{"id":5859,"date":"2008-04-01T20:55:29","date_gmt":"2008-04-02T03:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=5859"},"modified":"2008-10-10T13:21:45","modified_gmt":"2008-10-10T20:21:45","slug":"bizarre-gop-voter-fraud-zealot-von-spakovsky-cleared-by-inspector-generals-report-says-wapo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/?p=5859","title":{"rendered":"Bizarre: GOP ‘Voter Fraud’ Zealot Von Spakovsky ‘Cleared’ by Inspector General’s Report, Says WaPo"},"content":{"rendered":"

We admit to being perplexed enough by Matthew Mosk’s Sunday article in WaPo<\/i><\/a>, claiming that GOP “voter fraud” zealot Hans von Spakovsky, formerly of the DoJ Civil Rights voting unit, was “cleared” by a U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) inspector general’s report, to poke around for a few minutes trying to figure out who this Mosk was, and how the hell he figured the report “cleared” von Spakovsy of anything<\/i>.<\/p>\n

vS was one of the notorious villians at the DoJ who politicized the hell out of the Civil Rights division by turning it into a blunt instrument to keep<\/i> minority voters from being able to cast their lawful vote in any way he could figure out how to do. <\/p>\n

He is also the failed nominee<\/a> for the FEC who still has yet to show enough grace to remove his name from consideration, as he has singlehandedly succeeded in ensuring that the commission is entirely crippled, unable to vote on anything without a quorum, during an election year.<\/p>\n

As the IG’s report on whether the EAC was inappropriately influenced, by von Spakovsky and others<\/a>, to withhold and the re-write a bi-partisan study on voter fraud<\/a>, the then-chair of the EAC, Paul DiGregorio — a Republican himself — said that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153too many of [von Spakovsky\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s] decisions are clouded by his partisan thinking\u00e2\u20ac\u009d…vS \u00e2\u20ac\u0153certainly tried to influence…There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no question about that,” and that, the EAC chair felt that “von Spakovsky thought he should use his position (on the EAC commission) to advance the Republican Party position.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Mosk used his WaPo<\/i> article then, to quote vS alleging that the “conclusions (of the EAC IG report) represented a personal vindication” for him. Huh?<\/p>\n

We got distracted by other business, and were unable to finish our poking around to figure out what Mosk might have been after, and why this article, on a report published three weeks ago<\/i> suddenly became “news” to the Washington Post<\/em>, with “clearance” of von Spakovsky as the central meme.<\/p>\n

J. Gerald Hebert, over at the Campaign Legal Center Blog seems to have come away with the same perplexed reaction, opening his article yesterday<\/a> with…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Yesterday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Washington Post <\/em>story by Matt Mosk<\/a> that former FEC Commissioner Hans von Spakovsky had been \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cleared\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of undue influence by an Election Administration Commission IG Report is misleading at best.\u00c2\u00b7 At the outset, it seems odd that an article like this appeared almost three weeks after it was released.\u00c2\u00b7 It hardly seems like news\u00c2\u00b7at this point in time.<\/p>\n

In any event, the article\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s conclusion that the Report \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cleared\u00e2\u20ac\u009d von Spakovsky of any attempts at influencing EAC Commissioners is contrary to the facts set forth in the report.\u00c2\u00b7 In fact, the report indicated on several occasions that he in fact did make attempts at influencing EAC commissioners for political reasons.\u00c2\u00b7 In the report former EAC Commissioner Paul DeGregorio is quoted as saying that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153too many of [von Spakovsky\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s] decisions are clouded by his partisan thinking.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00c2\u00b7DeGregorio also said that von Spakovsky \u00e2\u20ac\u0153certainly tried to influence\u00e2\u20ac\u009d him, adding: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no question about that.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00b7\u00c2\u00b7 Finally, the report stated that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153according to DeGregorio, von Spakovsky thought he should use his position (on the EAC commission) to advance the Repuublican Party position.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00b7 So it is clear from this report that von Spakovsky did try and influence DeGregorio for political reasons, but it concludes that such efforts were in the end unsuccessful.\u00c2\u00b7 Mosk\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s story quotes von Spakovsky as saying that the report\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s conclusions \u00e2\u20ac\u0153represented a personal vindication.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00b7 This is a vindication? It sounds more like an illustration of incompetence or ineffectiveness at influencing a commissioner for improper reasons.<\/p><\/div>\n

Hebert goes on to offer more concerns about what was in the IG’s study, versus the way it was reported by WaPo<\/i>, and concludes with:<\/p>\n

Like fly paper, the litany of abuses of power by von Spakovsky while at DOJ cannot be shaken off with denials. The IG\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Report does nothing to vindicate him and his heavy-handed power grab at DOJ tells a different story. Too bad the IG didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bother to find out.<\/div>\n

So anybody have a clue what all of this is about? Who this Mosk guy is? And why this article comes out with this meme out of nowhere?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We admit to being perplexed enough by Matthew Mosk’s Sunday article in WaPo, claiming that GOP “voter fraud” zealot Hans von Spakovsky, formerly of the DoJ Civil Rights voting unit, was “cleared” by a U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) inspector general’s report, to poke around for a few minutes trying to figure out who this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[392],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hans-von-spakovsky"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}