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EXCLUSIVE: Former Trump campaign national press secretary and former White House principal deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley is launching a nonprofit to advocate for the passage of “constitutional election integrity laws” in all states across the nation ahead of the 2022 midterms and beyond, Fox News has learned.
Gidley’s 501(c)4 nonprofit, the Voter Protection Alliance (VPA), is set to “ensure that every legal vote cast by every legal voter is counted.”
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“There were well-documented and immeasurable amounts of irregularities, illegalities, anomalies and fraud committed in the 2020 election,” Gidley told Fox News. “This has to stop right now. We must save America by protecting the integrity of our elections.”
Gidley told Fox News that the organization will be committed to “developing and deploying facts to the American people that counter the false media narratives regarding 2020.”
“The leftist power structure in this country pushes the lie that there were no significant issues in the last election,” Gidley said. “But VPA will refute this fake narrative and work to help enhance election security in our states making it easier to vote and harder to cheat.”
His nonprofit will “lead the national charge” and “instill legal voters with confidence in our democratic system they so richly deserve,” he explained.
Gidley said his strategy is an “everything on the table approach to protect voters.”
“We will mobilize massive grassroots organizations, have discussions with legislators about what laws are needed to achieve election integrity, and where officeholders violate the law, we will challenge them,” Gidley said.
He added: “The future of America is at stake and VPA will fight to protect her.”
The nonprofit, according to Gidley, is set to shepherd legislation through state legislatures in all 50 states.
Meanwhile, the nonprofit will have an advisory council, including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who touted the nonprofit as “exactly what America needs to help ensure laws are passed in states so every single legal vote cast by a legal voter is counted.”
Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer and a national committeewoman for the Republican National Committee for California, is also on the advisory board. Dhillon called addressing election integrity “critical to the future of America.”
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“State legislatures have the primary constitutional authority and duty to pass laws that ensure their individual elections are free and fair,” Dhillon said. “Voters deserve to be protected, and VPA will be on the front lines fighting to ensure the American people have elections that once again instill confidence.”
Georgia State Rep. Vernon Jones, a lifelong Democrat who recently joined the Republican Party, is also on the board.
Jones slammed Democrats and the media, saying they “are lying about the integrity of the last election and lying about new state laws designed to protect voters – like the one that passed in my home state of Georgia.”
Congressional Democrats are pushing to pass a wide-ranging election and campaign finance reform bill, which Republicans in Congress vehemently oppose. The bill passed the Democratic-controlled House last month along party lines, but now faces an uncertain future in the Senate, where the Democrats hold an even more fragile majority.
Democrats highlight that their bill would “improve access to the ballot box” by creating automatic voter registration across the country and by ensuring that individuals who have completed felony sentences have their full voting rights restored. The bill would also expand early voting and enhance absentee voting by simplifying voting by mail. There was a surge in absentee voting during last year’s primaries and general election due to health concerns of in-person voting at polling stations amid the coronavirus pandemic.
If passed into law, the bill would also enhance federal support for voting system security, increase oversight of election system vendors, upgrade online political ad disclosure and require all organizations involved in political activity to disclose their large donors, create a multiple matching system for small-dollar donations, which would be paid for by a new surcharge on “corporate law breakers and wealthy tax cheats,” tighten rules on super PACs, and beef up the enforcement powers of the Federal Election Commission.
But Republicans are slamming the measure saying it would lead to a federal government takeover of elections and accuse Democrats of trying to change election rules to benefit themselves. But Democrats say the measure is needed to combat the push by GOP lawmakers in some states where Republicans control the governor’s office and the legislature to pass bills that would tighten voting laws, which Democrats characterize as voter suppression— like in Georgia.
The new law in Georgia changes how the state verifies the identity of voters who can request and cast absentee ballots. The change eliminates signature-matching—a process that can be subjective at times — as the method of confirming absentee voters’ identities. Instead, if voters have a driver’s license number or a state ID number, they are required to use that to verify who they are.
This change has been criticized by many as likely to make it more difficult for Georgians, specifically minorities who are more likely to vote Democratic, to vote by mail.
“We cannot and will not back down from this fight,” Jones told Fox News. “I’m so glad to work with VPA on these issues and help further their efforts give Americans confidence in their elections again.”
The 2020 presidential election was called in favor of President Joe Biden, but former President Trump refused to concede for weeks after Fox News, the Associated Press and other news networks projected Biden would win enough electoral votes to defeat him.
Trump has repeatedly charged that the presidential election was “rigged” and has claimed that there was “massive voter fraud” in a handful of battleground states where Biden narrowly edged the president, to score a 306-232 Electoral College victory over the GOP incumbent.
Trump’s legal time filed dozens of lawsuits in key battleground states contesting the election. They were shot down in state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court. And former Attorney General Bill Barr, before stepping down, said that “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
A recount in Wisconsin, as well as one in Georgia, also failed to alter Biden’s victories.
Recent polling indicates that election integrity remains a major concern for Republican voters, as Trump’s sway over the GOP remains immense.
Gidley’s plans come after other close Trump allies launch their own organizations.
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This week, former Vice President Mike Pence launched a new policy and advocacy organization to promote “pro-freedom policies of the last four years,” featuring an advisory board of nearly a dozen Trump-era alumni.
Also this week, former Senior Advisor to President Trump, Stephen Miller, launched America First Legal, a new conservative nonprofit organization “committed to upholding America First principles and combating the left’s radical and lawless agenda.”
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Meanwhile, the news of Gidley’s nonprofit comes as he is currently at Mar-a-Lago at the Conservative party Institute conference, sources familiar told Fox News, along with a number of other former Trump officials like former chief of staff Mark Meadows, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, former acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell and more.
Trump spoke at the conference Thursday night.