Speaker 1: Speaking of politics. It's always a pleasure to welcome Sarah Westwood,
Speaker 1: investigative reporter for The Washington Examiner, to the show. Sarah,
Speaker 1: how are you. I'm great, Thanks for having me. It's
Speaker 1: it's our pleasure. Thanks. I've read a couple of pieces
Speaker 1: that you've written, uh lately. In one in particular, really,
Speaker 1: we around here think it's one of the great under
Speaker 1: discussed stories in America, and that is, uh, people's trust
Speaker 1: in the voting system, people's belief in the fidelity of
Speaker 1: the ballot. And you've written a piece recently about various
Speaker 1: states moving in different directions in terms of who votes.
Speaker 1: How can you give us kind of an overview of
Speaker 1: what's happening? Sure, you know, I think that this was
Speaker 1: a much bigger deal at the federal level last year
Speaker 1: and early this year in January, you know, President Biden
Speaker 1: gave a big speech about voting rights. Kamala Harris was
Speaker 1: focusing intently on this, and it's lost a lot of theme.
Speaker 1: At the national level, there was not enough traction to
Speaker 1: get any sort of meaningful voting reforms through Congress. So
Speaker 1: now you're seeing these fights play out state by states,
Speaker 1: and New York and California in particular, have taken elements
Speaker 1: of what was then the HR one for the People
Speaker 1: Acts with John Lewis Voting Rights Access of legislation that
Speaker 1: had a lot of very um significant structural changes to
Speaker 1: voting laws and tried to implement them on the state level.
Speaker 1: And so you could see a lot of changes in
Speaker 1: this midterm election come November. A lot of states have
Speaker 1: tried and some have even succeeded, in making permanent the
Speaker 1: type of temporary solutions that were put in place to
Speaker 1: accommodate public health concerns during the pandemic, like sending absolutee
Speaker 1: ballots to every voter, which is something that is going
Speaker 1: to be now a permanent feature of California voting right.
Speaker 1: I saw in your article that the Wisconsin Supreme Court
Speaker 1: went in the other direction. Can you tell us about that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a significant blow to the left wing agenda
Speaker 1: when it comes to voting. But the wiscon In Supreme
Speaker 1: Court looked out the way the state's law is currently
Speaker 1: written and said that the law as as it send
Speaker 1: does not allow for unattended ballot boxes, which means that
Speaker 1: if precincts want to have ballot drop boxes where someone
Speaker 1: can fill out their absentee ballot at home. Maybe they
Speaker 1: don't want to drop it in the mail for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: they feel more comfortable leaving it at the box. They
Speaker 1: have to have a physical person they're monitoring the drop
Speaker 1: box if they want to have this option for voters.
Speaker 1: And that's a really expensive, logistically challenging way to to
Speaker 1: do drop boxes, while you typically see them being unmanned,
Speaker 1: because that that sort of manpower, full time manpower, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's hard to come by in elections. You also have
Speaker 1: in with constant um a band now from the State
Speaker 1: Supreme Court on what critics call ballot harvesting, which is
Speaker 1: basically where any third party sometimes political operatives can collect
Speaker 1: absentee ballots ostensibly to help people who can't necessarily get
Speaker 1: to the polls. I dropped them off in bulk, you know,
Speaker 1: county clerk's offices or at these drop boxes. That also
Speaker 1: is not compatible with Wisconsin law as it stands. Now.
Speaker 1: Voting rights advocates will say, you know this, this hurts
Speaker 1: elderly people, are disabled people who might not be able
Speaker 1: to get out of the house to submit their absentee ballot.
Speaker 1: But that's why the vote by mail system exists in
Speaker 1: the first place. It existed for people like you know,
Speaker 1: the disabled and the elderly who can't necessarily get to
Speaker 1: the polls, and so that option voting by mail is
Speaker 1: still available to people now that ballot harvesting is banned
Speaker 1: in with consin right. I remember it was a couple
Speaker 1: of election cycles ago that a Republican was booted out
Speaker 1: of Congress and the election had to be reheld in
Speaker 1: North Carolina because the various operatives engaged in ballot harvesting,
Speaker 1: which is illegal. And roughly half the states I think,
Speaker 1: or it's like twenty two to twenty three or something
Speaker 1: like that. Do you happen to know that number, off fan,
Speaker 1: I don't, but that sounds about or or you know,
Speaker 1: give or take a couple of states, right, right, And
Speaker 1: this is clearly editorializing, and you can join in or
Speaker 1: not depending on your your wishes. But um, what we've
Speaker 1: been saying around here is that people ought to be
Speaker 1: able to vote, certainly and mail and voting for old
Speaker 1: folks are disabled or whatever. That's nobody is against that,
Speaker 1: but the idea of one guy showing up with fifteen
Speaker 1: ballots is it's damaging to the credibility of the electoral process,
Speaker 1: even if there are reasonable safeguards in place to make
Speaker 1: sure every one of those votes is legit and and honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't find the safeguards uh strong enough, but just
Speaker 1: that very idea of a guy with a stack of ballots,
Speaker 1: it bothers people, it does. And I think you know
Speaker 1: a lot of these the liberalization of the vote by
Speaker 1: mail ruled in states like Pennsylvania, New York, and California.
