LEGAL/VOTER FRAUD/VOTING: “A lawyer representing President Donald Trump’s election fraud commission apologized to a federal judge Wednesday [8-30-17] over the panel’s failure to abide by a promise to disclose all relevant records ahead of the group’s first meeting last month.
Justice Department attorney Elizabeth Shapiro said the highly scrutinized panel and its staff did not realize that the pledge to make materials public could be interpreted to include the presentations and reports that individual panel members brought to the inaugural July 19 session…
The panel has been under fire since Trump first began publicly mulling forming it, after he claimed without evidence that 3 million people may have illegally cast ballots in the 2016 presidential race. Despite urging from lawmakers in both parties to drop the issue, Trump formally announced in May the creation of his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, headed by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.
The panel’s executive director, Andrew Kossack, had promised before its first meeting on July 19 that the group would make records public. But in an order issued earlier this month, Kollar-Kotelly noted that documents discussed by individual members at that July meeting weren’t released in advance. The Justice Department initially argued it did not have to release those documents before they were shared with the full panel, but Kollar-Kotelly appeared to reject that interpretation.
On Wednesday, the DOJ’s Shapiro said the panel acted ‘entirely in good faith’ and had no intent to hide materials, but she said commission members were not fully aware of their obligations. However, she acknowledged that the commission’s staff was aware in advance of one member’s plan to share a PowerPoint presentation at the session. It was not released before the meeting.”
-Josh Gerstein, “Trump election fraud panel apologizes in document disclosure flap,” Politico, Aug. 30, 2017 01:01pm