Unmasking Controversies: The Struggle for Election Integrity

Across Kansas, and the Republic, there are concerns over the handling of crucial election materials and the suspicious use of a software linked to the Chinese Communist Party. Join us as we welcome Thad Snider, who has been tirelessly investigating this matter. Despite a stay of destruction order in place, Snider reveals the chilling details about how these vital documents may be destroyed by order of a liberal county commissioner. And he's asking the state attorney general for help.

To that end, we also have none other than the state Attorney General, Kris Kobach himself, debunking some of these allegations while throwing light on the nature of election policy versus election crimes.

Lastly, we dissect the fine line between bad election management and criminal activity. Attorney General Kobach explains why it's crucial to prosecute when there is tangible evidence of a crime. We delve deeper into the discussion on accountability and authority in prosecuting election crimes.
Be sure that what happens in Kansas may well happen in your state.
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

The Right Side with Doug Billings.

Speaker 2: 0:12

Hi everybody, welcome to the set of my show, the Right Side, doug Billings. Here Today on the program, an interview with two separate individuals One, thad Snyder, a citizen of the state of Kansas who's interested in election integrity like we all are, who's raised some interesting questions. I had him on the show yesterday. We put the interview out and it caused a little bit of a stir among conservative circles and such within the state and the nation for that matter. The office of Chris Kobach, the state attorney general for the state of Kansas, reached out to me today and asked if he could come on and respond to some of these things that Mr Snyder had said the other day on the interview. Of course we would be happy to have the attorney general come on the program and he did so today. You'll see two interviews, very short in and of by themselves. First from Thad Snyder, who's concerned about documents in the state of Kansas, election documents whereby the county according to Mr Snyder, the county commissioner in Johnson County, kansas, mike Kelly, is threatening to destroy and do away with, and of course that would be a crime. These documents have a stay of destruction order on them from the previous state attorney general. And then, after the Mr Snyder interview, we will have the attorney general from the state of Kansas, chris Kobach, come on and respond to these issues, and I think that you'll find the interviews enlightening and interesting and they speak for themselves. I'll let them do just that and I'll bow out here and introduce you to the interviews that we did yesterday and today right here on the right side with Doug Billings. Cheers, hi everybody.

Speaker 2: 1:54

Welcome to the set of my show, the Right Side Today, a special short edition of the program with a guest, thad Snyder, from Kansas. Now Kansas is flyover country. I get it. Look, I live there. I live in Kansas, but nonetheless I think that what we see in Kansas can be a bellwether for what happens across the country in many aspects. In one particular, election integrity issues we have an active criminal investigation happening in Kansas with regards to election integrity Criminal investigation happening right now I'm going to let Thad Snyder explain it and we have a series of people involved in this, from our county commissioners, our county election director, even the state attorney general, who was supposed to be one of us, a conservative, who ran on and spoke about election integrity and getting to the bottom of things like this, without me muddying up the waters a bit. I'm going to bring Thad on right now. Let him explain this to us. Thad, welcome back to the program.

Speaker 3: 2:50

Thanks for having me, Doug.

Speaker 2: 2:51

So a big deal in Kansas and I want to point out to the country and to the world that this can affect and happen in other states as well. So take heed and take warning. Surmise for us in about four or five minutes what's happening in Kansas.

Speaker 3: 3:07

So our Sheriff, calvin Hayden, has had an active criminal investigation into the 2020 election for a couple of years now, and during the course of that investigation true, the vote outed Johnson County as one of the counties that had CONAC, the Chinese Communist Party software, running its election management system. So this is a big deal. It's a huge investigation, and during the course of the investigation, the previous Attorney General, derek Schmidt, issued a stay of destruction of the 2020 election materials pending the outcome of this investigation. Well, the investigation is still ongoing, but last week I found out that the Johnson County Commission voted to appoint a bipartisan duo to oversee the destruction of those materials, despite that stay of destruction, and this is being done in coordination with the Kansas Secretary of State and the County Elections Director, fred Sherman.

Speaker 3: 4:00

So this is a conspiracy to obstruct justice. If they destroy that material during an active criminal investigation, it looks like they're hiding something. There is no reason to destroy that material outside of the fact that they are hiding something, and our supposed constitutional conservative Attorney General, chris Kobach who used to be the Secretary of State during the time period in which we use CONAC, by the way will not do anything to aid Sheriff Hayden in getting to those materials. We need those materials subpoenaed and I have urged President Trump and his team and I know you put in a good word for me as well with his team to go ahead and subpoena that material because it could be exculpatory in his January 6th case.

