August 4, 2018
Member Of Disbanded Trump Voter Fraud Commission Speaks Out
DON GONYEA: So, Secretary Dunlap, I - as I understand it, it is your contention that
this commission was set up basically to validate a claim made by President Trump that 3 to 5 million people voted illegally in the 2016 election. Is that correct?
DUNLAP: Well, the commission was purported to investigate the claim and make suggestions on ways to improve the integrity of elections. But, as the commission went forward in this work, it became more and more mysterious in how it was moving. And, basically, we were getting walled off. And because we couldn't find out what our own commission was working on, I made a formal inquiry and was told that they were reviewing my request with their legal counsel, which made me scratch my head a little bit. And it led to a court case we ultimately prevailed in. And the court case was premised on the idea that, as an equal member of the commission, I was entitled to the working documents of the commission.
(. . .)
DUNLAP: Well,
what's remarkable about the documents is what's not in there, and what's not in there is any substantiated evidence of voter misconduct at any scale. In fact, one of the troubling things about the documents that we saw was that before we were even really meeting, commission staff were working on a framework of a report. And several sections of report talk about voter fraud, and those sections are completely blank. They didn't insert any information whatsoever.
So that's why we've been saying that,
even though the idea was to investigate voter fraud, it is pretty clear that the purpose of the commission was to actually affirm and validate the president's claims whether or not we had any evidence of any such voter misconduct.