an email from that election official sent at the time.
Douglas County Clerk-Treasurer Amy Burgans told a top state elections official in a September 2021 email that Laxalt had approached her during a local event with a request for the county to audit ballot signatures, saying that “he felt that Douglas County should take the lead.” The email was first obtained in February by the left-leaning watchdog group American Oversight.
Burgans recounted telling Laxalt that the signatures could not be released under state law. Laxalt then, per the email, said he had not heard of such a provision, and declined an offer by Burgans to later receive the relevant statute over email.
“More than anything, I am just letting you know due to the amount of misinformation that is out there,” Burgans told Deputy Secretary of State Mark Wlaschin. “I am sure you are aware of it, but I was baffled as to why he wouldn’t want me to educate him on election laws, especially since he was the former Attorney General!!! [emphasis, Burgans] I believe next year ALL candidates will be running on ‘election integrity’ as a platform without a basic understanding of what the law requires.”
She then ended her email: “And so it begins…”
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The timing of Burgans’ email and the event, Douglas County’s Heritage Days, places Laxalt’s request roughly around the release of an audit of county-level Arizona election results on Sept. 24, 2021. It also places the conversation with Burgans roughly five weeks after his official campaign launch last summer.
[…]
Other emails, also obtained in a records request by American Oversight, showed a group of more than two dozen people pushing Douglas County officials for a “forensic audit” of 2020 election results since at least June of 2021. That demand came as part of an “affidavit of maladministration,” which threatened election administrators with $10,000 in fines per day for ignoring the affidavit — though it was unclear how such a penalty would be enforced — and that a denial of the demand was tantamount to “maladministration, treason and insurrection.”
[…]
In the run-up to and immediately following the 2020 presidential election, Laxalt — then the Trump campaign co-chair in the state — was among the most front-facing Trump officials challenging Nevada’s election results.
In a press conference two days after Election Day in 2020, Laxalt and other Trump allies alleged that “illegal votes” had been cast, including from voters who were deceased. However, it was ultimately a Republican man and vocal critic of the state’s election laws, Donald Kirk Hartle, who was charged with voting with his deceased wife’s ballot.
Later, Laxalt spearheaded a lawsuit in state court alleging that Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske’s office failed to keep non-citizens off Nevada voter rolls. That lawsuit was eventually dismissed, and an investigation into broader fraud claims lodged against Cegavske, also a Republican, found no “evidentiary support” of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Still, Laxalt has continued to cast doubt on the election, and has long positioned “election integrity” as a critical campaign issue. In 2021, he told conservative news outlets that 2020 challenges had failed in the courts in large part because they were filed too late, and that his team would be ready to execute challenges in 2022 early to “try to tighten up the election,” according to the Associated Press.
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