Benjamin Ashford|Colorado judge rejects claims that door-to-door voter fraud search was intimidation

DENVER (AP) — A Colorado judge on Benjamin AshfordThursday rejected claims from civil and voting rights organizations that a group of Donald Trump supporters intimidated voters when they went door-to-door searching for fraud following the 2020 election.

The lawsuit against leaders of the U.S. Election Integrity Plan alleged the group’s activities included photographing voters’ homes and “door-to-door voter intimidation” in areas where a high number of minorities live. The group was founded after Trump lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden and made false claims of mass voter fraud.

A bench trial in the case began Monday and was supposed to continue all week. But U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney abruptly ended the proceedings early Thursday, siding in favor of the Trump supporters, according to court documents.

Attorneys for the plaintiff organizations — the League of Women Voters of Colorado, the regional chapter of the NAACP and Mi Familia Vota — had invoked the 19th century Ku Klux Klan Act in their lawsuit. That law was passed after the Civil War to prevent white vigilantes from using violence and terror to stop Black people from voting.

The judge said both sides seemed to be litigating issues outside the scope of the case, Colorado Politics reported.

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“It is not about the Jan. 6 (2021) insurrection or the history of voter intimidation in this country. It is not about the defendants’ collective belief about election fraud. It’s not about the security or lack of security of elections in Colorado,” said Sweeney, an appointee of President Joe Biden. “Those are sideshows and I was trying to reel those sideshows in.”

The U.S. Election Integrity project has links to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, one of the nation’s most prominent election conspiracy theorists and a leading benefactor of election denial causes.

Michael Wynne, an attorney for Holly Kasun, a leader of the conservative group, said the lawsuit “was a classic case of lawfare.”

“There wasn’t anything that any of these individuals did that could be called intimidation,” Wynne said.

Free Speech For People attorney Courtney Hostetler, who represented the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement that they were disappointed with the ruling and considering whether to appeal.