Ray Marcano is a Columbus Dispatch contributing columnist.
Sometimes nasty things don’t merely smell or stink. They reek.
That’s the case with the FBI’s June 12 raid of the Cleveland office of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a progressive group known for its voter registration efforts.
It was the Trump administration’s latest move to intimidate left-leaning organizations under the guise of fighting voter fraud and maintaining election integrity.
Remember, just this past February, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose called voter fraud in Ohio rare. How rare? LaRose, in a press release, said he sent 633 cases of alleged election irregularities over five years to the Ohio Attorney General’s office and only 12 were referred for possible prosecution.
The raid shows the Trump-weaponized FBI and Department of Justice have added a new chapter to their undemocratic playbook.
It will go after organizations the administration views as a threat to its preferred candidates by using threats, disrupting its operations, and forcing these groups to use resources to defend an indefensible act.
The timing couldn’t be more suspicious.
Back in March, LaRose unconscionably shared more than 8 million voter registration records with the DOJ. There’s no way of knowing whether the federal government somehow used the information LaRose handed over to target the collaborative.
Fox News released a poll June 3 that showed the Trump-endorsed candidates trailing Democrats in the races for governor and Senate.
And now, all of a sudden the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, one of Ohio’s major get-out-the-vote groups, finds Trump agents at their door and in their house.
Could it be coincidence?
Maybe. But the DOJ and its Trumpian puppets don’t do themselves any favors when they essentially tell people the justification for the raid is no one’s business, at least not yet.
The smell is overwhelming
The DOJ told NBC News the search warrants “are authorized by a judge and anything said by any organization or others in the media is unfounded speculation, as the target of any investigation is not privy to the search warrant affidavit until after indictment.”
It’s true that the affidavit isn’t immediately available. But it’s also true that, in a politicized environment, the federal government could give a small clue.
Are there alleged irregularities in the registrations? Any allegations of registering illegal immigrants (I refuse to call them aliens, as if they came here with vicious intent, like the Harvesters in Independence Day).
Silence tells a story
A little morsel of information would help temper, just a bit, the appearance of using political muscle on an voter group.
The feds don’t have a good track record in these cases.
Georgia’s Fulton County Election Center search, in which the government alleged all sorts of nefarious interference, hasn’t resulted in criminal charges.
In a related development, the government continues to demand voter registration data from Republican and Democrat-controlled states that have largely been resisting the requests.
Silence breeds suspicion in a government and president who clings to the myth that fraud cost him the 2020 election. It didn’t, says every reasonable lawmaker on both sides of the aisle.
This action appears to be an attempt at intimidation.
This doesn’t smell or stink.It reeks.
Ray Marcano is a Columbus Dispatch contributing columnist. The longtime journalist is the former national president of the Society of Professional Journalists, a two-time Pulitzer juror, and a Fulbright fellow.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Stench from Trump’s Cleveland raid turning stomachs miles away. | Opinion
Reporting by Ray Marcano, Contributed Commentary / The Columbus Dispatch
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Ray Marcano, Contributed Commentary | USA TODAY Network
