ARIZONA SUN TIMES | RACHEL ALEXANDER | SEPTEMBER 30, 2023
PHOTO | ARIZONA SUN TIMES

Witness in Disbarment Trial of Trump’s Former Attorney John Eastman Found ‘Vote Laundering’ of 280,000 to 300,000 Votes in Pennsylvania’s 2020 Election

The sixth week of the disbarment trial of Donald Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar, John Eastman, wrapped up Friday with testimony by two witnesses from Eastman’s team. Attorney Kurt Olsen, who is representing Kari Lake in her election challenge, testified first. Next, Ray Blehar, a retired Department of Defense analyst, testified, discussing his findings that 280,000 to 300,000 votes in Pennsylvania were “vote laundered” through the electronic tabulating machines.

Olsen began his testimony by explaining why he became involved in an election lawsuit over the 2020 election. He said, “I believed that something was not right.”

He listed what concerned him: video clips of poll workers not allowed to watch tabulation, the controversy in Michigan’s Antrim County, results that didn’t make sense, such as the stopping of counting ballots overnight in key counties, and “clear violations of law.”

Earlier in the trial, former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman testified that the machines in Antrim County flipped the vote from Trump to Joe Biden, but it was treated as a mistake. Gableman said it could not be determined whether it was intentional since the log files were deleted.

Along with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Olsen filed a Motion for Leave to File a Bill of Complaint with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking to stop Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin from certifying their 2020 election results due to multiple violations of state law. He worked with prominent attorneys and experts, including attorneys Jay Sekulow, Ken Starr, Larry Joseph, and economist Charles Cicchetti. Olsen said he found Cicchetti’s work “reliable and accurate.”

Olsen said the complaint addressed actions by non-legislative officials who violated state laws, often citing COVID-19 as an excuse. These included changing signature verification procedures, changing the cut-off date for ballots to be accepted, removing voter ID requirements, changing the procedures to open ballots by mail, and using unmanned drop boxes. He said the illegal actions violated the Constitution’s Electors Clause.

Olsen said they relied on the Ryan Report, a letter sent by former Pennsylvania State Representative Francis Ryan and 14 other legislators to Representative Scott Perry (R-PA-10) on December 15, 2020, which expressed concerns about irregularities in Pennsylvania’s 2020 election. The report found 9,005 ballots mailed with no mailed date, 58,221 ballots returned on or before the mailed date, and 51,200 ballots returned one day after the mailed date.

Ultimately, Olsen said the Supreme Court split 4-4 on whether to accept an expedited review of the case (Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had just died), rejecting it, which he said meant half of the justices believed the complaint was likely to succeed on the merits. California Bar Disciplinary Judge Yvette Roland, who contributed to Democrats while on the bench, said it was irrelevant and instructed Eastman’s attorney to move to another topic.

Next, Olsen discussed a consent decree in Georgia signed before the 2020 election that he believed was illegal. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger signed it with Democratic Party committees regarding signature verification, which changed the law. It added in a requirement of two additional people to review signatures, and only if both of them agreed they didn’t match would the signature be rejected. Olsen said this was both a statutory and constitutional violation.

He said Cicchetti analyzed the rejection rate due to this change, comparing it to 2016, when it was around 6 percent. In 2020, when the number of mail-in ballots more than doubled, or was maybe even higher, Olsen said, the rejection rate went down 17 times the rate of 2016, to around one-tenth of 1 percent.

Eastman’s attorney, Randy Miller, asked Olsen to review the difference between voter fraud and illegality in elections. Olsen said even if it’s merely illegal behavior — not proving the intent of voter fraud — the votes affected cannot be counted. He said that includes votes where the signatures were not properly verified. He also pointed out that “irregularity” has the same meaning as illegal in elections.

Blehar took the stand about halfway through the day. He discussed his study, which concluded that vote tabulation anomalies in Pennsylvania were “not a matter of chance and are almost certainly the result of systematic vote shifting” of write-In and minor party votes cast through ballot adjudication. After reading on a conservative site, he decided to conduct the study that 220,000 votes were switched statewide from Trump to Biden, so he downloaded the data on votes cast and compared it to exit polling.

He said the day after the 2020 election, he determined by observing polling data and counting outstanding mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania that it was very unlikely Biden could win the election in the state at that point.

Roland objected to much of his testimony and did not allow reports he had co-authored into evidence, usually because he hadn’t been designated an expert; they weren’t relevant or lacked foundation. She refused to designate him as an expert, stating that Eastman’s team should have requested that status for him 50 days before trial, citing a rule of the disciplinary court. However, judges frequently waive those types of rules.

One of those reports was the vote spike report, which Roland objected to the day before when physicist and auditor John Droz, who launched and oversaw the report, was testifying. Roland said since Droz didn’t examine the data personally, it could not be admitted, and he was not permitted to talk about it. Blehar was one of three other statistical PhDs who went over the data personally, but she still refused to admit it into evidence.

Next, Miller asked Blehar about a critique he and the other statistical PhDs worked on refuting the MITRE Report. MITRE put together a report on the 2020 election anomalies, stating there were no serious problems. Blehar said in Michigan, the MITRE team identified the wrong voting anomaly, one that didn’t exist; it was merely a typo made by an election clerk. Blehar’s team, on the other hand, investigated the actual vote spike. He said MITRE’s examination of Anterim County relied on “media fact checks” rather than actual analysis of the voter data. He said it could not have been a data glitch as the media said; it was a change that affected ballots which was done either knowingly or unknowingly.

Miller asked Blehar about an affidavit he prepared to be used in litigation. In it, Blehar referred to “vote laundering,” where he observed votes being shifted back and forth on election night. His affidavit stated, “Preliminary analysis found many instances of ‘Third Party’ vote laundering.”

In other words, votes were moved from Trump or Biden to the ‘Third Party’ then allocated to either Trump or Biden in a later transaction.”

He added that the votes may have been moved to “an adjudication folder for later reassignment,” not to an actual third-party candidate. He said the swap was “likely from human intervention.”

Blehar summarized, “My analysis of the data relating to Pennsylvania’s 2020 general election concludes that there were numerous anomalies and/or inconsistencies in the results and that an estimated 280,000 – 300,000 Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, and Green Party electors (voters) were disenfranchised because their votes were manipulated (i.e., changed) by the election system software, election administrators, and/or by introduction of other disruptive software (i.e., malware) or a combination of the three.”

The trial, which is live-streamed, continues most of next week and the following week unless interrupted by the Georgia prosecution of Eastman. Next week, it begins at 10 a.m. PST on Tuesday.

LINK TO ARTICLE ON THE ARIZONA SUN TIMES WEBSITE

Last Updated on October 13, 2023 by Real KBrett