The ACLU filed a new lawsuit Monday against President Trump’s voter integrity commission, delivering a fierce rhetorical attack on the panel as part of a complaint that the commission is violating open-government rules.
Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union said the commission, which Mr. Trump set up to study the scope of voter fraud and the size of potential barriers to voting, is actually an attempt to give “a veneer of legitimacy” to the president’s claims that millions of illegal votes were cast in last year’s election.
The crux of the legal challenge is that the commission is violating the Federal Advisory Commission Act, which requires presidential panels to make all of their meetings open to the public, announced in the Federal Register, and subject to record-keeping.
And the ACLU says the commission appears stacked to give Mr. Trump the answer he wants: that the election was tainted by fraud.
“At least four out of these six initial appointees to the Commission have a record of making exaggerated and/or baseless claims about voter fraud, and/or have implemented or supported policies that have unlawfully disenfranchised voters,” the ACLU said in its complaint.
The ACLU complaint is the second lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington seeking to dent the commission’s operations.
Another case brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center argues that the commission is violating the E-Government Act by requesting and storing information on non-secure government computers.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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