CPAC 2021- Protecting Elections pt. 6, Successful States

Ladies and gentlemen, our next panel is Protecting Elections Part 6, Successful States. Please welcome your panel. From the Republican National Committee, Tommy Hicks. From the North Carolina Republican Party, Michael Watley. Former U.S. Attorney General, Matt Whitaker. And your moderator, ACU's own Matt Schlapp. Thanks everyone. All right, Whitaker, are we going to fit in these chairs? We're going to find out, aren't we? Let's give it a shot. It's great to be with you again. We're talking a lot about the elections. And are you liking these conversations about what happened on Election Day? Why are we doing it? Because you couldn't find the truth of what happened on the election anywhere it seemed. Yes. And then we were told that in the courts of law that we lost in all of these cases, when I believe and saw firsthand that there were really no cases. Matter of fact, the evidence that was discovered throughout the process I don't think was ever really scrutinized and you never really got a chance to hear what happened on the ground. So CPAC is your first opportunity to see what actually happened on Election Day. And there was widespread voter fraud in way too many states, most especially in big cities run by the Democrat machine. That is a fact. And we gave you evidence to underscore that fact. And what's amazing is that these Democrat killer lawyers who went all over the country to either change laws, contort laws, work around laws to get as many illegal ballots in the count as possible, now have this diabolical bill called HR1. And as Dan Schneider told you, there's a reason why they call it HR1. It's because it's their number one priority. If they can keep every Republican from getting elected in anywhere that's that swing place or a purple place, that means they have all the power to undermine the Constitution at will. So it's important. Has everybody gotten the CPAC app? And if you haven't because you don't understand technology like me, we are also going to send you an email, but you're going to have messages going to your devices. You can go on to your CPAC app. You can go right to the button that allows you to talk to your Senator or Congressman in your jurisdiction. If you know anybody from West Virginia or Arizona or these other states, it's very important that they send their message as well. We're going to have an all-out push on HR1, and we need your voices. Now Matt Whitaker, General Whitaker, how crazy is it that this new Socialist Democratic Party, they want it to be states' rights when it suits their needs until they get all the power at the national level, and then they want to nationalize it? Right, and you're going to see this attempt in a lot of areas, but HR1 is in the election arena, and it's to do the kind of things that happen in Pennsylvania, Arizona, where judges overrule the state legislature, and ultimately, as we were talking about backstage, federalize a lot of these election techniques that expand voting without the integrity that's necessary to know that one voter is casting one legal vote. So I mean, I know you have a lot of experience with this, too. Yeah, well, what we did in North Carolina was we set up, we had over 500 attorneys that we recruited and trained. It took over two years to do it. We had thousands of volunteer observers that we brought in and trained. So in every single one of our 100 counties, we were on the ground on election day. We were there when we were doing absentee votes and early votes. We had a recount. We had every hearing covered, and we were going to be there. We're going to let everybody know we're going to be there every single day. And we ended up having pretty good conversations with most of our county boards of elections because they want to do the right thing. But our state board of elections, which also tried to do the sue and settle, we took them to court. We sued them four different times on it, took them up to the Supreme Court, and made sure that we were going to keep everybody aware that we were there, and if they were going to do anything, it was going to be in broad daylight and on camera. Right. And with efforts like H.R. 1, with efforts like H.R. 1, you're seeing they're going to want to open up that early voting window, even more locations, more ballots, and then they're going to want to extend that post-election counting to make sure that they can find the necessary votes to, you know, win close elections. Or you could just have an election year. It doesn't have to be an election day. Well, thank God, thank God for the judges that President Trump nominated. We had confirmed because that's where it's going to go. Yeah, it is where it's going to go. Now, Chairman Whatley, you, or you look so young, but you're a veteran. And you're a veteran of the 2000 recount in Florida, like I am. And we have all these kind of more establishment voices in the, even in our own party, which were really proud Republicans telling us that voter fraud isn't a thing, that they don't ever go into a back room and use that dreaded term, steal it. In 2000, was anybody on the Bush-Cheney campaign worried that they might steal it? You know, I got to tell you, one of the greatest things about that 2000 recount was getting a chance to meet this guy on day four of the recount down in Florida. He has been fighting this fight since 2000 as well. And what was amazing then was it was really the first time that Republicans got down into the trench and fought. And we