It really couldn't happen to a nicer guy! This deeply anti-democratic Kris Kobach is simply the biggest driving force in United States voter suppression efforts, and it's deeply satisfying to know he faces a grand jury. Gee, I hope this does affect his gubernatorial campaign. Via the L.A. Times:
A grand jury must be convened to investigate whether Republican gubernatorial candidate and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach intentionally failed to register voters in 2016, the Kansas Supreme Court has ruled.
The court’s one-page opinion offered no explanation behind the ruling, which addressed Kobach’s appeal of a lower court’s order to summon the grand jury, the Lawrence Journal-World reported.
The high court’s ruling, released Friday, stemmed from a petition first filed in 2016 by Steven Davis, a Lawrence resident who accused Kobach of intentionally choosing not to process online voter registrations and preventing qualified residents from voting in the 2016 election. The Douglas County District Court twice rejected Davis’ petition, saying there wasn’t enough evidence to support the allegations against Kobach.
But the Kansas Court of Appeals ruled that the lower court was incorrect when it said Davis needed to provide specific allegations of a crime. State law requires only general allegations. The court ordered Douglas County to summon the grand jury.
If the attorney general for New York has her way, Kris Kobach will be forced under oath to explain conversations he had with federal officials about placing a citizenship question on the 2020 Census.
The catalyst for a possible deposition is Wendy Teramoto, the chief of staff for Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross. When the New York Immigration Coalition, which is suing Ross over the Census question, tried to ask Teramoto about her interactions with Kobach, she couldn’t remember anything.
A snippet of her deposition was made available in legal filings last week as New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, a Democrat, formally asked the federal judge overseeing the case to make Kobach available for questioning.
Kobach, the Republican secretary of state for Kansas and a candidate for governor, lobbied President Donald Trump and his administration to ask about citizenship as a way of weakening representation for communities that tend to favor Democrats. The New York case is one of several lawsuits challenging the decision to add the question after it was announced earlier this year.