Speaker 2: 4:45

You're right, and Chris Kobach is a name that the national audience would recognize too. We made a bid to be part of President Trump's team, in fact, and so it's surprising that you have somebody like Chris Kobach, who is apparently and obviously lackadaisical or completely inactive in his approach to this Now the absentia for the.

Speaker 3: 5:05

Sorry to interrupt, doug, but the absentia from the investigation is bewildering to me, and I've even had a call from his chief of staff asking me to stop calling out Chris for not doing anything about election integrity because he said he doesn't have the statutory authority over election crimes, which is a bald-faced lie. Our statute, kansas statute 252435, gives four people statutory authority over election crimes. That's the county election attorney, the I'm sorry, not the county attorney the county attorney, the district attorney of the county, the secretary of state and the Kansas attorney general. And to say that he doesn't have the authority over it and, plus, this is a national security issue. If the Chinese Communist Party was running our elections in our largest county, you would think that there would be more of an impetus at that level to look into it and see how far did they make it into the state.

Speaker 2: 5:56

And the county commission's assignment here of a quote unquote bipartisan team to destroy this. My hunch is, and I'm sure you would agree, that a state of destruction for documents involved in an ongoing criminal case has no expiration date right.

Speaker 3: 6:13

That's correct. That's correct. I even spoke to Sheriff Hayden directly about this and I asked him. I was like, does it have an expiry? And he said no, and he's. I think he's going to try to coordinate with Chris Cobock to see if he will do something, but to this point I've heard nothing. I've seen nothing and you know his behavior to this point has been completely laissez-faire when it comes to election integrity issues, which is, you know, counter indicative of how he's, you know, presented himself in the past. This was a guy who was going on Bannon's war room and pretending to be all based and stuff. And now here we are with a true issue that we could really use his help here in Kansas and he's just sitting on his hands.

Speaker 2: 6:50

Well, we're going to call him out Chris Cobock. I was welcome to come on the show and explain himself. Chris, if you're out there, if your team is watching, you're always welcome to come on. This is an important issue. Ladies and gentlemen across the country, beware, keep your radar up and be aware of your county commissioners, your county election directors, your state attorney general with regards to everything that has to do with election integrity, because where it can happen in Kansas, it can happen in your state as well. We're going to try to get General Flynn on this. We're going to once again contact the Trump people and see if we can get their attention and for them to shine a light on this that. I can't thank you enough for pointing this out. It's an important issue not just to the state of Kansas but to our republic. To your point, if we have the Chinese in here involved in Kansas, who knows where else they might be involved?

Speaker 3: 7:38

What are, in about a minute or so, some closing thoughts that Well, like you said, this is, the Chinese Communist Party was running the election management system in Johnson County for seven years. They had, through the charging documents in LA County we know that they had super administrator privileges to our election management system which also had access to our inventory, such as the machines, the serial numbers, which precincts they were used. If you give the Chinese Communist Party an open door like that, there's no telling what they did in that seven years that they had that open door play with.

Speaker 2: 8:11

All right, ladies and gentlemen, thad Snyder from the state of Kansas, and a call out to our attorney general, chris Coball when are you? Come and talk to us, ladies and gentlemen. Where it can happen here in Kansas, it can happen to you in your state. Believe it for the Republic. Cheers. The right side with Doug Billings.

Speaker 2: 8:31

Hi everybody. Welcome to the set of my show, the right side. I'm Doug Billings. A big day here today in the studio.

Speaker 2: 8:37

We had an interview yesterday with a resident of the state of Kansas by name of Thad Snyder. Thad is becoming fairly well known within the state and the nation with regards to the issue of election integrity. He brought up a couple of issues that involve a potential criminal case potential criminal case involving election integrity issues as being handled by Johnson County Sheriff Johnson County, kansas Sheriff Calvin Hayden, and the destruction of certain documents that have been preserved through an order of stay, a stay of destruction order which is still in effect, according to current state attorney general, chris Cobock, who's coming up on the show next. Attorney general Cobock called his office, called me and wanted to come on the show to respond to the interview that I had with Thad Snyder. I, in full transparency, voted for Chris Cobock. I find him to be a conservative attorney general. I support his work and always think that it's interesting when he comes on and enlightening when he comes on the program. He's been on the show before. We've met in private life at various events around the state and here he is today coming on to respond to whether or not he, in his office, has the ability and the power to investigate certain crimes. I'm going to let him explain it in his own words these crimes that involve election integrity. I think that you'll find his answers intuitive and straightforward and to the point.

