Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General with history of extremism and dishonesty targets the Maricopa election audit.

(Alexandria, VA) – May 17, 2021: The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) wrote a letter to the Arizona State Senate President urging her to resist The Department of Justice’s abuse of power regarding the Maricopa election audit. 

“Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Pam Karlan is doing the bidding of, and acting as a surrogate for, the Democratic Party, not as an objective law enforcement officials and representative of the U.S. Department of Justice,” writes PILF President, J. Christian Adams and PILF Litigation Counsel, Maureen Riordan to the Arizona State Senate President.

Read our full letter here.

BACKGROUND:

Yesterday, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Pam Karlan wrote to Arizona Sate Senate President Karen Fann claiming their audit could be in violation of federal voting and civil rights laws.

Karlan is an ideologue with a history of partisan enforcement of civil rights laws and scholarly dishonesty. Some of her most egregious actions are listed below.

• As a member of Facebook Oversight Board, Karlan played a key rolled in censoring free speech and information about vulnerabilities in our election system.
• During the first impeachment trial of President Trump, she made a tasteless joke about the President’s youngest son.
• Karlan has falsely published that “for five of the eight years of the Bush Administration, [they] brought no Voting Rights Act cases of its own except for one case protecting white voters.” Yet, the record shows that numerous cases were brought under the Voting Rights Act to protect non-white racial minorities in all eight years of the Bush administration.

LIES AND ABUSE OF POWER BY THE DOJ:

Karlan’s letter is completely wrong on the law. This Biden Department of Justice is exercising a non-existent authority to conduct oversight of the audit.

Karlan claims that Maricopa Recorder’s Office simply surrendered all pertinent election records to a private party without proper retention and archiving procedures in place. This is false. The Superior Court of Arizona found the legislative subpoenas governing the handling of the election document in question were proper and lawful.

The Department of Justice is engaging a brazen abuse of power. An audit of a past election does not violate the Voting Rights Act or any other federal election law. In the entire history of the DOJ, the Department has not interfered with or investigated an audit because it has no legal authority to do so.

Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) is a 501(c)(3) is the nation’s only public interest law firm dedicated wholly to election integrity. The Foundation exists to assist states and others to aid the cause of election integrity and fight against lawlessness in American elections. Drawing on numerous experts in the field, PILF seeks to protect the right to vote and preserve the Constitutional framework of American elections. PILF has brought lawsuits and won victories in Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and across the United States.

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