had 500 attorneys on site, we had several hundred attorneys, I was on the legal team in Broward County. And we knew if we were not there, they were going to steal it. We caught them with chads, we caught them with tape chads, and with punch chads and all of these things. And now it's all electronic. But as Matt said, if we're going to have the voting that's going to stay open, and we're going to have the counting that's going to stay open until they get the results that they need, then we're not going to have any assurity of that. And so it is so important for us. Absentee voting can work, but it has to work with voter ID. It has to work with you requesting a ballot, you getting a ballot, you filling it out, you signing it, you getting a witness, the witness signing it, you sending it in. It's not mass mailing of ballots out to everybody the way that we're seeing in California and New York and other states. What we need to do is make sure that we are there and committed as a party on day one. When I got elected in June of 2019, the first thing I did that month was set up a goal of getting those 500 attorneys. And everybody looked at me like, why are you doing this? We need to be lawyered up. And I'll tell you, the litigation costs and the work that the RNC has done to make sure that they have the resources there for all of the recounts are going to be absolutely important as we're moving forward. So when we talk about the 2000 recount, does any of you remember that Brooks Brothers riot? You know, it's interesting. It wasn't a riot, just so you know, it was a protest. When Republicans protest, they call it a riot. When liberals riot, it's just a peaceful protest. It's one of the things we've got to deal with. But you know why we did that in Dade County? We did that because they took all those ballots away from the observers, behind doors with no windows, so they could finish up the count. Now, I know we're told in this day and age, they might do something like that because they don't want anybody to catch a virus. But that virus actually isn't Chinese Corona, that virus is election fraud. And Tommy Hicks, Florida was one of the states, I know Ron DeSantis started off CPAC the first day, he's not here now, but Florida is one of those states that did the right things immediately under Governor DeSantis. Yeah, within his first month of office, he weeded out corruption, fired a couple of election officials that traditionally, and he did a great job. But, and the RNC is, we're going to be much more proactive. We did really well in some states, North Carolina, Iowa, Florida. Florida State Chair Joe Gruders is going to be the chair of our election integrity committee. We're really excited about that. We had our first call last Friday, but we were going to be proactive and make sure that everybody is confident that their vote counts. Right. Now, Matt, you're initially originally from Iowa. Yes. And I met your Proud Iowan. Proud Iowan. I met your parents on the campaign trail in Iowa. Iowa did it right too. Yeah, they did. But it's been a it's been a it's been a several year process. They passed voter ID law, which means that you need a valid identification that they can compare to the voter rolls. And then they, it was kind of under the radar. But this year, there was a huge battle in Iowa, where a couple of Democrats state auditor who run the election sent out free, filled in absentee ballot request form to every single registered voter. And it included this unique pin that only comes with your voter registration card. And so they sort of completed that process for someone to request that absentee ballot, went to court, good lawyers on our side, got that reversed, those auditors had to call back all 50,000 of those voter applications and redo it to make sure that that pin and so there's a unique pin for every absentee voter request. And that really, I think, is a is a double check on making sure that legitimate voters are voting their legitimate ballots. And you know, again, the proof is in the pudding, you know, that we had not only I mean, this is a novel idea. But in Iowa, we counted all the votes by election night and said that Joni Ernst was reelected as a US senator, and Donald Trump won the state of Iowa. And that's how you do it. You have to have the results to make sure that there's confidence in those results on election night. God, I love the simplicity and straightforwardness of the Midwest. You know, it's really we need it everywhere. But Chairman Watley, when you saw what was happening on election morning, or the next morning, strange halting of counting strange the day before observers being kicked out, construction paper going up over windows. These are all that you do tend to go into hiding when you're about to do something you want the whole world to see, right? That's how this works. That's what I teach my children, of course, right? You know, if they go in the basement, I haven't seen for three days, I assume they're doing something good. Right? That's how that works. That's totally how it works. And that's one of the things that we were very proactive in doing is we spent significant amount of time with the Republican members of the county boards of elections, we had our attorneys that were out there, and we told them we're going to be there. We had one county where we've had issues in the past, we called them and said, Hey, we've got a team of attorneys, we're going to have at your hearing tomorrow, when and where is it? I said, Well, it's on the