Trump believes that millions of immigrants voted illegally in the election
Trump suggested that illegal immigrants were to blame only days after his defeat in the popular vote.
On November 26, Trump tweeted, “In addition to winning the Electoral College by a landslide, I took the popular vote if you exclude the millions of people who voted illegally.”
A special bipartisan commission set up to investigate the accusation has no plans to meet again this year, almost a year later and with no facts provided by the administration to support the charge.
According to court papers obtained by Politico, the president’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity did not meet in 2017.
A justice department attorney told U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, according to records quoted by Politico, that the commission “will not meet in December.”
The commission’s charter calls for meetings every two months, and the most recent meeting was on September 12. Meetings of committees must be reported 15 days in advance, according to federal regulations.
Since its formation in May, following an executive order from Trump, the commission has been dogged by controversy and setbacks, with Vice President Mike Pence as chairman and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach as vice chairman.
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The panel’s efforts to access voter lists, which contain social security numbers and criminal records, have been met with resistance from 24 states, citing privacy concerns.
Charges have also been filed on behalf of voters’ rights groups, arguing that the attempt to access voter information violates privacy laws. They argue that in Kansas, Kobach has used voter fraud issues to suppress minority and poor voters’ votes.
In October, a panel member who was assisting in the prosecution of the allegations was arrested on child pornography charges.
In the same month, Arkansas State Representative David Dunn, one of the five Democrats on the panel, died suddenly during heart surgery.
And last week, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, a Democrat on the commission, sued it for refusing him access to deliberations and information—charges rejected by Kobach.
As part of a hearing on Kobach’s case, it was announced that the panel will hold no more meetings this year.
Alan King, a probate judge in Jefferson County, Alabama, is a Democratic member of the panel who has called on the committee to either report its plans and what it has been working on or dissolve entirely.
“It wouldn’t surprise me based on what I’ve read and heard,” King told the Huffington Post in October. “It wouldn’t surprise me if this whole commission was staged and they had a specific end goal in mind when it was first conceived.”
Claims that the commission is hiding details have been dismissed by Kobach as “baseless and paranoid.” Outside concerns have delayed the commission’s work, according to a statement released by Kobach’s office in November.
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