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We need to talk about another GOP attempt to steal the 2020 election--Kanye West's false flag bid [1]

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Date: 2023-03-08

Let’s review. When West threw his hat in the ring on July 4, 2020, there were a lot of reasons to wonder why he was serious. After all, he’d already missed the deadline to get on the ballot in four states, and had no realistic chance of qualifying in several others.

By early August, West had missed so many deadlines that it was mathematically impossible for him to win the Electoral College. So why was he still running? Well, West answered that question in an interview with Forbes just after throwing his hat in the ring. He claimed that even though he was “taking the red hat off,” he had no qualms about siphoning off black votes from Biden. In another Forbes interview around the time he was mathematically eliminated from contention, he all but admitted that he was only in the race to screw Biden by siphoning off enough votes in enough states to give Trump another term.

If that was West’s game plan, he ended up a dead loser. In the space of 24 hours in August, he was thrown off the ballot in Wisconsin and Ohio—thus ensuring that he wouldn’t be on the ballot on enough swing states to even potentially tip them away from Biden.

In Wisconsin, the state election commission rejected West’s bid to get on the ballot because he’d turned in his petitions mere minutes after the deadline.

West’s effort to get on the Wisconsin ballot was challenged because his documents were filed one to two minutes after the 5 p.m. deadline on Aug. 5. “When you’re late, you're late,” Commissioner Julie Glancey said during a 2½ hour hearing at which the panel voted 5-1 against West. “We’ve knocked people off the ballot for being one signature short. If we are holding their feet to the fire on the number of signatures, we need to hold their feet to the fire on the time they file."

But according to WISN-TV in Milwaukee, West would have been wasting his time if he tried to fight that decision due to problems more fundamental than missing the deadline for turning in his petitions.

Specifically, according to a challenge by the Wisconsin Democratic Party, West canvassers turned in signatures with bogus names and addresses and even tricked people into signing petitions for West. Several of West’s canvassers also lied about their own addresses. All told, even if West had filed his petitions on time, all but a fraction of the signatures could have been struck down.

Less than 24 hours later, West was kicked off the ballot in Ohio due to discrepancies on his paperwork. Specifically, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose ruled that the signature on West’s statement of candidacy filed with his office didn’t match the signature on the petitions signed by voters.

The Ohio secretary of state's office determined the signature and information on West's nominating petition and statement of candidacy did not match the documents actually used for petitions signed by voters. “A signature is the most basic form of authentication and an important, time-honored, security measure to ensure that a candidate aspires to be on the ballot and that a voter is being asked to sign a legitimate petition," Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose said in a news release. "There is no doubt that the West nominating petition and declaration of candidacy failed to meet the necessary threshold for certification.”

And this was coming from a simon-pure conservative Republican.

Amid this comic opera, a lot of questions had already been raised about the large number of Republican operatives helping West. Among them was a Trump Republican National Convention delegate from Vermont who also would have been an elector for West in the unlikely event West carried Vermont. The former executive director of the American Conservative Union, the folks behind CPAC, was also helping West. And a well-connected Republican lawyer in Wisconsin dropped off West’s petitions in that state.

Those questions became even louder with The Daily Beast’s report in December 2021. It revealed that West’s “Birthday Party” had concealed millions of dollars in services it received from a network of high-powered GOP operatives in an apparent attempt to conceal their connection to West’s ostensibly third-party bid. It didn’t even report paying some of them and used an unusual abbreviation for others—moves that campaign finance experts concluded ran afoul of federal election law.

One of those outfits with documented Republican connections was Holtzman Vogel, one of the most powerful Republican-leaning white-shoe law firms in the country. Another white-shoe firm assisting West was BakerHostettler, who works for the Republican National Committee; West paid that firm $152,000 a month after the election.

Numerous people tied to the West campaign recalled that messaging decisions had to be cleared by “sensitive political ‘hands,’” while others claimed had been solicited by people known to be Republican operatives. For example, attorney Tim La Sota openly admitted that while the rapper didn’t reach out to him, “somebody else did.”

All of this only came to light when one of West’s campaign vendors, SeedX, sued the West campaign and several of its consultants for breach of contract. SeedX claimed the West campaign welched on millions of dollars in campaign work, including building and maintaining the West campaign website. The suit ultimately made its way to the U. S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, where it was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. However, SeedX’s disclosures outlined just how deep the West campaign’s ties were to the Republican ecosystem.

For instance, SeedX revealed numerous emails from Holtzman Vogel’s managing partner, Virginia State Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel, identifying herself as the West campaign’s lawyer. In one of those emails, the West campaign, through Vogel, offered to buy its site from SeedX for $20,000. SeedX turned it down out of hand and filed the $2 million suit. SeedX contended that since West never paid up, its campaign work amounted to a loan or an in-kind contribution to the West campaign—which in either case would have exceeded federal limits.

Filings by SeedX showed that there is no evidence West ever paid Vogel or her firm despite evidence she advised him on matters beyond compliance with campaign finance law. Nor was that work ever properly disclosed. According to Common Cause vice president Paul S. Ryan, that’s “a big deal.” He argued, and rightly, that the American people “had a right to know that a high-powered Republican lawyer” was helping West—and West was required to disclose said work.

It cannot be stated enough. These high-powered Republicans were helping a candidate who had no realistic chance of winning, and who had all but admitted he was only running—or as he put it, “walking”—to screw another candidate. At the very least, this is firmly in “what did they know and when did they know it” territory. As Jordan Libowitz of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington put it, one does not “trip and find your way into these Republican circles.” At the very least, the GOP created an environment in which this was acceptable—more reason why the GOP is not fit to govern.

At the very least, it’s clear that West, or those acting for him, were attempting to exploit a dangerous flaw in the presidential election system. Due to the presence of the Electoral College, we don’t really have a national campaign, but 51 state-level campaigns. This makes it far too easy for a bad actor to tip the results in enough states to throw the results of the election. This isn’t just theoretical. It very nearly happened in 1948 and 1960, when segregationist splinter candidates with no realistic chance of winning were potentially in a position to put their electoral votes “up for sale” in case neither major candidate won an Electoral College majority.

As monstrous as this is in and of itself, we also have to consider West’s well-documented mental issues. West’s longtime “spiritual adviser,” John Boyd, told The Daily Beast that from where he was sitting, West wasn’t really in control of his own campaign.

“He had companies, individuals working for him, I don’t even know if he knew what they were doing that deeply. That’s my personal view,” Boyd told The Daily Beast. “There were definitely agendas out there that perhaps he didn’t have full control over.” Boyd declined to give names or provide further details.

That we even have to ask if these operatives were taking advantage of a mentally ill man is almost too obscene for words. But even if that isn’t the case, the prospect that high-profile operatives with a major party were pulling the strings for a false flag campaign is the very definition of an attack on democracy. And it’s even more straightforward than anything Trump did. West openly admitted he was out to wreck Biden’s chances. If these operatives knowingly assisted in that, it at the very least meets the real-world definition of election fraud.

It may be a long time before we consign the Electoral College to the dustbin. But if we’re serious about protecting democracy, we must take seriously any potential attempt by bad actors to taint the election in this manner. If there isn’t an investigation into West being a false flag candidate, there damned well should be. And a lot of people need to be in jail.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/8/2156633/-We-need-to-talk-about-another-GOP-attempt-to-steal-the-2020-election-Kanye-West-s-false-flag-bid

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