Trump-controlled Gop’s Election Claims Echo in 2024: Bobb’s Role Under Scrutiny
On November 7, 2020, supporters of President Donald Trump demonstrated at a “Stop the Steal” event in front of the Maricopa County Elections Department headquarters. On April 24, Arizona’s attorney general announced the indictment of 18 people, seven of whom have their names deleted. Several news outlets have used details from the indictment to identify RNC senior counsel for election integrity Christina Bobb, as well as the remaining six.
Less than a week after the Republican National Committee launched a “historic” new method to monitor polls for fraud, a top committee lawyer was among five convicted in an alleged plan to exploit fake fraud accusations to overturn the presidential election results in Arizona.
Indeed, Christina Bobb, RNC senior counsel for election integrity, was slated to appear at an online conference on April 25 to recruit activists for the GOP’s vote-watching effort, but she did not attend. The conference was planned by extreme conspiracy theorists, including Bobb, who have helped spread false information regarding fraudulent voting.
On April 24, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced the indictment of 18 defendants, seven of whom have their names deleted. Several news media have used information from the indictment to identify Bobb and the other six. On Friday, Mayes confirmed Bobb’s indictment.
The coincidence of events involving Bobb, the RNC, and a loose network of anti-fraud activists highlights how the Trump-controlled GOP appears to be laying the groundwork to contest this year’s election with the same false claims about illegal voting — and even some of the same key figures — that it used in 2020. When asked for comment on Bobb’s reported indictment and whether she is still employed by the RNC, an RNC representative declined to speak on the record. Bobb did not respond to an inquiry concerning her failure to attend the April 25 event.
The GOP’s ‘unprecedented’ vote-monitoring scheme
The Arizona convictions come less than a week after the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee unveiled a “historic, 100,000-person-strong” operation to closely monitor the voting process, describing it as “the most extensive and monumental election integrity program in the nation’s history.”
“Whenever a ballot is cast or counted, Republican poll watchers will monitor the process and report any irregularities,” the RNC stated in a news statement.
It described the campaign as “a historic collaboration between the RNC, the Trump Campaign, and passionate grassroots coalitions who are deeply invested in fighting voter fraud.” That appeared to be a reference to the party’s appeal to anti-fraud activists, including those at Thursday’s gathering, many of whom had bought into myths about the 2020 election.
Multiple lawsuits found no evidence of systematic or widespread fraud in 2020.
Lara Trump, former President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, championed the RNC’s vote-monitoring effort after taking over as co-chair in late February. Bobb was quickly appointed as an election integrity counsel at the RNC.
Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee in 2024.
In an April 23 interview, Lara Trump stated that the vote-monitoring scheme will include “people who can physically handle ballots” at polling locations on Election Day. The restrictions for partisan poll watchers vary from state to state.
17 people have been charged in the fake electors conspiracy.
Bobb’s absence from Thursday’s online gathering, despite advance promotion by organizers, could be due to more pressing reasons. The allegations filed in Arizona accuse a scheme to use forged electors to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election.
The 11 people named in the indictment are the Arizona fake electors, who are all Trump supporters. The other seven people, whose names have been deleted, have been identified by news sites such as CNN and the New York Times as Bobb, as well as Trump supporters Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Mike Roman, and Boris Epshteyn.
According to the indictment, one of the seven “was an attorney for the Trump Campaign” who “made false claims of widespread election fraud in Arizona and in six other states.” According to the indictment, the person “encouraged the Arizona Legislature to change the outcome of the election,” as well as “encouraged (Vice President Mike) Pence to accept the false Arizona Republican electors’ votes on January 6, 2021.”
Bobb joined the Trump campaign as a lawyer following the 2020 election and was among the campaign staffers, led by Giuliani, who orchestrated a strategy to exploit fraudulent fraud charges as grounds for submitting fake electors in seven states Trump lost, including Arizona, CNN reports.
Bobb also tweeted on January 6, 2021, “@VP @Mike_Pence can solve this now by sending it back to the legislators.”
The indictment names Trump, who is defined as “a former president of the United States who spread false claims of election fraud following the 2020 election” as an unindicted co-conspirator. The indictment claims that as part of the plan, the phony electors voted for Trump to receive Arizona’s electoral votes, “falsely claiming to be the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States from the state of Arizona.”
