Trump Convinces Texas To Do Audits Of Four Counties, Even As Arizona Audit Fiasco Finally Collapses

This is like letters crossing in the mail, or ships passing each other in the night. Earlier Thursday Donald Trump sent out one of his email missives addressed to Greg Abbott, imploring him to work on an audits bill. Here’s the text.

Dear Governor Abbott,

Despite my big win in Texas, I hear Texans want an election audit! You know your fellow Texans have big questions about the November 2020 Election. Bills to audit elections in your great state’s House and Senate were considered during Texas’ Second Special Session. Instead, the legislature passed a watered-down amendment that doesn’t even apply to the 2020 Presidential Election. This short amendment doesn’t answer the questions Texans have about the last election. Texans demand a real audit to completely address their concerns.

We need HB 16, which was just filed in the Third Special Session. This legislation specifically addresses the 2020 Presidential Election, and enables audits for future elections. The bill creates a process for candidates and party chairs to initiate an audit, and uses the same language as SB 97, which already passed the Texas State Senate, but did not have enough time to make it through the House during the Second Special Session.

Texas needs you to act now. Your Third Special Session is the perfect, and maybe last, opportunity to pass this audit bill. Time is running out. Paper ballots in your state are only kept for 22 months after the election. Your citizens don’t trust the election system, and they want your leadership on this issue, which is the number one thing they care about. It is their most important issue—one that will affect 2022 and 2024.

Governor Abbott, we need a “Forensic Audit of the 2020 Election” added to the call. We’re quickly running out of time and it must be done this week. Texans know voting fraud occurred in some of their counties. Let’s get to the bottom of the 2020 Presidential Election Scam!

Donald J. Trump

In response, the Texas secretary of state’s office announced late Thursday that it has begun a “full forensic audit” of the 2020 general election in Collin, Dallas, Harris and Tarrant counties. What makes this curious is the fact that there currently is no secretary of state in Texas. The previous secretary of state was Ruth Ruggero Hughs, who was appointed to the job in August, 2019. She went a full session without the Texas State Senate confirming her, and was therefore required by the Texas constitution to leave the office. She resigned May 31, which was the last day of the legislative session. The Senate Nominations Committee, chaired by Republican Dawn Buckingham, never took up Hughs’ nomination. Buckingham’s office declined to comment on why the committee did not consider the nomination.

So much for the state’s top election official. And it wasn’t the first time something like this had happened according to the Texas Tribune.

Hughs’ predecessor, David Whitley, gave the governor similar latitude by resigning on the last day of the 2019 legislative session even though it was clear he lacked the votes to keep the job after he oversaw a botched effort to scour the voter rolls for supposed noncitizens. The review instead threatened the voting rights of tens of thousands of naturalized citizens, landed the state in federal court and prompted a congressional inquiry into voting rights violations.

You knew politics in Texas was pretty strange, but maybe you didn’t know how deep it went.

As you recall, right after the election Ken Paxton sued Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania, challenging their election results and the Supreme Court shut that down in a heartbeat. Now we move forward to see what the use is of Trump, who won Texas with 52% of the vote, attempting to prove that he actually won by 55% or 60%, whatever the magic number is. Nobody is quite certain what the point of such an exercise is, but be that as it may, it’s going forward. All I feel confident saying is that somebody’s pockets are going to get well lined. If Trump is behind something, there is a green, negotiable factor involved, always.