Speaker 2: 10:06

Ladies and gentlemen, my interview with Kansas state attorney general, chris Cobock. Hi, everybody, welcome to the right side with Doug Billings. Thanks for tuning in from around the world, coming to you from smack dab, as we always do, in the middle of the fruited plane in the state of Kansas. Chris Cobock, the Kansas attorney general, gracious enough to join us in response to an interview that I had the other day with local cans and Thad Snyder. We were talking about election integrity.

Speaker 2: 10:35

There's an ongoing case, apparently I'm going to let the attorney general talk a lot about this in the state of Kansas, we have Johnson County, kansas, probably the most populous county in the in the entire state, and we have a sheriff here, constitutional sheriff, by the name of Calvin Hayden, who is conducting an investigation into several aspects of the election integrity. I'm just going to leave it at that. I am not an attorney general, I don't play one on TV, nor am I a sheriff, but I do have Chris Cobock here. Who is this Kansas state attorney general? And Chris, I want to give you a chance to reply to some of the things that you saw on the show the other day.

Speaker 4: 11:12

Yeah, sure, thanks, doug, I appreciate it. As many of your viewers know, I have been on the voting integrity crusade for quite a long time and, before I address some of the things that Mr Snyder said that are incorrect, I would like to just remind you or is kind of my history in this thing. Yes, so when I, when I became Secretary of State in January of 2011, I immediately drafted the Secure and Fair Elections Act personally, with the help from other attorneys in the Secretary of State's office, and that made Kansas, without question, the most secure state in the country. Now, no state is. Voter fraud can happen anywhere, no matter how good your laws are. But without question, we were the only state that has had photo ID as well as equivalent security for mail in ballots where you provide your Kansas license number and or a photocopy of a photo ID and signature verification and proof of citizenship, and I drafted that law. Then we I defended that law in court, and one of the elements that was in the original draft of the law that some moderates in the Kansas Senate stripped from the law, which I fought year after year after year to finally get added in 2015, was prosecution authority, because what I found was that if prosecution authority as it existed then, only in the hands of county attorneys wasn't being exercised to prosecute election crimes, and I finally got the legislature to do that in 2015.

Speaker 4: 12:37

Then in 2016, mostly it was already ongoing the ACLU was attacking our proof of citizenship requirement. That is a long legal saga that my office fought through the district court level, then the Kansas Attorney General at the time, derek Schmidt, his office ticket to the Court of Appeals level. That is a battle that I hope is not over. I mean that case is over, but the I'm convinced the US Supreme Court would rule in our favor had the US Supreme Court taken the case. Then fast forward to 2017. President Trump is elected and he nominates me or chooses me as the head of his election integrity Commission, which I lead, and then the commission is disbanded. I won't go into the details unless you want to, but that that was a very interesting disbanded. It appears at the behest of Vice President Pence's office without any foreknowledge, no warning, giving to us commissioners who are trying to fight against voter fraud. And of course, that was in 2017, prior to the 2020 election.

Speaker 2: 13:41

Chris, can I just ask one question about that? Just yeah, you do you have any gut feeling that you can share with us as to why, if Mike Pence, what would been, what a or whomever did it? What would have been the motive?

Speaker 4: 13:53

I don't know if it was Vice President Pence himself or his staff, but I think their motive was they just didn't want to fight. The commission was hit with more than a dozen lawsuits more than any presidential commission in the history of presidential commissions and we were ready to fight it out and we were fighting it out. But I think they lost the stomach for the legal battles. But hey, when you take a stand, you've got to be willing to fight those legal battles through. So those are five things. No, those are four things. And number five was after the 2020 election. Many people will remember the lawsuit that the state of Texas brought against the four states that changed their election rules without any legislative action, meaning it was unconstitutional. That lawsuit was drafted by a group of five attorneys who assisted the state of Texas. I was one of those five attorneys behind the scenes drafting that lawsuit and, unfortunately, the US Supreme Court declined to. They found that there was no standing for Texas.

Speaker 4: 14:52

I believe that was an erroneous decision, but that's why we're under the bridge now. Now fast forward to 2021. There's a bill moving the Kansas legislature on election reform. I call the principal author of the bill and say, hey, I'd like to put another signature verification requirement in Kansas law. We already had one when you request the absentee ballot. We added one in the 2021 law when the ballot is returned.

