Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed creator of the Huey Report and direct mail expert, Craig Huey, in-studio to explain ballot harvesting and the threat facing states and individuals in defense of election integrity.
Leahy: In studio, digital marketing expert, California refugee now living in state income tax-free Tennessee. Brought your businesses. Doing great here. Craig Huey.
You know Craig, Clay, Travis, and Buck Sexton have their show on here now from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. They have been great in promoting The Tennessee Star Report. We really appreciate that.
Huey: Awesome.
Leahy: You’re talking about the possibility of voter fraud in the California recall election.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: I’ve got a story for you kind of related to it. Since you were last here. You can’t stay away from us for too long, Craig, (Huey chuckles) because we’re opening up state-based conservative newspapers.
Huey: I’m so excited about that. That’s great.
Leahy: At a rapid pace. We launched The Arizona Sun Times on June 24.
Huey: Perfect.
Leahy: Headline by Rachel Alexander, our state house reporter in Phoenix. Twitter Bans Official Arizona Audit Account and Other Audit Accounts.
Huey: Not shocked. Not shocked.
Leahy: Do you have a story to tell us?
Huey: I do. Because what has happened is this, the Democrats are running scared because voter fraud is going to be recognized because of the audit in Arizona and hopefully in other states.
Leahy: Various levels of audits are currently undergoing. There is the Fulton County, Georgia audits with absentee ballots going on now.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: And the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Joe Biden was certified the winner in Arizona by less than 11,000 votes out of 3 million cast. Certified the winner in Georgia by less than 12,000 votes out of 5 million cast. Fulton County – there’s so many problems there.
It looks like you can’t rely upon Fulton County results. Arizona, they’re doing this audit. The Arizona State Senate has the authority to subpoena county records because in our constitutional government of the United States of America, we have two entities that have sovereignty. The national federal government and the state government.
Huey: Correct. Federalism.
Leahy: The state government, the state legislature have sovereignty over the counties which have been created by the state government.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: So they started this audit of the Maricopa County election results. Maricopa County, two million votes cast in Maricopa County, as Phoenix. It’s the biggest county in the state. Three million total cast.
They started the audit on April 23. Everything you see in the establishment media and Democrats since even before that has been nonstop criticism of the audit for spurious reasons. They don’t want the results to come out.
And you’ve got a little story to tell us about how far the Democrats and basically the highly partisan U.S. “Department of Justice.” I say that in quotes with Merrick Garland and Joe Biden. It’s the Department of Injustice as far as I can tell.
So tell us what’s going on there. Let’s put the big picture first. The Democrats’ number one thing is to be able to have mail-in ballots and be able to have ballot harvesting so that they can do voter fraud.
Leahy: Remember that 2005 bipartisan commission I talked about, it was headed up by Jimmy Carter, the Democratic President in 1977-1989, and by former Secretary of State James Baker in the George H.W. Bush administration. That bipartisan commission said, don’t do mail-in ballots because it’s prone to fraud.
Huey: That’s correct. Here in Tennessee, Secretary of State Tre Hargett has said, we’re not going to do any of that stuff. And our elections are pretty solid.
Huey: They’re pretty solid. So here’s the thing. You’ve got 19 states who have outlawed ballot harvesting, and you’ve got 28 states that allow it.
Leahy: Briefly describe ballot harvesting for our listeners.
Huey: Ballot harvesting is not voter fraud, but it leads the voter fraud. Ballot harvesting, usually for the Democrats and the unions is a paid person, can get data of who their voters are and go to that door multiple times until they find the person at home.
Talk to them about getting their ballot. They hand them the ballot. They give them a voter guide as to who to fill out. And then they take that ballot from them and take it to the poll. Now, they can do this to 100, 500, a 1000 different homes.
One person can bring those ballots in, and there’s no audit trail. There’s nothing to say who brought those ballots in. That person can throw away Republican ballots and nobody would know it.
