How To Guarantee the Georgia GOP Loses in 2022 & Beyond-Part 3
by Bill Simon
Preamble
There is a term in psychology called “projection.” There are various applications of it, but, in the context of this discussion, it has to do with someone spending a LOT of their time blaming others for their own faults and reckless negligence, in a deliberate attempt to duck responsibility for the FUBAR they, themselves, actually caused.
In a previous PV I issued a couple of weeks ago, I pointed out the repeated press releases issued by the Georgia GOP that attacked SOS Brad Raffensperger. Upon further research into a few things, I have come to the conclusion that, while Raffensperger does have his own faults (which I will get into shortly), the finger of whose fault it is for the resulting 2020 Settlement Agreement lies squarely at the feet of Chairman David Shafer.
Now, upon reading that, I know that Shafer (and his followers), will declare “That’s absurd! I didn’t know anything about the Settlement at that time! My (Party) General Counsel was forbidden to tell me!”
That was the defense uttered by Shafer’s Chief Useful Idiot, Debbie Dooley*, after the last PV was issued. This “defense” is based on the premise that a lawyer cannot divulge the matters of a case for one client to another client who is not a party to an ongoing case.
And, while that is true, as to confidentiality in an active case, the fact is that once the case got settled in early March of 2020, it was no longer a secret, and the facts of the settlement were published.
Here is an AJC article, describing the settlement, and look at the publication date of March 7, 2020.
Shafer’s Ga GOP has no excuse for not being prepared for the November 2020 election slaughter. None.
Here’s a fun fact, just to keep in the back of your mind: there were approximately 23,000 Republican voters who voted absentee in the June 9, 2020 Primary, who did not cast any vote in the November 3, 2020 election.
There was a component of the Settlement that allowed for anyone whose signature on an absentee ballot envelope that was rejected by a Board of Elections, had the opportunity to “cure” it by showing-up at their respective BOE, and showing their ID, and confirming their ballot was good and should be counted.
What did the Georgia GOP, under Chairman David Shafer, do, prior to General Election Day 2020, to prepare county parties on helping in the endeavor to contact any Republican voters in their county where the BOE had rejected their ballot due to a signature mis-match? Absolutely NOTHING. ZERO preparation.
The Democratic Party had their lines of communication all setup and ready to go. The Georgia GOP had NOTHING setup to notify Republican electors who may have gotten their ballots rejected due to a signature mismatch, and ZERO communication apparatus setup in the county GOP parties to remedy the “cure” issue.
What was the winning margin the Biden had over Trump in Georgia? About…12,000? How many Republican primary voters voted in June 2020 that didn’t vote in November 2020? About 23,000.
Golly…I wonder where the margin of difference could be buried? Could there have been 12,000 or so Republican absentee ballots that were not counted because they had a signature mismatch and were rejected in the various Boards of Election? Hmmm…
Lawyers, Legal Entities, and Shafer’s Reckless Negligence
I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not sure if there is a legal term of “reckless negligence,” but if there is, it would apply to Chairman David Shafer. Why? For his reckless negligence to the cause of defending and protecting the RIGHTS of the Republican voters in Georgia. How did he accomplish this? By him thinking he is smarter than 100+ years worth of legal precedent.
The Georgia Republican Party, Inc. is a legal entity, wholly separate from the State of Georgia, the Georgia Department of Law, and the Georgia Secretary of State.
The Georgia Republican Party should have a truly independent legal counsel advising it. Under Chairman Shafer, it did not. And that is 100% Shafer’s deliberate fault.
What is an “independent legal counsel?” A lawyer who has no client relationships with any other entity that could conflict with the party.
Shafer’s term as Ga GOP Chair began in May of 2019. In June of 2019, and continuing through 2020, Shafer’s GOP paid the law firm of Robbins, Ross et al. a monthly retainer to compensate Vince Russo as the Georgia Republican Party’s General Counsel.
You might recall seeing Vince Russo’s signature on the Settlement Agreement from March 2020. But his signature on that document was not because he was representing the Ga GOP. His signature was as defense lawyer in representation of the Georgia SOS’s office…a completely separate legal entity from the Georgia Republican Party, Inc. entity.
How much money does the State of Georgia pay Robbins, Ross et al. for lawyers like Vince Russo to represent agencies like the Georgia SOS? According to this snapshot of the Fiscal Year 2020, close to $1 million in pure legal fees:
On November 6, 2019, the Democrats filed the case against SOS Raffensperger that eventually turned into the Settlement Agreement. This is a link to the federal docket info for that case, where, when you open it, you can view all the Plaintiffs, all their lawyers, all the Defendants, and all their lawyers, as well as kinda follow the legal process of the case.
