Democratic Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe is desperate.
He has reason to be. Recent polling data show his Republican contender, Glenn Youngkin, has a good chance of taking the governor’s mansion next week.
Perhaps this is why McAuliffe’s campaign recently hired attorney Marc Elias, best known for his election-related legal challenges. Perhaps McAuliffe plans to launch a lengthy legal challenge if the election next week swings in the GOP’s favor. It’s not a crazy theory. After all, McAuliffe has long held the 2000 presidential election was stolen, and he said as recently as last week that the 2018 Georgia governor’s race was stolen from failed Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams. Challenging the legitimacy of U.S. elections is sort of McAuliffe’s thing.
But don’t you dare report that! If you do, McAuliffe’s team will try to have the story killed, as Fox News learned this week.
“Less than a month before Election Day, McAuliffe’s campaign spent $53,680 on the services of the Elias Law Group, a firm that Marc Elias started earlier this year,” Fox News reported.
The report adds, “When Fox News reached out to the McAuliffe campaign for comment, McAuliffe spokesperson Christina Freundlich responded to the email with a message apparently meant for colleagues, not for Fox News.”
Freundlich’s Email read specifically, “Can we try to kill this.” She added in a second email, “To dispute the challenges of the election.”
The name Elias should be familiar to you by now. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016 hired the law firm to conduct opposition research on then-GOP nominee Donald Trump. This research included work on the infamous Steele Dossier, which may or may not be the product of Moscow’s sophisticated, targeted disinformation campaign.
“Elias has represented Democrats in efforts to contest elections,” Fox News reports. “Going into the 2020 election, he represented Democrats challenging a Texas law barring ‘straight-ticket voting.’”
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley first suggested the McAuliffe campaign’s hiring of Elias might signal the Democratic nominee has plans to challenge the results of the Virginia election.
“There are a host of election lawyers, but McAuliffe selected an attorney accused of lying to the media advancing rejected conspiracy theories, and [is] currently involved in a major federal investigation that has already led to the indictment of his former partner,” Turley said.
He added, “McAuliffe may be preparing to challenge any win by Republican Glenn Youngkin,” calling the hire an “astonishing move.”
It was in the context of these remarks Fox News posed its questions to the McAuliffe campaign — questions the campaign clearly didn’t appreciate.
Later, after Fox News reported on the misfired emails, McAuliffe’s spokeswoman bragged about her efforts to kill Fox’s reporting.
“I think it’s clear based on this story that we did in fact … kill the story,” Freundlich tweeted.
Well, OK, except we’re all reading about it. So, it’s unclear what exactly she means.
On Friday, during a rainy, overcast Youngkin campaign stop in the Charlottesville, Virginia, area, a group of unidentified tiki torch-wielding individuals dressed in khaki slacks and sunglasses lined up in front of the Republican candidate’s bus, reportedly chanting, “We’re all in for Glenn.”
McAuliffe’s spokeswoman jumped at the chance to highlight the event, claiming it’s proof the Republican nominee is the preferred candidate of white supremacists.
“The Unite the Right rally was one of the darkest days in the Commonwealth’s history,” Freundlich said. “This is who Glenn Youngkin’s supporters are.”
The likelihood that actual, honest-to-God, sunglasses-sporting, khaki-clad white supremacists tracked Youngkin’s campaign bus to show their support and stand like idiots in the pouring rain seems quite low. The fact that one of the supposed white supremacists is, uh, black likewise suggests the show of support is not exactly what Freundlich claims it is. It’s more likely the individuals are Democratic activists, if not out-and-out Democratic operatives. There is strong evidence to suggest the supposed white nationalists are the latter, actual Democratic operatives, though it has not yet been confirmed. (Virginia Democrats deny any involvement in the obvious stunt).
No matter! Their appearance at the Youngkin campaign stops supposedly says something about Youngkin or something.
Again, desperate.
Update:
The Lincoln Project, a grotesque assortment of washed-up former GOP operatives who’ve grown fat and wealthy bilking gullible liberal donors with performative acts of anti-Republican “resistance,” has taken credit for Friday’s tiki torch stunt. Moreover, at least one Democratic operative, Lauren Windsor, has copped to coordinating the demonstration (she admitted her involvement only after she pretended initially to be shocked by the “protest”). One of the faux “white supremacists” photographed in front of Youngkin’s bus has been identified as an operative who has worked closely with Windsor. The McAuliffe campaign and the Virginia Democrats, meanwhile, deny they had any role in the incident (this still seems doubtful). The McAuliffe campaign has called on the Lincoln Project to apologize.
