Trump’s wild claims of voter fraud blow back on campaign aide – By Matt Dixon and Marc Caputo (Politico) / April 9 2020
TALLAHASSEE — Days before President Donald Trump deceptively called vote-by-mail “corrupt” and damaging to Republicans, his campaign hired an operative tied to a 2012 absentee ballot scheme that sent a Florida Democratic operative to jail.
The plot involving Giancarlo Sopo — who has never been charged with wrongdoing — was highlighted in a report on election fraud that Trump’s campaign blasted out Wednesday to support his wild vote-by-mail attacks. Sopo joined the Trump campaign April 1.
“The national news media routinely and condescendingly dismiss any concerns about voter fraud, including state vote-by-mail provisions,” the campaign wrote in an email highlighting the Heritage Foundation report, a document that was used by the president’s voter fraud task force, which failed to turn up proof of widespread voter fraud.
The email, in addition to exposing an uncomfortable incident in a staffer’s past, highlights the exaggerated nature of the president’s attacks on voting by mail. The absentee ballot scheme involving Sopo wasn’t technically voter fraud, it was caught by authorities, and it never would have resulted in illegally cast ballots even if it hadn’t been stopped.
The case tied to Sopo, Trump’s new director of rapid response for Spanish-language media, was listed in the Heritage report along with hundreds of others throughout the country over the span of three decades — a tiny fraction of the total elections held during that period.
The 2012 ploy involved 1,800 phony absentee ballot requests that were made for voters without their knowledge, an activity that is illegal in Florida. The plan was to use the requests to target infrequent voters to cast ballots for Joe Garcia, a candidate in a four-way Democratic primary for Congress, the Miami Herald reported at the time.
The scheme was directed by Jeffrey Garcia, a former top aide to former Rep. Joe Garcia. The two are not related.
Sopo, a Garcia campaign volunteer who later became the congressman’s spokesperson, said Jeffrey Garcia tricked him, a cousin, and other staffers into thinking the phony requests were legitimate.
Continue to article: https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2020/04/09/trumps-wild-claims-of-voter-fraud-blow-back-on-campaign-aide-1274383
