Donald Trump isn’t the only right-wing fabulist who has learned that when you enter a courtroom, rules matter. True the Vote, a national group devoted to spreading conspiracies about voter fraud, just suffered a humiliation in a Georgia courtroom, thanks to a judge’s simple request that they — get this — provide evidence for their claims of fraud during the 2020 election and the subsequent Senate runoff.
While it’s understandable to despair at the ease with which the liars and con artists of the right’s “election integrity” movement pump fabrications into the national bloodstream, their virtually unbroken string of failures in the courts may offer some solace. At least there, the system seems to work.
To make a charge stand up legally, these voter fraud fabulists have to back it up with evidence. Again and again, they have failed to do so.
That’s because courts have rules far more strict than Rudy Giuliani’s podcast or — as Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News showed — an evening of right-wing television. To make a charge stand up legally, these voter fraud fabulists have to back it up with evidence. Again and again, they have failed to do so.
The cycle, by now, is depressingly familiar. First, groups like True the Vote spout claims of widespread fraud based on innuendo, ignorance of the law and the occasional I-know-a-guy-whose-girlfriend’s-cousin-heard-from-another-guy hearsay. Then those claims are amplified by conservative media — in this case, True the Vote’s conspiracy theories were heavily featured in the film “2000 Mules” from Dinesh D’Souza, a conservative pundit and convicted felon who was pardoned by Trump.
But though the claims may be widely believed by the devoted and the deluded, when it comes time to actually challenge the outcome of an election, they fail. In the Georgia case, True the Vote had filed a claim with the state in late 2021 alleging that the organization “spoke with several…
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