Top Election Official in Crucial Pennsylvania County Hobnobs With Election Deniers
Donald Trump is spreading misinformation about allegedly fraudulent voter registration in Lancaster County. The post Top Election Official in Crucial Pennsylvania County Hobnobs With Election Deniers appeared first on The Intercept.
Just days before the presidential election, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, became ground zero for Donald Trump’s claims about voter fraud. Trump alleged that large-scale “cheating” was taking place after officials opened an investigation into over 1,000 suspicious new voter registrations in the county.
With attention on the former president’s claims of widespread voter fraud, which have been described as misinformation, local officials in rural Lancaster County are coming in for scrutiny.
One official involved in the effort to root out fraud in Lancaster has a history of rubbing elbows with those undermining faith in the democratic process. Lancaster County Commission Vice-Chair Ray D’Agostino, who also chairs the county Board of Elections, has associated with election denialists, among them an architect of Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
D’Agostino was also the featured guest for an “election integrity” workshop hosted by a pro-Trump social media personality who has written for pro-Russian media outlets. The host introduced D’Agostino at the workshop as someone who could help listeners learn if “we are able to give Trump another victory, the third victory, in the election.”
In the workshop, D’Agostino objected to being portrayed as an election denialist. “Even just mentioning the talk about integrity or securing elections, you can get branded an election denier or a threat to democracy,” he said. “This is crazy.”
“The election denial history and connections of Republican commissioners are incredibly alarming.”
With the 2024 presidential election looming, the ties to election denialists are raising fears that the fraud investigation could set the stage for another falsely contested election in the crucial swing state.
“The election denial history and connections of Republican commissioners are incredibly alarming as we approach Election Day,” Democratic strategist and Pennsylvania election expert J.J. Abbott told The Intercept.
A spokesperson for the Lancaster County Commissioner’s Office responded to questions from The Intercept with a link to a press release on the recent fraud investigation.
Lancaster was among three counties in Pennsylvania listed by the Brookings Institution as among the jurisdictions that “pose a relatively higher risk of attempts at non-certification in the November 2024 election.” In Lancaster, Brookings cited the county commission’s failure to certify complete 2022 primary election results until it was compelled to do so by the court.
D’Agostino, one of three commission officials who refused to initially certify the results, testified in court in defense of the decision.
Election Deniers
D’Agostino is associated with major and minor election deniers alike.
In 2022, D’Agostino attended a conference hosted by Cleta Mitchell, a chief organizer of the 2020 “Stop the Steal” movement. Mitchell, who was on the notorious call where Trump asked Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” 11,780 more votes, has been a leader of ongoing “election integrity efforts” that Trump critics say could be used to undermine results.
D’Agostino, according to LancasterOnline, which reported his attendance at the meeting at the time, was in the audience and was called on by name from the podium. (LancasterOnline did not report D’Agostino’s responses.)
Weeks after the conference, D’Agostino removed a mail-in ballot drop box in a Lancaster municipal building — a move that drew criticism and led to a winning lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. After being forced by the courts to reinstate the drop box, D’Agostino launched a new process that this time complied with state law and eventually removed the ballot box permanently.
D’Agostino also appeared at least three times on the podcast of Pennsylvania-based social media figure Stephen Turley. Turley, who has written for pro-Russia sites for years, said days after the 2020 election that Joe Biden only won because of “the biggest mail-in voter fraud in the history of our nation.” D’Agostino’s links to Turley have not been previously reported. (Turley did not respond to a request for comment.)
Turley’s show, called “Turley Talks,” features episodes with pro-Trump political takes and episodes that unabashedly boost the agenda of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Turley’s Podcasts
D’Agostino recently appeared on Turley’s podcast to discuss the fraudulent voter registration investigation in Lancaster County. D’Agostino gave an update on the case and wondered if those behind the fraudulent registrations were trying to “influence the election in some way.”
D’Agostino also went on Turley’s podcast on September 18 as a featured guest for a “Stop the Steal” election integrity workshop. “Join Ray D’Agostino for a powerful ‘Stop the Steal’ workshop,” Turley advertised in promotions for the broadcast.
During the hour-long virtual workshop, D’Agostino spoke at length about the election fraud conspiracy theories that animate the “Stop the Steal” movement.
“We’re talking about, you know, ‘Stop the Steal,’” D’Agostino said. “And this is a playbook the left has, when you steal the values of a country, you’re then able to claim victory at the ballot box.”
One viewer asked about a rumor regarding undocumented immigrants registering to vote with false addresses. D’Agostino replied, “Well, they shouldn’t be registered to vote, and that’s part of the investigation we’re looking into.”
Pro-Russia Lancaster Vote Denier
Turley has his own extremist associations. He has written a dozen pieces for Russia Insider and wrote for Russia Faith from 2018 until 2021 — both sites the Southern Poverty Law Center said were operated by Charles Bausman.
Authors who wrote for Bausman’s far-right, pro-Russia websites are being monitored by American intelligence, according to a New York Times report last year.
Bausman, who has espoused racist views, once sought funding from a sanctioned Russian oligarch, according to a leaked email reported on by the Daily Beast. (Bausman denied at the time that he took money from Russian oligarchs but said the leaked email was real.)
Both Turley and Bausman have Lancaster County connections. Though he lives in Delaware, Turley incorporated his podcast company in Lancaster County in August 2020.
Bausman lived there in 2020; his home was reportedly a destination for visiting white nationalists. Bausman was an organizer for Lancaster County’s “Stop the Steal” contingent, fundraising for the movement and helped plan rallies.
On January 6, 2021, Bausman was in Washington filming the unfolding insurrection. After his presence inside the U.S. Capitol was reported, Bausman fled for Moscow.
“Election Integrity Team”
At a public county commissioner’s meeting on Wednesday, a Lancaster resident asked D’Agostino if the county planned to “reach out to the Trump campaign to correct the misinformation that he put out.”
“Look there are so many things being said by so many different people,” D’Agostino responded. “And no, we are not going to go after every single social media post, email, whatever somebody says simply because it’s being put out there, I’m sorry.”
On Saturday, Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley posted on X that he had been directly working with Lancaster County.
“Yesterday we learned of a potential fraudulent voter registration operation in Lancaster County, PA,” Whatley tweeted. “County officials worked with our on-the-ground election integrity team to identify the issue in real-time and prevent fraudulent registrations from being processed.”
Whatley’s claim piqued the interest of election watchers in Pennsylvania. (The RNC did not immediately return a request for comment.)
Adam Bonin, a campaign lawyer in the state, said that Republican officials may have just been reviewing the registrations made by Republican voters, but the area’s history of false claims about the 2020 race and prevalence of fraud conspiracies raised red flags.
“Reviewing voter registration applications is something which is entrusted to the board of elections staff, not outside partisan attorneys from either side,” Bonin told The Intercept. “What we have here, as we did in 2020, is Republican officials boosting something as a potentially massive scandal which might not be a scandal at all, and certainly one for which there has not been any transparency.”
Abbott, the Democratic strategist, said, “No election deniers or Republican operatives should be involved in any election office operations.”
The post Top Election Official in Crucial Pennsylvania County Hobnobs With Election Deniers appeared first on The Intercept.
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