From Greg Palast Website
The RNC is petitioning a federal district court in New Jersey to lift a Consent Decree that blocked an ugly Jim Crow voter purge scam known as "caging." Here's an excerpt from a memo filed on November 5th, 2016 by the presiding US District Judge, John Michael Vazquez, which provides some background on the case:
"The original Consent Decree was entered in 1982. The Decree was the result of the settlement of a lawsuit which claimed that, in connection with the 1981 New Jersey Gubernatorial election, the RNC and the New Jersey Republican State Committee attempted to intimidate the minority voters, in violation of the Voting Rights Act... Specifically, the RNC sent sample ballots to areas where a large portion of the voters were ethnic minorities, then asked that the name of each voter whose ballot was returned as undeliverable be removed from New Jersey's voter rolls."
The Decree was modified and extended twice, in 1987 and 2009, but it's set to expire on December 17, 2017 -- unless, as per Vazquez's memo, "the DNC proved in the interim that the RNC violated the Decree, in which case the Decree would be extended an additional eight years."
I discovered that the RNC was violating this Consent Decree in 2004, when my BBC Newsnight team caught George W. Bush's campaign red-handed. And, get this, Roy Moore's campaign chief, Brett Doster, was the one doing the dirty work for George W. in Florida. The RNC was busted when a little bird gave me an email from Tim Griffin (Karl Rove's dogsbody) to Doster (Moore's goon) with a subject header marked "caging" -- with one of the caging lists attached.
The full skinny on my investigation into the RNC's racist caging operation is chronicled in Chapter 13 of my book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. We've posted the complete chapter, entitled "Karl Rove Confidential," below.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. explains caging in The Case of the Stolen Election -- the post-election update of our film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (see above clip), which is based on the book. Kennedy also discussed the original RNC Consent Decree with me and asserts that even if it is allowed to expire, caging remains illegal under the Voting Rights Act because it targets voters of color. However, it's unlikely that GOP officials will choose to interpret the law in the same way, and the Consent Decree's expiry could lead to a vastly increased, and more overt, use of these nefarious vote-stealing tactics as we head towards the 2018 and 2020 elections.
Congressman Tim Griffin is a big, BIG supporter of the XL Pipeline. And the Kochs are big, BIG supporters of Congressman Griffin. Koch interests lined up $167,183 for Griffin's run in 2010. Let me put that in perspective: for $167,183, the average member of Congress would be willing to wash your car -- with their tongue.
That kind of money doesn't come into a GOP candidate's hands without the helpful hand of Karl Rove.
When voting-rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joined our investigations team in 2008, he examined the latest documents we'd squirreled out of Republican Party headquarters' files. And then he said, speaking of Karl Rove and his associate Tim Griffin, "What they did was absolutely illegal -- and they knew it and they did it anyway. Griffin should be in jail."
But Griffin's not in jail, he went to Congress. Rove is not in prison either. According to IRS records, he's director of a non-profit "social welfare" organization. American Crossroads, GPS, tax-exempt under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, aims to improve society's welfare by dragging Democrats out of their seats in Congress and removing a Democrat president from the White House. A federal prosecutor expressed the same sentiment to me. How Griffin ended up in Congress, not in prison, is the more intriguing story.
It was well after midnight, some time in the first week of October before the 2004 election, when the e-mails started pouring in.
The chieftains of the George W. Bush reelection campaign were copying me on their most intimate and confidential messages -- and Ollie, my research director, pissed me off by waking me in my cheap motel room to tell me this whacky-ass news. I was in the middle of nowhere USA with my election investigation for BBC going nowhere, so I wasn't in the mood for this bullshit.
But it wasn't bullshit. It was a miracle. Karl Rove's right-hand man, Tim Griffin, Bush's research director (read, smear director), had sent the data for some sick scheme to the chairman of the Bush reelection campaign in Florida, Brett Doster. Griffin, instead of sending copies to GeorgeWBush.com, their internal e-mail domain, sent copies to GeorgeWBush.ORG, to my friend John Wooden's joke site. Wooden passed them on to us for forensic analysis.
Here was the GOP leadership with their pants around their ankles, exposing their cheat sheets.
Holy Mama! Do I have to believe in God, now?
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