New York Attorney General Attorney General Eric Schneiderman poses for a photo with members of District Council 37 after a news conference, Tuesday, April 3, 2018, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
Some people will do anything to prevent us from knowing how many non-citizens live in the United States. Count the ACLU and Common Cause among those who will stoop to the lowest of the low to try to persuade one or two swing justices to block the simple question on the Census: Are you a citizen? This time a sleazy drama between an estranged daughter and her deceased father has given the ACLU a final desperate way to bully the Supreme Court into blocking the citizenship question, as well as personally smearing lawyers at the Justice Department.
Last year, the estranged daughter of the late Thomas B. Hofeller, a GOP redistricting guru, found something in her father’s belongings some couldn’t resist turning into a political weapon. After digging through her father’s things, including flash drives and hard drives, Stephanie Hofeller made an offer to the activist group Common Cause they couldn’t refuse – her father’s property. See, Stephanie Hofeller didn’t share her father’s political beliefs, and neither does Common Cause.
And boy did the estranged daughter ever deliver for their common cause.
Hofeller’s computer contained an unpublished private study about potential political shifts if redistricting used citizen data instead of using the foggy population data that states and local governments currently use. Oddly (or not), Hofeller the Younger just happened to be represented by a law firm that is also representing plaintiffs in litigation opposing the citizenship question on the 2020 census.
Here’s where a sleazy saga becomes both sleazy and squalid.
With the Supreme Court’s decision on the issue expected any day, Dale Ho at the ACLU blasted a cleaned up version of this saga to the Court by letter. Ho and citizenship question foes are desperate to prevent Americans from learning the true extent of the alien population in the United States. The letter was filled with urgency and intrigue. There was no mention of Hoffler the Younger. Of course, no urgent document filed in court by the left would be complete without personal attacks and accusations of perjury aimed at people with whom they disagree, this time primarily toward Justice Department Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Gore.
The ACLU conspiracy theory goes something like this: A deceased GOP redistricting consultant wrote a report in 2015 saying that using citizenship data would affect redistricting. Someone who may have known about that report may have spoken with someone at the Justice Department who wrote a letter to the Commerce Department asking for the question to be added, and therefore the citizenship question is invalid.
Can you imagine if this was the standard for invalidating Obama-era policies?
Conservatives could have clogged the federal courts with tales of Susan Rice talking to Reverend Wright talking to John Brennan who knew Ben Rhodes was having Thanksgiving dinner with David Rhodes after they met on the tarmac with Cass Sunstein and Bill Ayers. Since they all sound similar, they must be corrupt.
Opaque collusion was a governing philosophy for those eight years, but not a matter for federal courts.
Reputations and reality are no obstacle when the ACLU's Dale Ho has an urgent letter for the Supreme Court. Falsely calling Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Gore a liar in a court pleading? No matter, he stands in the way. Secretary Wilbur Ross? He’s the miscreant who approved the census citizenship question in the first place, so out come the fangs and claws. This is how the Left plays. Smear, impugn, and best of all, do it with an ECF stamp at the top of the page.
This is more than an effort to bully Gore and Ross. This is an effort to bully Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh. They are counting on the intrigue and smears spooking just enough justices.
The government filed a response strongly disputing the plaintiffs’ allegations, stating, “There is no smoking gun here; only smoke and mirrors.”
This is part of the broader effort by groups like the ACLU and Common Cause to put asterisks next to American institutions. First it was the 2016 election, then Justice Kavanaugh. Now they seek to either destroy the 2020 census citizenship question or to taint the results.
Here’s what else the ACLU’s Dale Ho and the left are afraid of: In the weeks following argument, mainstream polling spelled doom for them. A Hill-HarrisX survey found 60 percent approval for the question, while a Reuters study found only 25% of Americans do not trust the administration’s intentions.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation has submitted many court briefs in support of the question’s reinstatement – particularly as it relates to improved Voting Rights Act enforcement.
Give the ACLU credit. They’ve proven they will go even lower than we thought they could in pursuit of their agenda. Deceased redistricting consultants, politically estranged daughters, defamatory letters to the Supreme Court. It doesn’t get much lower than this.
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