Lara Trump says Republicans plan to 'strike' at 'major polling locations' and 'hit things'

02 May 2024

With six months remaining before the general election, the Republican National Committee (RNC) is announcing plans for its legal team to throw a wrench in the works at voting precincts around the U.S.

During a recent interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, RNC co-chair Lara Trump — the daughter-in-law of former President Donald Trump — spoke ominously about the GOP's plans using vague language suggesting mass disruption.

"We plan on having attorneys in all of these major polling locations across the country," she said. "We can't wait to litigate something weeks after it has happened. We need to strike at a moment's notice. We want people there on the ready to hit things and hit the ground running when they happen so that we are never seeing 2020 happen ever again."

Lara Trump's suggestion of an RNC rapid-response strike force to challenge election results appears to be a ramped-up version of what the GOP did in 2020. Both the Trump campaign and the RNC's legal team challenged election results in all of the battleground states Trump lost to President Joe Biden in 2020 — like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — alleging that the results were fraudulent.

USA TODAY analyzed the 62 lawsuits Trump and his allies filed in the wake of the election, and found that the former president lost 61 of them. In the one Pennsylvania lawsuit where Trump prevailed, a judge agreed that voters whose identification was questioned had three days to follow up with their county clerk so their ballots could be "cured." That lone victory was not nearly enough to flip Biden's win in his home state. And Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), who at the time was chair of the House Republican Conference, publicly derided the ex-president's efforts to cast doubt on election results.

"The president and many around him pushed this idea that the election had been stolen. And that is a dangerous claim. It wasn't true," Cheney (R-Wyoming) said in early 2021. "There were over 60 court cases where judges, including judges appointed by President Trump and other Republican presidents, looked at the evidence in many cases and said there is not widespread fraud."

After Trump's massive post-election losses in court, the nonprofit group Campaign Legal Center noted that "federal judges in states like Colorado, Michigan, and Wisconsin have begun moving to consider and, in at least one instance thus far, implement sanctions against the lawyers that submitted them." The group attributed the blowback from judges to the "sheer number of election-related cases that lacked merit."

The RNC's 2024 litigation efforts could be complicated by ongoing legal proceedings in other states. Conservative lawyer Christina Bobb, who is a member of the RNC's election integrity team, was recently indicted on felony charges along with 17 other people for allegedly interfering in Arizona's 2020 presidential election. Other defendants include former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Trump campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn.

Prior to joining the RNC, Bobb was an anchor for the far-right One America News Network. The Washington Post reports that she met with Giuliani at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC on January 6, where Trump's inner circle was strategizing on how to prevent Congress from officially certifying Electoral College votes.

"[Bobb] is part of a new department within the RNC that includes lawyers and political operatives who are focused exclusively on election integrity," the Post wrote. "Their mission includes making sure state and local election administrators are following the law — and filing lawsuits where they believe they are not — and recruiting and training tens of thousands of activists to volunteer as poll workers and poll watchers in battleground states."

Watch the video of Lara Trump's comments below, or byclicking this link.

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