Yesterday, ABC News host George Stephanopoulos asked White House adviser Stephen Miller if he had any evidence to substantiate President Trump’s patently false allegation that millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election, including his recent baseless claim that Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte only lost New Hampshire because thousands of voters from Massachusetts unlawfully voted for Democratic candidates in the Granite State. (New Hampshire elected a Republican governor in the same year, a fact Trump conveniently left out.)
Miller said that voter fraud in New Hampshire is a “very real” and “very serious” problem, but added that “this morning on this show is not the venue for me to lay out all the evidence.”
Miller cited issues like deceased people who are still listed on voter rolls and people who are registered to vote in more than one state—such as several Trump administration officials—as evidence of actual voter fraud.
He went on to say that Trump was a victim of voter fraud and that the Justice Department will investigate this “scandal,” urging Stephanopoulos to “invite Kris Kobach onto your show and he can walk you through some of the evidence of voter fraud in greater detail,” referring to the Kansas secretary of state and Trump adviser who is a consistent foe of voting rights.
Trump aide Stephen Miller repeats Trump’s blatantly false claim about mass illegal voting. There is zero evidence. pic.twitter.com/9NvPXjPYVO
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) February 12, 2017
However, Kobach has been repeatedly unable to find evidence of massive voter fraud despite his dogged efforts.
Mark Johnson of University of Kansas School of Law told The Intercept’s Spencer Woodman that Kobach “hasn’t brought a single case of voter impersonation or alien registration or voting,” and Woodman notes that Kobach has only found a small number of cases of voter irregularities:
The few cases Kobach has announced focus more on minor — and possibly unintentional — breaches of voting rules, far from the flagrant electoral manipulation he has publicly obsessed over.
Today, a year and a half after the Kansas legislature gave Kobach free rein to pursue his legions of illegal voters, he has announced a mere half-dozen prosecutions related to voting, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, largely against elderly voters — and none involving voting by non-citizens.
Only four of Kobach’s six cases have been successful.
Last April, Kobach dropped all charges against a 61-year-old woman just days before the state was scheduled to bring her to trial. In December 2015, her husband, a Vietnam veteran named Steven Gaedtke, pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count after Kobach’s office dismissed two other charges against him.
“He’s an otherwise law-abiding citizen who made a mistake,” said Gaedtke’s attorney, Scott Gyllenborg. The couple had apparently voted in both Arkansas and Kansas in 2010, but because it was not a presidential year, neither had cast multiple votes for any one candidate. In May, Kobach dropped two serious felony charges against a 77-year-old man in exchange for guilty pleas to two lesser voting-related misdemeanors.