website. I know, but then I don't get to call and tell you I'm bringing a team of attorneys. So you know, we were going to be there, we made sure we were there. We had social media posts, we had everything else that was out there, so that they knew, if this happens, we were going to screen bloody murder. And unfortunately, in North Carolina, because we put so much pressure on the system for a year in advance, it really came down to being a pretty clean election. Now, Tommy Hicks is from the great state of Texas, where I spent some time as a kid in Houston, and Texas was a little tighter in the cycle. And Texas is always the story of the red state, we're going to lose every cycle, we're going to lose it. Ted Cruz, they said was going to lose to that. What is his name? Robert Francis or whatever? O'Rourke, Beto, the guy is always talking from a very high purse. I'm not gonna use my hands. Are you doing the right things in Texas? We are. We, by the way, people are moving to Texas from all over the country, because we have smaller government, no taxes, no income tax. And we need to put signs up by the airport to remind people to move from California to leave their votes there. That's right. By the way, can I encourage you, you know, Florida kind of outbid you to get CPAC, you know, you can join that bidding. We'll have to work on that. By the way, great job with CPAC this year. Thank you. Thank you. But you think you're doing the right things to make sure that they can't do what they did in these other states? Absolutely. And we need to establish best practices from the states that did it right, make sure that every state has the opportunity to understand what works, what didn't work. As with any organization, we should constantly be trying to improve. And that's what we are going to do. But in Texas, specifically, you know, we're going to invest in Texas, we're going to invest in all states, every single states in play, we're going to have a massive, massive victory in 2022. And we need one in order to save our republic, because of what the Democrats have been doing the last 35 days. That's right. Well, let me, let me put you on the spot a little bit, Tommy, and you and I have become, I think, good friends. And I have a lot of respect of what you're doing. I think what the people want to know, from the perch of all of you who have Republican positions, you're excluded until you become a senator, Matt. Which I think could happen. The can we have on speed dial, the very best election attorneys to combat Perkins Coie, the same law firm that gave us the dirty Russian dossier to compete against them? Are we ready for that? You think we'll get that done? We will have a permanent presence inside the building. Now we're going to make sure that we have the best lawyers we can get, we will be proactive, not reactive. And that's what it's going to take. We this is the first time in over 30 years, we've been able to have true election day operations because of the consent decree that we've signed. But so that's part of our improvement, we will we will have the best legal representation possible. And we have a great team. And the 22 people on the Committee for Election Integrity are fully committed, and they're going to be meeting weekly, and very resourceful. And I think you should put Michael in charge, by the way. Well, and I'll tell you this, you know, we actually use we use we use one of three, you know, main Republican firms for our national coverage, as well as lined up about six different firms in North Carolina. Our legal budget was three quarters of our operating annual budget. And we say that like it's a bad thing. Well, there you go. But but it's worth every penny. Right? I mean, we had we had a recount in our chief justice race that came down to 401 votes. And you can't tell me in 100 North Carolina counties, they couldn't have come up with four votes if I didn't have lawyers and attorneys there in every single one of those counties. The Democrat filed protests in 92 of our county, I paid over $750,000 in legal fees, just to make sure we were countering on those protests. This is going to have to be part of the Republican establishment going forward. And I'm really glad that Rana and Tommy, and the RNC are committed to working to make sure that we have the legal resources that we're going to need. Because this is going to be lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit. That's just the reality. And the thing is, as you guys look at polls in your states and everything else, look at the states that held Iowa had some tight polls. And most of those polls were inaccurate, right? Fake news, fake polls, fake news produced fake polls. So it's the one thing we always know. But what ends up happening in the states that do proper election day following the law and integrity is the polls hold or they get better. So Iowa held or got better. Paduchick in the team in Ohio, it you know, the polls didn't get as tight, they actually widened up to I think something like eight points. So like, that's when you know you have election integrity. And when you went to Arizona, post election day, and there was all of this tumult, that was the state that I mean, I give give Matt a lot of credit as soon as he saw what happened on election day, he was on airplane straight to one of those states. So thank you. Well, I mean, and we need we had a lot of patriots go out to try to try to make sure that these shenanigans that were described both from 2000 and this year, weren't allowed. But you