Speaker 1: Those were done under the pretext of the pandemic, and
Speaker 1: they were all builled as temporary measures. And now any
Speaker 1: effort to go back to what the pre pandemic stand
Speaker 1: neard was is being decried as voter suppression. And so
Speaker 1: you know, this is sort of a bait and switch
Speaker 1: that a lot of these Democrats did. When it comes
Speaker 1: to the voting law in Texas, for example, a lot
Speaker 1: of the changes that Texas made in their voting reforms
Speaker 1: that they passed last year was just stripping away some
Speaker 1: of those pandemic policies like twenty four hour voting or
Speaker 1: like drive through voting which occurred in sub prefings in
Speaker 1: urban areas. That was attacked by Democrats, as you know,
Speaker 1: taking away people's right to vote, even though at the
Speaker 1: time Democrats insisted that those measures were never meant to
Speaker 1: be temporary. So there is a lot of sort of
Speaker 1: rhetorical deception around this voting issue that's no longer you know,
Speaker 1: in the national spotlight, because again, this is playing out
Speaker 1: in the States, but you know, those fights are still happening.
Speaker 1: Sarah Westwood, investigative reporter for the Washington Examiner, on the
Speaker 1: line in the a couple of minutes we have left,
Speaker 1: you did another piece on the House Republicans indeed take
Speaker 1: the I'm sorry. If Puplicans take the House, which is expected,
Speaker 1: that they are going to launch their own bunch of
Speaker 1: investigations into the Biden administration. I'm not sure how much
Speaker 1: I love this government by investigation that seems to be
Speaker 1: popular these days. But what will they be investigating and
Speaker 1: who's going to do it? Yeah, so we are seeing
Speaker 1: outs Republicans start to lay the groundwork for what those
Speaker 1: investigations are going to look like and what committees are
Speaker 1: going to be the venue for those probes. Even though
Speaker 1: they're not in the majority, they don't have subpoena power
Speaker 1: necessarily the power to set the agenda and call witnesses
Speaker 1: they can't send letters and requests and inquiries, and so
Speaker 1: we're starting to see that. For example, the House Oversight
Speaker 1: Committee uh Congress, and James Cohmer is the ranking member,
Speaker 1: largely expected to be the chairman if Republicans take the
Speaker 1: House in November. He's already started sending request to the
Speaker 1: Treasury Department for what's known as suspicious activity reports, or
Speaker 1: reports that are automatically generated when business transaction internationally. The
Speaker 1: potentially raise red flags all the suspicious activity reports related
Speaker 1: to Hunter Biden. So he's sort of starting to lay
Speaker 1: the groundwork there for what will probably be a pretty
Speaker 1: robust investigation of Hunter Biden's business dealings. The House Administration Committee,
Speaker 1: which you know resees the sort of administrative staff associated
Speaker 1: with Congress, is already sort of gearing up to investigate
Speaker 1: why Capital police didn't have more security on January six,
Speaker 1: why were they caught so flat footed? And you have
Speaker 1: Republicans sending request to the January six Committee asking them
Speaker 1: to preserve all their emails and documents because Republicans are
Speaker 1: gearing up to do a pretty aggressive investigation of the
Speaker 1: investigators of January six to see, you know, was any
Speaker 1: witness coerced or threatened with financial ruin, you know, if
Speaker 1: they didn't testify where people's rights trampled on by this aggressive,
Speaker 1: you know, made for TV investigations. The Republicans really positioning
Speaker 1: themselves to do some some aggressive investigating if they do
Speaker 1: win in November. Well, and I understand the House Judicial
Speaker 1: Theory Committee might be looking at Anthony Fauci. That's right,
Speaker 1: as Congressman Jim Jordan's really interested in the Anthony Fauci
Speaker 1: sort of the space of this unpopular COVID response, the
Speaker 1: Republicans are interested in how and why he shifted so
Speaker 1: dramatically his position on the lab leak theory. This theory
Speaker 1: that COVID nineteen escaped from a virology lab at Wuhan
Speaker 1: and that's how it starts spreading in China, which is
Speaker 1: a pretty now publicly accepted likely possibility for how the
Speaker 1: pandemic began. But Sauci hasn't not really explained why he
Speaker 1: went from totally dismissing this theory too reluctantly embracing it.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of questions about, you know,
Speaker 1: in i h's funding of grants that contributed to research
Speaker 1: at that virology lab in Wuhan, and so those are
Speaker 1: the sorts of things that Republicans are going to be
Speaker 1: looking into, and you know, that could be pretty uncomfortable
Speaker 1: for for Dr Fauci. Sarah Westwood of the Washington and
Speaker 1: Exam her follow her on Twitter, read her at the
Speaker 1: Washington Examiner dot com. Sarah, Hey, thanks very much for
Speaker 1: the time. Thanks for having me. Armstrong and Jetty