Note that there is no one representing the Georgia Republican Party, Inc. Note that the date of the filing was 11/6/2019…well into Chairman Shafer’s term as Chairman of the State GOP. Why didn’t the Georgia GOP have legal representation in there to intervene with our interests?
The Georgia GOP and Shafer cannot blame the Democrats OR SOS Raffensperger for his failure as GOP Chairman to hire a lawyer to represent the interests of the Georgia GOP in that case.
Why didn’t he hire someone to represent the Ga GOP to intervene?
If you ask him now, Shafer would likely claim “Well, Vince Russo was the Party’s Legal Counsel, and he’s getting paid by the State of Georgia to defend the SOS…and the SOS is a Republican, the Attorney General is a Republican, and I just saved a bunch of money for the Party by having state taxpayer dollars pay for our legal counsel to do double-duty.” Or, some such muddled line of thinking.
Did Vince Russo inform Chairman Shafer of the 11/2019 case, and that he would be representing the SOS in it? Shafer will likely claim Russo told him nothing, but, therein is the slight problem that Russo, as a lawyer, licensed by the State Bar of Georgia, has a higher level of requirements to follow than merely forgetting to tell his boss, Shafer, at the Ga GOP of his activities.
Georgia State Bar Rule 1.7 covers the instance of something called “Conflict of Interest” in which Russo was required to inform Shafer that he was representing the Georgia SOS’s office in an Election matter…and, when it comes to “election matters”, it damn well IS something the Ga GOP had better be getting involved in to protect our interests.
A lawyer who disobeys Rule 1.7 gets disbarred. (So, David, are you and your useful idiots going to continue to lie about your knowledge of the case the Democrats filed in November of 2019 to cover-up your blatant negligence? Make sure you do it in print so I can take that and file a bar complaint against Russo…because either you’re lying when you say you didn’t know anything about the case filed in November of 2019, or Russo violated bar rules and should be disbarred. These are the only two possibilities.)
Funny thing I just remembered about a conversation I once had with Shafer, back when he was Senator Shafer. I was mad at him for voting for some cluster-f**k legislation that expanded the government and decreased the liberty of the citizens, and his (paraphrased) response to me was: “Well, I got one side of the legislation from one lobbyist, and I got the other side of the legislation from another lobbyist, and I didn’t hear from anyone else.”
And, I asked him “Well, what about the actual people you represent? Did you think about the effect on them in this legislation?” He said “No, they weren’t there to tell me their concerns.”
So, just like back then, when Senator Shafer didn’t get input from, ultimately, the people most hurt by the legislation he helped pass, SOS Raffensperger didn’t hear from the Georgia GOP of their concerns for the proposed settlement changes in the law…and the settlement got signed, and the Georgia GOP was left with the crap that happened in the General Election of 2020.
Now…I happen to believe with…99.999% certainty that Vince Russo did inform Shafer, and Shafer, via the concept of “informed consent” (defined in Rule 1.7), allowed him to represent the SOS, and Shafer just blithely left the Ga GOP open to whatever the Democrats wanted to do. And, they gleefully got their revisions to the law in that Settlement Agreement.
But, through the psycho act of “projection,” Shafer lays ALL the blame on Raffensperger for the Settlement Agreement, when it was Shafer’s own deliberate, reckless negligence in failing to put together a true legal team, one independent of any other legal entity, whose interests didn’t conflict with the Ga GOP’s interests.
Character is Doing the Right Thing When Nobody Else Is Looking
In talking with a friend of mine recently, he told me that he attended the Fulton GOP Sunday Brunch Bunch a few weeks ago in which Shafer spoke to the crowd. In that speech, Shafer told everyone that (paraphrasing here) “After that March Settlement Agreement, I got the Georgia GOP to intervene in all the cases the Democrats filed after that time…”
Well, actually, that was a blatant lie Shafer stated to that crowd. Here are all the cases Democrat interests filed against the Secretary of State after that November 2019 case was settled in March of 2020…and you can look at the docket for each case…no appearance by the Georgia Republican Party, Inc. at all…not even a smidgeon as a party intervening:
Filed on 4-14-2020: https://politicalvine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/FED-FileDate-4-14-2020.pdf
Filed on 4-20-2020: https://politicalvine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/FED-FileDate-4-20-2020.pdf
Filed on 5-8-2020: https://politicalvine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/FED-FileDate-5-8-2020.pdf
Ya know, for a guy to lie as much as Shafer lies, why would anyone trust him to remain in the position as State Chair?
