Jon Ralston on MSNBC: “Sounds of silence […] Adam Laxalt, Ric Grenell, Matt Schlapp, the Chairman of the Republican Party, Michael McDonald, there have been crickets since this decision came out and then the sentence was imposed today.”
Failed, corrupt politician Adam Laxalt still has refused to comment after one of his main allies — who Laxalt propped up as a victim of voter fraud — pleaded guilty to voter fraud. Laxalt is getting local and national media coverage for his role amplifying the lead posterboy of Trump’s Big Lie, Kirk Hartle, who claimed someone had fraudulently cast his deceased wife’s ballot. Now, Hartle has been sentenced for casting that ballot himself.
As Donald Trump’s Nevada campaign chair, Laxalt led efforts to try to overturn the 2020 election and used Hartle’s false story as evidence to promote the Big Lie. Now that Hartle has admitted to his crimes, Laxalt is facing media scrutiny for their work together and his silence on Hartle’s guilty plea.
Reminder – A federal judge, the Nevada Supreme Court, and Nevada’s Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Nevadas. But Laxalt is already planning preemptive litigation to overturn the 2022 U.S. Senate race if he loses, and has refused to commit to certifying a Joe Biden victory in 2024 if he wins.
Via AP:
“The Secretary of State’s office investigators began a probe of Hartle’s case a year ago […] after former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt and American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp held a news conference to allege widespread voter fraud in Nevada.
Laxalt co-chaired the Trump campaign in Nevada. He is now seeking the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate.
Schlapp named Rosemarie Hartle and one other person among what he said were ‘hundreds’ of cases of dead people voting in Nevada.
Investigators determined the other case, involving a woman who used a deceased relative’s ballot instead of her own, was accidental.
[…]
Nevada GOP officials did not immediately respond Tuesday to messages about Hartle’s plea.”
Full video here or click above
Jon Ralston: This whole thing was a sham from the beginning, Rachel, we now know. But let’s— you accurately dramatized how incensed they all were that this voter fraud had taken place and how front and center Kirk Hartle’s allegations were. It was Adam Laxalt, now running for the U.S. Senate I should mention, who was the co-chairman of the Trump campaign, and the Trump campaign nationally sent two partisan thugs out here, Matt Schlapp of the American Conservative Union who mentioned Hartle by name. And Ric Grenell who as you know, is essentially an internet troll elevated by the Trump administration. Those three were at a news conference and they repeatedly said that there was massive voter fraud. And Matt Schlapp invoked Kirk Hartle’s name as essentially the canary in the coal mine, or as you call them, the poster boy for voter fraud. And now it is all collapsed.
Rachel Maddow: Now that it has collapsed, has there been any reckoning at all? I wouldn’t expect it from somebody like Ambassador Grenell, for example, but within Nevada, within the Republican party, particularly because they used this not only to hype this idea nationally, but to use it as the basis for advocating for voting restrictions in the state of Nevada, has there been any reckoning with the fact that the whole pretext that they created around this story was false?
Jon Ralston: Sounds of silence, Rachel. They have not said a word […] You know, the big question to me of course is what did they know and when did they know it? […] And so they have not, Adam Laxalt, Ric Grenell, Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the Republican party, Michael McDonald, there have been crickets since this decision came out and then the sentence was imposed today.
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