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By Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
Election woes got you down?
Imagine the look of contempt on Karl Rove's face this past Sunday as he swaggered toward his star turn on CBS's Face the Nation only to be served with our subpoena sanctioned by the Secretary of the State of Ohio.
The federal subpoena orders Rove to testify in deposition. Our attorney, Cliff Arnebeck, intends to ask Mr. Rove about his role in the theft if the 2004 election, and to discuss his orchestration of tens of millions of corporate/billionaire dollars in the one coming up on November 2, 2010.
As co-counsel and plaintiff in the on-going King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal lawsuit, we have fought for six years to win justice and full disclosure in an election that Rove stole for George W. Bush.
In the course of this civil rights federal suit, we have seen the illegal destruction of hundreds of thousands of paper and electronic ballots that were supposedly protected by federal law.
We have seen 56 of 88 Ohio counties destroy most of their poll records, making a full recount of the 2004 vote an impossibility. Some of this destruction was done in defiance of federal law and a federal court order, for which no one has been prosecuted.
We have also seen the very mysterious and disturbing death of Michael Connell, Rove's former chief computer guru. Rove used Connell to establish the electronic tools and architectural framework through which the vote count manipulations that shifted the election from John Kerry to Bush were accomplished.
An experienced professional pilot, Connell died improbably in a fiery crash at his home airport in Canton in December, 2008. Connell had been deposed the day before the November 2008 election. Attorney Arnebeck was in the process of preparing for another round of questioning when Connell's life was ended.
Our subpoena is aimed at letting Rove explain all he did to give himself, Bush, and Dick Cheney another term in the White House.
But there is much more. With the US Supreme Court's infamous Citizens United decision, the floodgates have opened to an unprecedented wave of cash coming from corporations and billionaire donors such as the Koch Brothers. By many accounts at least $150 million in corporate/billionaire lucre is being laundered through Rove's American Crossroads.
Under Rove's orchestration, this money is being used to wipe Democrats out of Congress and to take control of the apportionment process at the state level throughout the country.
"Rove is the de facto head of a coordinated Republican national campaign in which Tom Donahue of the Chamber of Commerce is a senior partner, while the Republican National Committee has been relegated to junior partner status," says Arnebeck.
"Rove has filled the airwaves with high-priced attack ads funded by the mega-corporations and billionaires that stand to benefit most from another assault on the public trust and treasury.
"He and the Koch Brothers have also funneled large bundles of cash to a Tea Party astroturf organization meant to give the Republican campaign a grassroots veneer.
"From the fiasco of Florida 2000 through the theft of Ohio 2004 to the present, there has been no significant federal reform of the electoral process or curtailment of the use of easily manipulated electronic voting machines," adds Arnebeck. "With the added tsunami of cash from Citizens United , Rove's role as the principal perpetrator of a racketeering conspiracy, as defined by the Ohio Corrupt Practices Act, has been vastly enhanced."
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