Speaker 4: 15:14

So that's my history in pushing to secure Kansas elections. If you ask anybody in the ACLU, they will probably call me the most heinous person in the world when it comes to election security. As of 2020, I still hadn't heard of that. Snyder and I like his zeal and I like that he's fighting for election integrity. But the notion that somebody who wasn't there during those fights didn't show up, the legislature didn't campaign on election integrity, didn't do anything, and suddenly he proclaims himself the, I guess, the voice of election integrity that's fine. We welcome him to the battle. But this notion that somehow Chris Cobuck isn't doing enough. Now that's just up to my becoming attorney general. Since I've become attorney general, here are four things we've already done in the less than a year that I've been here. First, the attorney general's office. My office issued an attorney general opinion stating clearly that when there is a recount, the actual ballots must be recounted, not images of the ballots.

Speaker 2: 16:16

Yes, yes, I remember that.

Speaker 4: 16:18

Yep, yep, that is an important point of law that was being disregarded, shall we say, by some election officials. Second, I appeared in the Kansas Supreme Court and personally argued the case defending our proof of signature requirement. That was important for me, and the attorney general himself appears in a relatively small number of cases, but that is the case that I've also appeared in some of the cases defending our SB 180 law, which says you can't change the sexes on birth certificates and driver's licenses, but that was so important to me that I wanted to be the attorney arguing that case, and I have argued many cases across the federal courts of the United States and this one was, in particular, in the Kansas Supreme Court.

Speaker 4: 17:04

Number three many of your viewers may be aware that there was a legislative battle in 2023 where I was asking the legislature to get rid of ballot drop boxes, and we had a very unusual confrontation in that committee where the secretary of state the current secretary of state, who favors ballot drop boxes and I were disagreeing and we were going head to head, telling the committee that we favor opposite points of view on this issue. I think I'm right. I think most of your viewers would agree that ballot drop boxes are unnecessary and they facilitate for a rod, and so that was number three. Number four we are actively investigating a voter fraud crime. Right now I can't say more about it, but I would just point out that, ever since I wrote the law that was enacted in 2015, giving the attorney general and the secretary of state prosecution authority, I'm the only secretary of state who's exercised that authority and, assuming that this pending investigation leads to charges, the only attorney general who's ever exercised that authority.

Speaker 2: 18:14

Are you referencing 25-2435, the one that you wrote that statute?

Speaker 4: 18:19

Yes, and I found it particularly amusing that in your prior interview with that he says I spoke to Chris Kobach's chief of staff and he said that they don't have the authority to prosecute election crimes. I think that maybe was listening carefully. I believe what my chief of staff said is we have the authority to prosecute election crimes. We don't have the authority to administer elections. That belongs and exists in Kansas law in the secretary of state's office. So if there is an election crime, your viewers can rest assured we will go after it.

Speaker 2: 18:52

And is this the? And you might not be able to comment, and we understand that you might not, but you mentioned an investigation being conducted by Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden, and there are some documents that were protected by your predecessor a stay of destruction order, some such thing. Is this the case you're talking about? Is this the investigation you're talking about?

Speaker 4: 19:15

It is not that that document protection order is still in effect. It doesn't need to be reiterated for it to be in effect. I will say that on that subject, that it is important to distinguish between bad election management and committing an election crime. Mr Snyder came to our office and said look what's happening. This Chinese company, connick, has got custody of these voting records in Johnson County. In my opinion, that's a very bad idea and it is something that should not happen because we don't want our voter election records to be anywhere near a location that the Chinese Communist Party could control.

Speaker 4: 19:54

However, bad policy is not a crime unless it is specifically defined in Kansas law as one of the election crimes. There's a list of about a dozen election crimes with election forgery, impersonating election officer, intimidating voters. They're laid out very clearly and if there is a crime, rest assured we'll go after it. But I found it disconcerting that someone who purports to be a conservative wants to just go after any bad policy and put somebody in jail for that bad policy just because it's bad policy. We live in a country where there's the rule of law. You can't be thrown in jail unless there is a crime that you have committed and you have met all the elements of that crime and, as much as I agree with him that that's bad policy, I can't throw somebody in jail or prosecute somebody for doing something. That is not a crime. So it's important to understand that Kansas law, every state's law, defines crimes and you have committed a crime if you do this. A, b and c and those are the elements of the crime. Making bad policy is not a crime.

Speaker 2: 21:00

Again, ladies and gentlemen, with the Kansas State Attorney General, chris Kobach. Chris, the case that I mentioned, the one that Sheriff Hayden is involved with, and, according to Thad Snyder, the Johnson County Commissioner, mike Kelly, has commissioned a bipartisan quote unquote committee to look into the possibility of getting rid of these documents that are supposed to have the stay of destruction order. Do you know anything about it? Can you comment on that? Is it true?