“Defendants deceived the citizens of Arizona by falsely claiming that those votes were contingent only on a legal challenge that would change the outcome of the election,” the complaint states. “In reality, Defendants intended that their false votes for Trump-Pence would encourage Pence to reject the Biden-Harris votes on January 6, 2021, regardless of the outcome of the legal challenge.”
RNC courts conspiracy theorists and election skeptics.
Bobb was slated to participate at a gathering on Thursday organized by two Florida activists with ties to top election doubters, including MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, and attended by hundreds of grassroots anti-fraud activists from all across the country.
It follows a similar session on April 4, when Christina Norton, the director of the RNC’s election integrity program, explained how activists can get engaged with the party’s vote-monitoring operation. State Newsroom attended both virtual meetings. The April 25 meeting featured a parade of speakers, including former Democratic consultant Naomi Wolf, who claimed that illegal voting occurred in 2020 and 2022, predicted that this year’s election will be similarly manipulated, and urged supporters to take action.
“The current situation is that President Trump will once again win the presidential election just as he did in 2020,” said one speaker, Greg Stenstrom, a conspiracy theorist based in Pennsylvania who co-authored the book “The Parallel Election: A Blueprint for Deception,” which alleged massive fraud in that state’s 2020 vote. “But it will be taken away from him, and all of us, again, unless we restore fair and honest elections in the short time left before November. He cannot maintain the presidency unless we intervene.”
In place of Bobb’s live appearance, Steve Stern, the call’s organizer, aired an interview he had recently conducted with her for his podcast. In the discussion, Stern asked Bobb what might be done about President Joe Biden’s proposal to add “a million illegal aliens” to the voter registers. (Despite the far right’s frequent allegations, there is no evidence that Biden has such a plan.)
Bobb acknowledged a “concerted effort to empower the illegals to cast ballots,” stating, “It’s a very serious issue this time around, and it’s something that we’re looking into…” Is it something that law enforcement should handle since there may be a criminal element to it?”
“As far as illegals voting,” Bobb continued, “after they’ve registered, it’s really difficult to reverse the process. Because the registration is considered valid.” Non-citizens vote in extremely small numbers, according to numerous studies. According to a Brennan Center research from 2017, suspected — but not verified — ballots by non-citizens amounted to about 0.0001 percent of all votes cast in the 2016 election.
Other connections
In addition to these two encounters, there have been additional recent reports of RNC staff wooing right-wing individuals who promote electoral misinformation. Bobb chatted last month with Breanna Morello, a far-right podcaster. According to the Guardian, she also participated in a recent conference call with various Trump-allied groups that propagated false information about 2020.
Stern and Raj Doraisamy, two far-right Florida activists and Lindell friends who have circulated bogus charges about fraudulent voting planned both the April 25 and April 4 gatherings. Last month, Stern talked with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon to promote the April 4 meeting. “We have so many illegal aliens in this country,” Stern went on to say. “They want to vote.” “We have to stop them.”
Doraisamy was reportedly outside the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, and later founded Defend Florida, a group that went door to door gathering thousands of “affidavits” from Floridians in an effort to show that the state’s 2020 election was tainted by massive fraud. At a group-organized 2022 event, Doraisamy praised Lindell for his assistance with the door-to-door campaign.
Joe Hoft, who co-founded the Gateway Pundit website with his brother Jim, also spoke on the April 25 meeting call. The website has been a primary channel for the spread of unfounded conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, the covid vaccine, and other topics.
Joe Hoft’s self-published book, “The Steal,” is characterized on its Google Books page as follows: “It’s early on November 4th, President Trump is way ahead in the swing states, but he warns of 4 a.m. ballot dumps. He was correct again. “When Americans awoke later that morning, the election had been stolen.” Another speaker at the meeting, Jay Valentine, used Lindell’s original grant to develop voter data monitoring software.
According to documents obtained by the progressive organization American Oversight, Valentine has collaborated closely with Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, a key figure in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, to persuade lawmakers in Wisconsin and other states to use his “fractal programming technology” to uncover widespread fraud.
“Voter fraud is a nationwide crime perpetrated locally, mostly by Democrats,” Valentine wrote separately, advocating for a national election fraud database. “We cannot fight industrial, sovereign, large-scale, election fraud with reports, press releases, and webinars.”