Reckless Negligence, Part 2
While Shafer was guiding the State Executive Committee into getting riled up and attacking Raffensperger for things that Shafer was actually directly responsible for, do you know what the Democrats were doing in relation to the Election Integrity Bill wending thru the Legislature? I’m on their email list, and nearly every single day there was a blast from them claiming all the “evil” things (in their crooked minds) that the bill had in it.
Where was the State GOP to lend a hand in providing opposition cover to help the Ga GOP legislators? NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. NO press releases to fight the Democrats. Nothing issued by the Ga GOP to help communicate all the reasons for why the legislation was written as it was. Zero. No support AT ALL.
This is what you get when you have someone who is incompetent, who is negligent, who is a proven liar, who is lazy-minded in his approach to fortifying the legal interests of the party…you get two U.S. Senate seats lost, and Presidential Electors to send to D.C.
Now, is Brad Raffensperger a dirty, rotten POS? Yes, but not so much for the Settlement Agreement, as he is a POS for his defense of the many lies coming out of Jordan Fuch’s mouth and mind that Raffensperger allows to pass with no correction. People that look the other way for liars are sleazy people themselves (yeah, Brad, that’s you).
[Oh, and, Brad? You are also a sleazy SOS for your intervention, via that motion filed by the AG’s office, into the cases that Voter GA* has filed in both Fulton County court and Gwinnett County court, against those county boards of elections, for the examination of the absentee ballots. That move just proved you’re just as crooked as you can be about covering-up the ballot harvesting and stuffing that went on in this state in 2020.]
Side Note to the Reader: *VoterGA (Voters Organized for Trusted Election Results in Georgia) is a registered 501(c)(3) entity based in Georgia.
It has filed two lawsuits relating to the recent 2020 Georgia Elections: 1) Against Gwinnett County Board of Elections and 2) Against Fulton County Board of Elections.
The Fulton County case is being heard by a Henry County Judge and argued in Henry County (but Henry County’s BOE has not been sued).
Garland Favorito, the director of VoterGA, filed as the lead Plaintiff against the Fulton County BOE. This case is still on the Fulton County docket, which creates confusion when searching the Henry County website.
Here are videos of some of the proceedings thus far, courtesy of Ted Metz at Operation Educate:
VoterGA Motion For Summary Judgement in Gwinnett County Superior Court on March 24, 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq0uUIUveeA
Videos of Hearings for the Fulton County BOE Lawsuit: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs-Naq5hayWv7W0lAeaexcNlWKDYmqhWx
Back to Shafer…his reckless negligence with respect to not having an independent legal counsel is actually WHY the State GOP didn’t intervene into the Voter GA cases. Because Voter GA is opposing the SOS’s office….and Russo gets more of his gravy from the State than he gets paid by the Georgia GOP…so, again, the Georgia GOP is hamstrung by the reckless negligence of David Shafer as chairman by not having adequate legal representation where it counts!
In Conclusion (for the moment)
While it is true that the Georgia GOP, in partnership with the RNC, is now intervening in the case(s) the Democrats are filing against the SOS and the State Elections Board over SB 202, Shafer didn’t think that up. He doesn’t have the mental capacity. The RNC Chairwoman took the lead on that initiative, and Shafer, as he always does, seeks to claim all the credit for it.
If you choose to ignore all the foregoing presented to you, as voters to the Ga GOP Convention this year (as some of you will because…you’re Shafer’s favorite Useful Idiots), I’d like to remind you of what Shafer said in his Campaign Plan when he was running in 2019. On Page 4 is this:
“During my tenure as Executive Director of the Georgia Republican Party in the early 1990s, I helped move Republicans from one congressman to eight in our delegation. The work we did laid the foundation for Republicans to move from minority to majority status in our State House and Senate.”
Well, let’s re-write that to describe our current condition, after two years of Shafer’s leadership as Chair:
“During my tenure as State Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party from 2019 until now, my decisions as leader directly led to Republicans losing both U.S. Senate seats, as well as the state’s electors for the Presidential Election of 2020.”
Yes, indeed…a glowing endorsement of his legacy, eh? And, you know the Democrats are actually hoping Shafer wins again as they thrive on incompetent opposition. Shafer hasn’t disappointed them at all these past two years.
[To follow more of Shafer’s idiocy as Chair, read part 4…]
*Speaking of Useful Idiot Debbie Dooley, Al Gore is one of her new buddies! Yes, and one has to presume that if the Green New Deal required every household to buy solar panels, she would be 100% in favor of the entire Deal! Here’s a riveting story to read…and read allllll the way down through the final paragraph. It’s delicious!
