Dear America,
Kris Kobach, the Secretary of State in Kansas, is the vice-chair of Donald Trump's "commission" looking into voter fraud in 2016. As Kansas Secretary of State, he has prosecuted ten voter fraud cases after claiming to his legislature that he had identified a hundred or more. He got six convictions, all of double voting and none for voting without the right to do so. By way of example of the quality of those cases, one involved an elderly man who voted in Kansas, but having a future retirement home in Colorado, he also got a Colorado mail-in ballot, which he submitted voting only on the marijuana referendum because he didn't want pot grown near his house. Colorado declined to prosecute him, but Kobach went ahead. Eventually, the 62 year-old Kilian paid a $2,500 fine, apparently realizing that even though his violation of the law was just technical--and Colorado agreed--Koback would crucify him if he got the chance. Seven of his ten prosecutions were of Republicans, most of them elderly who made one kind of mistake or another, and who knows what the rest of the cases were like, but that is the quality of Kobach's Trump-style claim of rampant voter fraud. Kobach also championed a Kansas voting law that requires proof of citizenship from those trying to register to vote, which violates federal election law. Since that law passed in Kansas, it has been litigated in various suits, almost all going against Kobach's law, and one of them is still in progress. The ACLU sued over a Kansas election officials decision to overrule the federal court on the issue and the picture of Kobach entering a meeting to show his documentation of voter fraud claims to president-elect Trump, having made the national news, became an issue. The ACLU filed a motion to produce those documents, which Kobach defended against by making certain claims of fact...which turned out to be false. The federal judge involved fined Kobach $1,000 for misleading the court and ordered him to submit to a deposition held by the ACLU, which order Kobach is appealing. And he'd better win because lying to a judge is grounds for disbarment in most states. That's whom Donald Trump has chosen to do his dirty work for him: someone who obviously doesn't mind doing dirty work.
But Kobach is a minor figure in American politics, and his misdeeds are of only passing significance. What is more important is why Donald Trump has insisted on this putative commission at all. What is important is why Donald Trump insists on vituperating the former president and criticizing him, sometimes for things that Trump himself advocated at the time, like reluctance to get involved in the Syrian civil war. And the reason that it all is important is that, along with much other conduct including his incessant tweeting and at best dubious, self-serving claims relating to everything from the size of his inauguration crowd to the size of his hands, betrays a kind of insecurity that is not just unbecoming; it is dangerous. I suppose that if you have an ego as big as Trump's, it must be quite thin in places as well. In his case, that translates into fixation on every criticism and refusal to allow for the possibility that he should even consider rethinking an idea. His prideful arrogance is so imbedded in his job performance that sooner or later, he's going to push the wrong button somewhere and create a mammoth problem. We can only hope that it isn't a war, but who knows.
I don't think a president can be impeached for being a megalomaniac, nor for being a fool. George W. Bush proved that point. But in light of Trump's self-inflicted tendency to err, it may be crucial that we find some reason to get rid of the blatherer-in-chief. And today, an augury of that reason may just have appeared. Walter Schaub, Jr., who is the director of the independent Office of Government Ethics, has resigned because he says he cannot accomplish anything more under the conditions that prevail in this administration...the Trump administration. He has fought with its members and with Trump's surrogates as well about divestment of properties that represent serious potential conflicts of interest, all to no avail. Boy, has Kris Kobach found a home.
That resignation is just the kernel around which a discussion of the issue of Trump's integrity could coalesce, but it is a start. One can only live in hope.
Your friend,
Mike
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