That person can alter the ballot and nobody would know it. And get this, Michael, they can go to a nursing home, what’s called granny farming, go bed to bed, pick up the ballots, fill them out and nobody would know the difference.
If you’ve been to an apartment complex, people when they get their ballots by mail, if they do not want that ballot, they just leave it there. People can pick it up.
Leahy: It’s just prone to fraud all over the place.
Huey: Everywhere. I could go on and on about this. SB1 and HR1 is the first bill in Congress that the Democrats had that they thought they could have passed, which would have nationalized ballot harvesting. And basically, the Republicans could never win ever again.
Huey: And they failed in that attempt, though they’re still trying. They failed in that attempt. In Arizona, they outlawed ballot harvesting. The Democrats did what the Democrats do. They took the Republicans to court to try to overthrow that bill. It went up to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court just a couple of months ago said Arizona has the right to outlaw ballot harvesting. Democrats lost a major, major court case that affects everything in the United States.
Leahy: And that’s a very important case. I wrote a story about it at a Breitbart, Brnovich, the attorney general, the Democratic National Committee. In that six to three decision, Justice Samuel Alito wrote the following.
He wrote that states have the right to limit fraud in their states and simply by limiting fraud according to their own rules, they are not violating Section Two of the Voting Rights Act, which is the entire basis of the Department of Justice’s attack on the state of Georgia.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: The Merrick Garland highly partisan Department of Injustice.
Huey: You’re being too nice.
Leahy: I know. I’m being too nice.
Huey: Michael, what we have right now is a war on election integrity. Right now we have Merrick Garland, the attorney general, directing an army of ideological left-wing Democrats who have unlimited time, unlimited money, and unlimited resources.
They have an army of people going after to intimidate any state that questions the last election and that will try to put into place voter ID or anything to protect the ballots.
Leahy: Not just any state but any private individual who participates in that. You’ve got some stories on that.
Huey: I do. So what happened is about three weeks ago, the attorney general made the announcement that they were going to investigate the states like Arizona.
Leahy: By the way, mercifully, I don’t always say many things about Mitch McConnell, the current Senate minority leader. But when he was a majority leader and in the last year of the Obama administration, they nominated – when Justice Scalia passed away, they nominated Merrick Garland to be on the Supreme Court. And Mitch McConnell because he knows the rules and said, I’m not doing it. I’m not going to hold the hearing. Mercifully.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: Mercifully, instead we got Neil Gorsuch.
Huey: That’s exactly right. And going back to that Arizona decision that upheld the outlawing about harvesting, if Garland was on the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court would have decided against Arizona.
Leahy: So you know what would have happened? Let me tell you. See, if you see this is the case. So Garland would have voted against Arizona.
Huey: Correct.
Leahy: That would have been five four before they announced the decision.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: You know what I’m going to say next.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: In their conferences, the Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, because Crom was in here yesterday talking about a Kimberley Strassel article who said, basically, Justice Thomas, Chief Justice Thomas is fretting about Democrats attacked on the legitimacy of the court.
He’s making political decisions and has for some time since the 2012 NFIB Sebelius decision that allowed Congress to unconstitutionally pass Obamacare tax versus no tax. In that conference committee, old fretting Chief Justice Roberts would have flipped his vote.
Huey: That’s right.
Leahy: Do you agree with that?
Huey: I totally agree with that.
Leahy: So, by the way, thank you, Senator Mitch McConnell, thank you.
Huey: I can’t believe you are saying that.
Leahy: You give everyone their due.
Huey: – Everyone their due. But going back to Garland here he has unleashed an army against election integrity. It’s a war on these states and individuals. And here’s the thing in Arizona, they’re going to prove fraud. There are so many ballots that are questionable. So what they have done is they have written threatening a lawsuit, but not only a lawsuit, Michael, one year in jail.
And they had threatened a thousand dollar fines to the people who basically are like you and me. We don’t have lawyers to back us up and to intimidate them. And they’re saying, you are violating the Voters Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act and intimidating the voters by checking on the last election and ballot integrity. So the opinion of the Department of Justice is the stop the audits in Arizona, Georgia, any other state.
