Videotape Reveals Corporate-Funded Plan To Try To Overturn A Trump Loss
A powerful corporate-funded right-wing organization that includes state legislators and lobbyists was already mobilizing early this year to overturn a possible election loss by President Donald Trump, according to a videotape of an official discussing the plan.
“Obviously we all want President Trump to win,” said Lisa Nelson, chair of the controversial American Legislative Exchange Council, which was responsible for getting the at-times-lethal “Stand your ground” laws enacted in several states.
“Really what it comes down to is the states and the state legislators,” Nelson noted in remarks in February, recorded in a videotape obtained by Documented, a watchdog group that tracks corporate influence on public policy.
Nelson and three Republican attorneys were already drafting letters then “questioning the validity” of a Trump loss that state legislator members of ALEC could submit to local officials to challenge the ballots.
“They can write a letter to the secretary of state questioning the validity of an election and saying what did happen that night,” Nelson told an election strategy session of the conservative Council for National Policy (see the video above). “So we are drafting a lot of those things ... they can start to ... exercise their political muscle in that area.”
Trump wouldn’t begin raising questions about the legitimacy of the election until months later, well before any votes were cast.
ALEC has come under fire for undermining public interest in a marriage of state legislators and corporate and right-wing interests in a powerful nonprofit organization whose tax-exempt status is supposed to restrict it to nonpartisan activities.
ALEC’s plan to challenge, with an eye to overturning, the election if it goes against Trump is consistent with its efforts to undermine a democracy ruled by the majority, ALEC expert and Columbia University assistant professor Alexander Hertel-Fernandez told HuffPost. ALEC is “seeking...