know, what we saw is each one of these cases and each one of these lawyers in these lawsuits need to understand that their case may be the most important Maricopa County in Arizona, for example, the judge held open registration for about 10 more days, they registered 14,000 more voters in that time period. And we lost Maricopa County by just 1000s of votes. And so it really, it's hard to say directly, it made the difference. But it actually, at the end of the day, every single one of those lawsuits, it has to be fought and make sure that like the law is followed, because that was an illegal order from the judge. But how do you put that toothpaste back in the tube? It's it's, you know, the die is cast. And all of a sudden, you have 14,000 more registered voters in Maricopa County, and you lose it by about 5000 votes in Arizona. And it was we kept getting that margin down every day, we get the updates. And but you know, should it be like that? Should it be that hard to count votes? I mean, again, Ohio had their votes in election night, Texas had their votes in election night, North Carolina, Florida, Iowa, these places that that do it right. This should be the model for every state. Because again, it is not only about election integrity. It's about election confidence. We have to believe that the result is the result. We do. And we were the most litigious we've ever been going into this election. And, and Ron is proud of that fact. He's the most litigious chairman in the history of the party. But we don't have enough people running for local office and state office who can actually fight for election integrity. So I'd like to encourage everybody who can to get involved and run. Yeah, for sure. Now, if you can determine who's what, like, America's idol in a couple of minutes, you can punch something into your phone, I was thinking the bachelorettes, oh, the bachelor, the bachelorette, or whatever, get an Uber, get Uber eats like we do these things instantaneously. So when a state says, Oh, it's very complicated. There were so many more votes. I mean, come on. I mean, we've we've got the computer technology to do like amazing things very quickly. If Kentucky, who's here from Kentucky, if Kentucky can determine their statewide winners by dinnertime, why do why do big cities run by Democrats have to have days and weeks like what we saw? Gee, I wonder. Yeah, I wonder. That's exactly right. And I just want to say this about judges. I know we all revere judges, and we're glad that we have good judges. But there's another side to that. We also have judges that aren't good. We have judges that don't follow the law, we have judges that care more about getting invited to the country club to be with the powerful people in their city or community to get a foursome of golf than actually do the right thing. So when anybody in the media tells you that, oh, well, you had your chance in court 60 times or whatever the number is, just so you know, as you're talking about this, I don't believe and I've not seen evidence that all of this amazing boxes and binders and in our case, in Nevada, it was a carload of evidence of illegal voting that was that was found by volunteer attorneys and volunteers generally and God blessed them for what they did. But I don't think the judges because they ruled in like 20 minutes and in 20 hours and like it was like these immediate rulings saying, if you really look at the rulings, they never say we look through all the evidence and we didn't find the evidence compelling. In almost every case, what they said was, it's just too hot politically in their own legalese. Like, we don't want to touch this. We saw the violence of the summer. We saw what happens when you say things that the news media will call the big lie. And we don't want any part of that. Right. Right. And you also the good news, though, is that because of Donald Trump, we now have a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court. And that's where these issues, as we move forward to 22 and 24, are ultimately going to have to be vetted to make sure that we do have election integrity, because I know that we maybe were caught a little flat footed for the four years leading up to 2020, but we're not going to be caught again flat footed on these issues. Can we stop H.R. 1 or do you think it's going to become law? I think we have to stop it. I think we absolutely have to stop it. We got to put every bit of pressure that we can on every single member of the Senate. We need to put pressure on Arizona and West Virginia. Like you said, we cannot let this is the single biggest assault on election integrity in the history of our country. That's exactly right. And if we lose on H.R. 1, folks, basically it cancels your ability to have these common sense reforms like we've seen in Florida, like we've seen in Ohio, like we've seen in Iowa, like we've seen in North Carolina, Texas. So you have hope, right, Tommy? I can't see how the people of West Virginia or Arizona could ever get behind H.R. 1, and I hope their senators or Democrats understand that. Well, I hope you appreciate why we're going through all this evidence in painstaking detail. If you're from Iowa, if you're from Ohio, if you're from North Carolina, if you're from Florida, your people did the right thing, and so thank them. So as we fight against H.R. 1, don't forget to pat someone on the back and say, job well done. I have to really applaud Governor DeSantis for what he did here in Florida. He did a great job. Thank you all very much.