Leahy: Contravene justice.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: This is Orwellian. War is peace, peace is war.
Huey: Authoritarian. I can’t believe it. And not only this, the individuals who are involved in the audit have received a letter from the Department of Justice.
Leahy: Arizona.
Huey: Yes, Arizona. If you get a letter from an attorney, man, you get scared.
Leahy: What if it comes from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Huey: You’re doubly scared cause, you know, you can’t fight them.
Leahy: Well, you can, asterisk. Okay, what does it take to fight them?
Huey: Money?
Leahy: Huge amounts of money.
Huey: And here’s what they’ve asked. Get this. This makes me so upset. I think it’s going to make you upset, Michael. They have written to them and saying, were you part of the January sixth insurrection? Were you at the capital? Are you part of any domestic terrorist groups? Are you affiliated with any voter fraud?
Leahy: When did you stop beating your wife? Are you a Communist? This is McCarthyism.
Huey: Yes. They’re asking for text, telephone numbers, voicemails, emails, and every correspondence from these individuals.
Leahy: It’s none of their business.
Huey: No.
Leahy: They’re using this as an excuse.
Huey: Yes.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett to the newsmakers line to discuss the mechanics of the HR1 bill and the letter written by 15 other Republican secretary of states to Congress in order to stop it.
Leahy: Come Carmichael in studio. And on the newsmaker line with us right now, the Secretary of State for Tennessee. And I’m going to add this, I think one of the best Secretary’s of State of all 50 States in the country. Tre Hargett, welcome to The Tennessee Star Report.
Hargett: Well, good morning. Thank you for having me this morning.
Leahy: So HR1, the federal government is trying to tell states how to run their elections. What do you think of that?
Hargett: Well, I’ve signed on to a letter along with 15 other Republican secretary of state asking Congress to not pass a piece of legislation that really is just an overreach and would take away the state’s constitutional authority to set the time, place, and manner of elections.
Leahy: That’s a very clear constitutional overreach by the Congress of the United States. It has passed the House. What’s going to happen with it in the Senate? What kind of response has your letter gotten?
Hargett: Well, we’re not sure what’s going to happen in the Senate. It feels like it’s falling on partisan lines, but we’re hoping some common sense will reign in the U.S. Senate. and I’m hopeful that your listers, who feel so led will contact friends and relatives and other states and ask them to contact their U.S. Senators to make sure they’re going to vote consistent legislation.
Leahy: When I look at who is on the bubble on the Democratic side, two names come to mind. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Senator Kirsten Sinema of Arizona. Are those the two senators who have not made a public statement on this or who are in doubt in the U.S. Senate?
Hargett: I don’t know. I haven’t seen a lot of public statements on either side. Of course, in Tennessee, Senator Blackburn and Senator Haggerty had both express their opposition to the legislation. But, you know, things have been pretty quiet on the Senate side. I think they’ve been focused on some other issues. And so perhaps they just haven’t felt led to make statements yet.
Leahy: Why is this bill so bad for Tennessee?
Hargett: Well, great question. And so there are several things I think are just bad for Tennessee. And one of them is it allows ballot harvesting across the country. And you remember a congressional race in North Carolina just a couple of years ago, they had to be thrown out because of ballot harvesting. And a lot of people don’t know what ballot harvesting is.
But that is whenever someone else goes out and collects ballots from other people and then wants to turn them in mass. And the real risk here is that someone could change your ballot or they could just not turn it in. And that’s what happened in North Carolina. The person knew that the ballots were from people who weren’t supporting their candidate.
They collected the ballots, didn’t turn them in. And it was a close race and It made a difference. In Tennessee, our law right now says you have to turn in your own ballot. You have to mail that back in. So you’re not supposed to mail somebody else’s ballot back in or pick it up and put it in a dropbox or anything like that?
