Arizona MAGA Republicans ripped for refusing to admit debunked voter fraud lies were 'manure'

Texas-based True the Vote, one of the far-right groups that has promoted the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, suffered a major embarrassment on Valentine's Day 2024. That day, the voter suppression outfit admitted to a judge in Georgia that it doesn't have evidence to support its claims of ballot stuffing in that state.

Mike Hassinger, a spokesman for conservative Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, said, in a scathing response, "Once again, True the Vote has proven itself untrustworthy and unable to provide a shred of evidence for a single one of their fairy-tale allegations. Like all the lies about Georgia's 2020 election, their fabricated claims of ballot harvesting have been repeatedly debunked."

True the Vote's ballot stuffing claims relied heavily on far-right conspiracy theorist Dinesh D'Souza's film "2000 Mules," which claims that the 2020 election was stolen and has been repeatedly debunked.

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When "2000 Mules" came out, it was enthusiastically promoted by MAGA Republicans in Arizona, including 2022 GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs and State Sen. Wendy Rogers. The Arizona Republic's Laurie Roberts in a biting column published on February 15, calls out those Arizona Republicans for refusing to admit that the claims of "2000 Mules" and True the Vote have been "manure."

"It seems True the Vote just told a Georgia judge that it doesn't have evidence to support its claims of illegal ballot stuffing during the 2020 election," Roberts explains. "This should be no surprise to anyone in Arizona, given the group's refusal to turn over evidence in 2022, when requested to do so by the Arizona Attorney General's Office."

Roberts adds, "Oh, there were plenty of promises by True the Vote that the data backing up their claims would be handed over…. It just never was."

The columnist argues that Lake and other MAGA Republicans in her state should have enough integrity to admit that True the Vote's claims were total "manure" — although she doesn't expect them to.

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"This week," the Arizona Republic writer says, "True the Vote’s attorneys finally responded to a judge's order that they pony up the goods. Here is what they said: 'TTV has no such documents in its possession, custody, or control.' So now, we wait for Lake and Mark Finchem and others who grabbed onto the mules as evidence of some widespread conspiracy to admit they were wrong."

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Laurie Robert's full Arizona Republic column is available at this link.