Speaker 4: 21:25

I have not heard about Commissioner Kelly's what you're describing as his latest move in that. We will certainly be watching it. If they're intending to violate that stay of destruction request, then that's certainly something that would be, you know, potentially illegal and certainly troubling. But as long as that stays in place, they should not be doing that.

Speaker 2: 21:45

Okay and I think that's the rub for a lot of us, as I watched from the peripheral of this, that was concerning to me as well and you're saying that, look, as Attorney General, if you were to become aware of factual evidence that would indicate that these documents were being pursued for destruction, that would be something your office would look into.

Speaker 4: 22:05

We would absolutely look into it. Okay, bear in mind, we and I'm not making a comment about that particular set of documents Again, we have looked very carefully and we continue to look very carefully at a number of things that are happening in our state and if there is an election crime, if the behavior matches the behavior defined as a crime, people should rest assured we're going to go after it and I'm fairly certain that there will be something announced in the coming weeks. Again, the investigation is still underway and we won't prosecute anything unless the elements of a crime are clearly there. But we do not look the other way when anything involving election fraud happens, and anyone who knows me knows that this is a cause that has been near my heart for many, many years.

Speaker 2: 22:51

Okay, well met, mr Attorney General. I appreciate you very much Coming on at the last minute here this afternoon on the program. I appreciate you and your team making time for us. We stand with you in your office On this program. We certainly notice and pay attention to election integrity issues. They're one of the key factors that drive us and motivate us and we appreciate your efforts in keeping the state of Kansas in line with regards to all of that. I think you've been in your career, quite frankly, a role model for every state in the union when it comes to election integrity.

Speaker 4: 23:26

Thank you. I just wish more states would follow Kansas's lead and do what we can. But you know, as this, as I mentioned at the beginning, no matter how good our laws are, the people who want to commit election fraud, whether on a small scale or a large scale, will still try to find ways around it. And that's one thing I've learned over the years fighting in this arena is you can never completely seal it, seal the system against fraud, and so that's why you have to have people willing to prosecute the crimes, people willing to investigate the crimes, and I will continue to do that. That's why I drafted that law giving the authority to prosecute election crimes both to the Secretary of State and to the Attorney General, so that there would always be someone hopefully willing to investigate, willing to look, and of course, it also resides in the County Attorneys. So there are three different entities the County Attorney, the Attorney General and the Secretary of State, and I believe and we're the only state that has that, by the way- and that's what.

Speaker 2: 24:26

Yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead sir.

Speaker 4: 24:28

Well, and that's you know. Looking at this issue for so so long for I guess going on 14 years now that's one of the things I've learned is you've got to have people willing to investigate and prosecute where there is a crime. And unfortunately in most states election fraud occurs. But the individual who's given the authority to prosecute has never done a case like that before, may have a conflict of interest, may just may just not be comfortable doing that kind of case, and that's why in Kansas we have three potential prosecuting entities to make sure that when election crimes occur they do get prosecuted and people can rest assured that I will enforce the law, and I'm all about the rule of law here.

Speaker 4: 25:12

But that also means you don't go too far in our constitutional republic and you try to manufacture a crime when all you're really looking at is bad policy. We absolutely have to recognize the rule of law, recognize the constitutional limits on anyone's power, no matter how well intention they be they may be. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, as our founding fathers recognized, the biggest threat to our rights comes from government, not from other private individuals, and that's why they designed the Constitution to put our government in a cage, and so we must always recognize that, when government exercises its powers, it must exercise only those powers that are precisely given to the government, to the Constitution and relevant statutes, and not announced more, because that is the ultimate protection of our liberties, the limits on power and our Constitution.

Speaker 2: 26:04

Well, that certainly resonates over here. And just to tie this particular issue up, we had gentlemen Thad Snyder on the program earlier and in general, and let me just summarize my impression of your response, if there were a crime being committed, Thad Snyder shouting from the mountaintops about a specific issue, if it were, or if it becomes criminal, your office, according to you, would be committed to look into that.

Speaker 4: 26:30

Absolutely and, as I say, stay tuned.

Speaker 2: 26:33

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we've had the honor to have Kansas State Attorney General Chris Kobach on the program this afternoon in response to an interview we had earlier today. We're going to air both programs again and give the audience the full scope of Mr Kobach's comments and response, and we appreciate you watching and tuning in to the right side with Doug Billings. Again, mr Attorney General, thank you very much. My pleasure.

Speaker 4: 26:58

Take care, merry.

Speaker 2: 26:59

Christmas to you and your family. You too, thank you.

Speaker 1: 27:04

The right side with Doug Billings. The right side with Doug Billings.

Speaker 2: 27:20

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