Leahy: That’s a good law.
Hargett: The HR1 one would make it where we can’t ask for a photo ID at the polls anymore.
Carmichael: In Washington, the Senate version of HR1. I guess they call it the Senate version. It’s not HR1. It’s S1.
Hargett: It’s S1. That’s correct.
Carmichael: But S1 can’t pass in the Senate unless there are 60 votes unless they overturn the filibuster.
Hargett: Well, that’s right.
Carmichael: In the filibuster kind of the first line of defense? And then Mitch McConnell has said that if the Democrats attempt to overturn the filibuster that he’ll invoke the quorum rule, and he will just tell Republican senators to stay in their office and not go to the Chamber.
Hargett: Well, those are certainly the options. I would leave that to Leader McConnell to determine what the best way to handle that is. I think the best thing, though, for us right now is to start making senators aware of the issue and how we feel about it before it gets too late. And it gets any momentum. Let’s squelch it right now.
Carmichael: Yeah. The Democrats seem to be determined to use their power to insulate themselves against political losses in the future. It’s just really quite mindboggling. Do you have that problem with Democrats here in the state? Or is it because the Republicans have such large majorities that you’re able to work with Democrats, at least to some extent? Democrats in Washington don’t seem to want to work with Republicans.
Hargett: With a few exceptions, I have good working relationships with the Democrat side of the aisle.
Carmichael: That’s good.
Leahy: That’s very Tennessee. You’ve been in office for how long, Secretary Hargett?
Hargett: I’ve been in office for 12 years.
Leahy: 12 years, and no scandals of any significance while you’ve been in office. Thank you for your service, Secretary Hargett. And thanks for joining us. Come back in the studio sometime If you will.
Hargett: I look forward to it. Thank you.
Listen to the full third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed creator of the Huey Report and direct mail expert, Craig Huey, in-studio to discuss the HR1 bill that would put the country in danger allowing for voting regulations that encourage fraud and wins for Democrats.
Leahy: Tennessee remains one of the 35 states out there where freedom is still a possibility. California is one of the 15 states where freedom really is not a possibility. And living evidence of that in our studio right now Craig Huey who escaped from California and wants to make sure that doesn’t happen to Tennessee. There’s a Californian in Washington. Her name is Nancy Pelosi, and she embodies everything that’s wrong with America. But she has power right now. And she has introduced a bill that’s passed in the House. HR1.
It’s about to go to the Senate. Perhaps the worst bill in modern American history. Let me just read from Joel Pollak my colleague at Breitbart. House Democrats passed HR 1. This was back on March 4. The so-called for the people act on Wednesday. The bill would radically change American democracy, nationalizing elections, and making permanent changes to voting rules that would virtually ensure Democrats never lose another election. Let’s just pause for a moment, Craig. This is dangerous stuff.
Huey: Michael, it is the most dangerous bill possible. And the reason they’re pushing it hard is they know they have this window of opportunity right at the beginning more so than the in anytime in the next two years. It’s their number one priority. If they can change the election they will permanently be able to win 2022 and 2024.
They will change the election in the entire United States. This HR1, for example, legalizes in every state in the union what’s called ballot harvesting. Ballot harvesting is outlawed in most states. 39 states have it legal in some form or another. I come from California. California was one of the first states to pass ballot harvesting.
Leahy: And let me just interject. When I hear ballot harvesting, I think this is a way for Democrats to cheat. That’s what I think.
Huey: It’s voter fraud on steroids. This bill legalizes voter fraud. And basically what happens is this. Let’s say if that passes then Tennessee is forced to allow ballot harvesting that means political operatives people who are trained political door to door knockers can go to a house, show them how to vote with a voter guide, pick up that ballot, and they can deliver 50, 100, 500, 1000 ballots a thousand ballots to the voter booth and nobody knows who this person is. They could throw away Republican ballots. They could order ballots. They can go to nursing homes go out and pick up all the ballots.
