Lawsuit: Michigan Sec. of State illegally accepted Zuckerbucks

FPI / February 19, 2022

Michigan Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson illegally accepted private money for the 2020 presidential election in an effort to swing the election to Joe Biden, according to a lawsuit filed by the Thomas More Society.

The lawsuit, filed in the Michigan Court of Claims, alleges that Benson violated election law by spending private election funding on partisan purposes that denied Michigan voters’ constitutional equal access voting rights.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan pumped $400 million into the 2020 election through their Chicago-based nonprofit, the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL).

CTCL awarded over 2,000 grants to various jurisdictions around the U.S. during the 2020 election, allegedly for assistance in carrying out the elections amid the Covid pandemic.

In Michigan, the Thomas More Society lawsuit says, CTCL made 19 payments exceeding $100,000 all to jurisdictions that Biden carried in 2020. The lawsuit cites an America Public Media report finding some cities spent little of the money on personal protective equipment (PPE).

Thomas More Society Special Counsel Thor Hearne said that Benson spent CTCL money to boost Democrat-dominated areas in the 2020 election via increased mail-in voting and ballot harvesting.

“The Michigan Constitution guarantees every eligible citizen the right of equal protection when it comes to voting, and that means state officials may not put in place an election scheme that enhances the weight of votes cast by one class of voters or increases one favored class of voters’ access to the ballot,” Hearne said in a statement. “That’s just what happened here. Analysis of data that the Center for Tech and Civic Life provided to the Internal Revenue Service and other public records demonstrates that this scheme was designed to favor urban areas in Michigan and to disadvantage Michigan voters in rural and suburban more politically conservative areas.”

The Michigan Legislature aimed to ban private funding of public elections via Senate Bill 303, which Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed in 2021.

“The only way Michigan residents can stop a high-tech billionaire from California from directing the conduct of Michigan’s 2022 election is for the Michigan voters and citizens to prevail in this case against Secretary of State Benson,” Thomas More Society President and Chief Counsel Tom Brejcha said in a statement.

Free Press International