California’s Secretary of State awarded a $35 million “Get Out the Vote” no-bid contract to a “Team Biden” firm, a situation that appears to violate federal election law, according to Fox News.
Tucker Carlson Tonight accessed the contract between the state of California and SKDKnickerbocker—whose managing director, Anita Dunn, is a senior aide for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
In the contract for the Vote Save California initiative, SKDK said that the project would have to overcome a range of “challenges” that included suppressing “fear and misinformation with facts” about mail-in voting.
“The President and his allies, including those in certain corners of the media, continually repeat false claims that voting by mail is uniquely susceptible to fraud,” SKDK said in the proposal. “It’s not, and we need to make that clear.”
SKDK even mentioned President Donald Trump by name.
“Viral messaging is already circulating that ballots need to be returned far before Election Day because of issues in the U.S. Postal Service, and President Trump himself recently tweeted that the election should be delayed as vote-by-mail can’t be trusted (which was debunked by other users on the platform),” the firm said. “Who knows what the next claim will be?”
Despite the obvious opposition to Trump, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a Democrat, described the Vote Save California project as “a nonpartisan effort.”
Yet even today on SKDK’s website, there is featured anti-Trump content under the headline “Black Lives Matter.”
The post falsely states that “Over the last four years, Donald Trump has been telling white Americans they should be afraid of Black [sic] and brown Americans.”
The post continues: “Trump and his enablers are using a heavy dose of fear at their convention to gaslight us…”
Republican Reps. James Comer of Kentucky, Rodney David of Illinois and Jody Hice of Georgia, sent a letter to Patricia Layfield, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s inspector general, asking her to investigate the partisan contract.
“Not only was this shady contract fast-tracked to a blatant pro-Biden consulting firm, new information reveals it likely violates federal law and Democratic operatives are running the contract and targeting specific voters,” said Comer, the ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The letter raised many questions about the contract, including whether it had illegally granted sensitive voter information to the partisan Democratic firm or illegally used money from the Help America Vote Act grant, which was included in the CARES Act.
It is illegal to use HAVA grant money to fund get-out-the-vote programs.
“For example, in its proposal, SKD proposes using eight percent of the $35 million budget on mail,” the congressmen noted. “Specifically, the proposal states, ‘a direct mail program can deliver a tailored message to a micro-targeted universe of individuals.'”
Comer joined Tucker Carlson Tonight on Monday to talk about the investigation.
“To get out the vote, they’re going to have to micro-target voters,” he said. “In order to do that, they’re going to have to have sensitive voter data from the secretary of state’s office. … We’re not going to let this go.”