Leahy: So in other words, they can go to somebody’s house and they say hey, fill out the ballot. I’ll take it to the registrar for you.
Huey: Yes. Michael, I’m going to send you a video that you can use of a professional ballot harvester and she knocks on the door and she’s got the data. And she knows the parents who have opened the door are Republican. She doesn’t want to talk to him. She’s been to that house 10 times to talk to the daughter.
The daughter is her target. She wants to pick up her ballot and she says I’m from the Democratic Party as a service to help pick up the ballot and deliver it. And she then will be able to go all the way from school board to governor or president depending on the election as to who to vote for. It transforms politics by 10, 15, 20 percent. And basically, it comes who is the most organized wins. That’s what it is. Who can get at the most ballots.
Huey: And then if you add the fraudulent part…
Leahy: It’s prone to fraud because with ballot harvesting you could go to the house of an elderly Republican couple. They could take the ballots. They could throw them away.
Huey: Totally. Throw them away or older them. And then you’ve got in California 450,000 ballots were sent out to people who are dead. People who have moved. Kids who have gone off to college. Duplicate ballots 40 to 50,000. Now if I go to an apartment and I see these mailboxes I see ballots there. I could pick them up before they’re delivered. If I know who’s getting duplicate ballots I can get those duplicate ballots and hand in a couple of ballots. It opens the door to fraud that you can never overcome.
Leahy: Yeah, and that’s before the Senate. 50 Republicans, 50 Democrats. And it looks like the Democrats are going to try to jam this through.
Huey: They’re going to try to jam it through. They have a very good chance. It will be universal mail-in ballots without a clean voter roll. Voter ID is the number one way to prevent fraud. It makes it illegal to have a voter ID.
Leahy: Which is ridiculous.
Huey: Totally.
Leahy: Talk about transforming our country from a constitutional republic to something like the old Russian Communist party.
Huey: It also tries to get people to register all online. I had a dog registered online (Leahy laughs) in California. Three elections I got the mail-in ballot for the dog at my office address. And when I moved to Tennessee, the ballot followed me.
Leahy: The dog can still vote.
Huey: Yes. There’s no control in doing online registration. And then it also demands that anybody is put on the voter roll who’s on welfare, Obamacare, any type of government agency whether they’re legal or not they’re put on as voters. This is corrupt. This is wrong. And it must be stopped.
Leahy: Well and you kind of get to really the existential element of the survival of our constitutional republic. We are there right now.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: Of course now 20 attorneys general in the United States have called this unconstitutional. It is unconstitutional because supervision of election is a state function. So now the national federal government is usurping the state authority.
Huey: Unconstitutionally because it is.
Leahy: Here’s the problem. Let me be totally blunt here. The federal courts have in many regards abandoned originalism. And certainly, the big effort by Donald Trump was to put a lot of conservative originalist jurists in the federal court. And they succeeded to a degree asterisk. What is it about a judge that purports to be conservative?
Once they are on the bench you look at their opinions. I’ll give you an example. Big, big push. So Donald Trump names three “conservatives” to the Supreme Court. Big political battles over all of them. A lot of political capital was spent to get them on. New Gorsuch confirmed. Brett Kavanaugh confirmed. Amy Coney Barrett confirmed.
Now if you look at their decisions, Gorsuch is really kind of a libertarian. Not exactly a Scalia originalist, textualist. Kavanaugh and Barrett, let me be blunt, are huge disappointments. Their votes are more like John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy than they are like Anthony Scalia. Do you see that as well?
Huey: I see it but I have hope that you’re going to see from the Supreme Court to the lower bench appointments at the transformation of the judiciary but it still has appointees in there that are judges that are judicial. I think there is a step forward. We have to be prepared now for Biden who will be using the bench to transform society, culture, and politics from the bench. They’re going to legislate from the bench. So we’re now really in a four-year period of danger.
Leahy: Big-time danger. No question about that. And I pray for the health of Clarence Thomas and Justice Alito every day.
Listen to the full third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.