The DOJ’s Election Threats Task Force has charged four individuals with threatening election officials in Colorado, Alabama, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Although they are unrelated cases, all of them are related to the actions of a task force put in place in 2021. The National Election Threats Task Force (ETTF) was charged with investigating individuals who “threaten violence in an effort to undermine our democratic institutions.”
Members of the ETTF first met in February 2019. Much of their agenda was finalized pursuant to an OAG letter sent in August 2021 by Kate Heinzelman, who was officially confirmed general counsel of the CIA in 2022.
In January and July of 2021, the ETTF published two reports. The reports were autopsies of the “crisis” brought about by the 2020 election with recommendations to ensure that such a crisis never occurs again. At the top of the agenda was concern over alleged “election deniers.” The Task Force was preoccupied with the “undermining of free and fair elections,” all propagated by “lies and conspiracy theories.” Take a wild guess about the profiles of these so-called “election deniers.”
The group bills itself as “cross-partisan,” but a little research tells me it isn’t. And although the aforementioned charges seem to be legitimate, many of the Task Force’s members and associates do not give off a non-partisan vibe.
Their membership includes members of progressive organizations like the Brennan Center for Justice, the notorious Center for Tech and Civic Life, and the Democracy Project. The organization throws in a few conservatives for good measure, but many of them barely qualify. Regardless, given the company they keep and the narratives they push, it is plausible that not all “threats to our elections” will be treated equally.
As an example of bias, the Task Force regularly references Protect Democracy messaging and projects on X. According to Influence Watch, the group is a “left-of-center” organization. Its X post on Oct. 22 references Part Two of its special series on “How election deniers create the impression of cheating.” The entry is a part of Protect Democracy’s “Special Series” on “Subverting 2024.”
The first sentence in the series entry directly refers to the threat of “telling lies about the 2024 election” and then goes on to talk about the “mob” that “stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021” while “hopped up on lies about a ‘rigged’ election.” Those are some pretty biased and inflammatory statements for a group that claims to be “cross-ideological.”
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