Democrat Fetterman’s Campaign Hires Former Clinton Campaign Lawyer In Ballot Lawsuit

A longtime Democratic legal operative has been retained by a Senate hopeful in Pennsylvania.

Originally published by WND News Center. Used with permission.

Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman has hired controversial Hillary Clinton lawyer Marc Elias to spearhead his federal lawsuit contending mail-in ballots with an incorrect or missing date should be counted.

The lawsuit filed Monday challenges the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that such ballots cannot be included in the vote count because state law requires voters to write the date on the outer envelope. Fetterman, who is running against Republican nominee Mehmet Oz, argues that not counting the votes violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars election officials from denying someone the right to vote based on an error on the ballot that is “not material” to determining whether the individual is qualified to vote.

However, constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley – noting former Virginia Democratic governor and Clinton acolyte Terry McAuliffe’s use of Elias one year ago in the race against Glenn Youngkin backfired – points out that the legislature “clearly concluded that such dates are material to the security of the vote-by-mail system.”

Turley recalled that reporters alleged Elias falsely claimed that the Hillary Clinton campaign did not fund the bogus Steele Dossier, which was used to launch the Obama Justice Department’s evidence-free Trump-Russia collusion case. Elias was sanctioned by the courts, and the Clinton campaign was sanctioned by the FEC for hiding the funding of the dossier through his prior firm, Perkins Coie.

“Elias has also been criticized for challenging elections when he and other Democratic lawyers denounced Republican challenges as a threat to democracy,” Turley wrote on his website.

“Elias later came under intense criticism after a tweet that some have called inherently racist. He was denounced for a tweet where he suggested that Georgia voters could not be expected to be able to read their driver’s licenses correctly — a statement that seemed to refer to minority voters who would be disproportionately impacted by such a requirement.”

Elias was general counsel for the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign and the John Kerry 2004 presidential campaign.

Regarding the Pennsylvania law, Turley pointed out that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that, regardless of the requirement’s perceived wisdom, state lawmakers unambiguously require the voter to write in the date.

Fetterman’s complaint contends “the Date Instruction serves no legitimate purpose,” calling it “a trivial procedural formality that functions only to disenfranchise eligible voters seeking to vote.”