You've probably heard the story that's been going around for about eight months about thousands of people being bust into New Hampshire from Massachusetts to vote illegally in last year's election. President Trump even told that story to a group of Senators in a closed door meeting in February. New Hampshire officials have denied those claims, and there's been no evidence
to back them up. But President Trump's claims that three to five million people voted illegally in November led him to set up a controversial voter fraud Commission, which held its first meeting in July. Any form of illegal or fraudulent voting, whether by noncitizens or the deceased, and any form of voter suppression or intimidation, must be stopped. That commission has been the center of controversy since its inception.
Joining us as Bloomberg News legal reporter Andrew Harris, who has written an article in Bloomberg Business Week entitled the Few Democrats on Trump's Voter Fraud Panel, pushed back Andrew tell us about the surprising allegations the head of the integrity Panel, Kansas Secretary of State Chris Kolback, made about New Hampshire's voting. Hi June, Michael, thanks for having me on the show. Chris Callback for a long time has
been associated with toughening voter registration UH laws. Uh it kind of goes hand in hand with his UH other association, which is with toughening U S immigration laws. So about five days before the panel met in Manchester, New Hampshire, earlier this month, UH Colback, who is Kansas Secretary of
State and a candidate for governor there. He's a Republican, wrote a column for Breitbart in which he asserted that more than six thousand people who voted in last year's election in New Hampshire showed up the polls using out of state driver's licenses as I das, and that only some five and that ten months later, only a thousand or so of those people that actually UH secure were
New Hampshire ideas. So Mr koback ansserted that the balance of those people were apparently in violation of New Hampshire residency laws, and that there's a good chance that these people were out of state voters who tipped both the Senate election there and potentially the presidential balloting there in favor of Democrats Maggie has Hassan and Hillary Clinton, and so what was the response. The response from New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner was a numbers, uh, don't
constitute proof. He wouldn't substantiate the allegations. Another Democratic member of the panel, Main Secretary of State, Matt Dunlop, called the column reckless and said that making this allegation was tantum out to say that money found in somebody's wallet was evidence that they had robbed the bank. So it didn't go over very well at the Commission meeting in Manchester Andrew More generally, given that the you know how partisan a lot of Democrats feel this voter for commission is.
You know, you've got five Democrats on the Commission. How are they approaching this? And beyond just that allegation, well, you know you have at least what appears facially to being in balance. As I said, Chris Kulback has spent a lot of time working on election law issues, as have some of the other more notable Republicans on the Commission. Hans von Spakovski and Jay Christian Adams, both of Rum,
are former Republican Justice Department attorneys. On the other side, you have Mr Gardner, Mr Dunlap, a former Arkansas state lawmaker, a West Virginia County clerk, and in Alabama probate judge. None of uma is closely associated with this issue, as
are the three men that I mentioned on the Republican side. Nonetheless, has spoken to all of them except for Judge Allen King, and they've all said that they are resolute in staying on the panel, even as uh, some of their colleagues have said, well, you're lending a veneer of credibility to this uh not credible effort. Uh. Their their opinion is that they're best fighting from the inside then walking away.
And Andrew, So, there have been these accusations that this is a partisan commission from the beginning, but you're write about evidence that at least one of the panel's Republican members you just spoke about was concerned about even including Democrats. That would be Mr von Spakovsky. On the day that the Commission was meeting in Manchester, a public interest group released a copy of an email they had gotten pursued
to a Freedom of Information Act request. It was an email sent by Mr von Spakovsky, He says to a friend back in February had ultimately made its way to Attorney General Sessions, in which Mr von Spakovsky expressed concern about putting uh Democrats or even moderate Republicans on the Commission and asserting that they would be an impediment to the Commission's objectives and that email is one of the reasons that seven Democrat at the Senator has asked the
Department of Justice on Tuesday to explain any involvement it has with the Commission. The Justice Department has said that it has no involvement with the commission. Is that correct? Its correct? We haven't We haven't seen any evidence of that. The Commission is nominally led by Vice President Pence. Mr Kolback is the vice chairman of the commission. Has uh you noted it is a majority Republican entity, seven Republicans,
five Democrats. Uh. They're they're they're charged with investigating problems with American election integrity and what gives people confidence in what takes it away. But there's been no indication that the Justice Department has weighed in on this, at least not that I've seen. So what has Judge Alan King, who you mentioned earlier, has written a memo on these
Where is he at all this? Uh, he's one of the minorty Democrats and he's worried that the Commission is spending more time I'm looking for ways to keep people from voting, even by toughening registration laws or toughening voter ID laws. Then it is helping people to vote. And his concern, and it's echoed by a lot of his fellow Democrats. Is it The end result of this Commission's work will be a recommendation to the President to toughen those registration and voting laws and make it harder for
some people to get to the polls and cast their votes. Andrew, what has struck you as you were writing this about the way Americans view voter fraud? Well, you know, June, this is really where the rubber meets the road in the democratic process. I mean, there are a lot of hot button issues, whether it's gone ownership or gay marriage or abortion rights. But this is people voting, So there's
probably nothing more essential to the process than that. And depending on who you talk to, people either are convinced that this is a widespread, endemic problem or that it hardly exists at all. Nobody's saying it does exist, but the question is really scale and there doesn't seem to be a lot of middle ground being expressed from either side.
Thanks so much. That's Andrew Harris, and he is a Bloomberg News legal reporter and he wrote this article, very well researched for Bloomberg Business Week entitled the Few Democrats on Trump's voter fraud panel push Back. That's it for this edition of Bloomberg Law. We will be back Monday at one pm Wall Street Time, and hope that you will be as well. Thanks to our producer David Suckerman
and our technical director Sean Kilby. You can always find the latest legal news at Bloomberg Law dot com and Bloomberg BNA dot com, plus a website for the legal community at Big law Business dot com and Attorneys You can find exceptional legal research and business development tools there as well. You can listen to the latest legal topics in the news at any time by going to our Bloomberg Law podcast. You just go to Bloomberg dot com
slash podcast slash Law for the latest legal news. Coming up next, Bloomberg Markets with Carol Masser and Corey Johnson. Carol has just walked into the studio time enough to tell us one of the top things you'll be talking about, Carol Ware about Steve Bannon. He's back and he's targeting China. June, I have no comment on the list, no comment, speechless for one of the first times in my life. All Right, have a great weekend everyone. I'm June Graza with Michael Beast. This is Bloomberg.