An official state investigation is now underway into multiple voter fraud charges against Rightwing author and one-time attorney Ann Coulter in Connecticut. The investigation began after a complaint was filed with the state's Elections Enforcement Commission on January 29, 2009.

The BRAD BLOG has exclusively obtained a copy of that one-page complaint which is posted in full, as filed with Joan M. Andrews, Director of Legal Affairs and Enforcement for the commission, at the end of this article.

The complaint was filed by Daniel Borchers, a conservative Christian critic of Coulter's following allegations in the New York Daily News in January that she had illegally voted by absentee ballot in CT, using her parents address there, in 2002 and 2004, despite being a resident of New York City at the time.

Previously allegations by Borchers against Coulter have been the subject of a number of articles over the years here at The BRAD BLOG, and he has, on occasion, even guest blogged a number of times here for us himself.

Though the allegations of Coulter having committed voter fraud in CT in 2002 and 2004 would be her first known instances of casting ballots illegally, they are not the first allegations of such crimes against Coulter. In 2005, after she moved from NY to Palm Beach, FL, she knowingly falsified her Voter Registration Form (a 3rd degree felony), knowingly voted at the wrong precinct (a 1st degree misdemeanor), as well as gave a false address for her drivers license (another 3rd degree felony).

Despite an inaccurate report from AP in May of 2007, subsequently picked up by other media, Coulter was never "cleared" of the voter fraud charges in FL.

The BRAD BLOG has posted indisputable evidence of her FL crimes, including her actual fraudulent Voter Registration Form on which she lied when filling out her own address, official testimony from a Palm Beach pollworker (and the county's former Supervisor of Elections) detailing her knowingly having voted in the wrong precinct, as well as a report from the Palm Beach Township Chief of Police, verifying the crimes.

Coulter, however, was able to escape accountability for the illegalities in FL, due to an inappropriate (and likely illegal) intervention from a former boyfriend of hers in the FBI, and gaming of the legal system, such that the crimes were eventually nullified by the statute of limitations there.

The most recent complaint from Borchers follows articles by the New York Daily News and Lee Stranahan at Huffington Post last month, detailing her apparently-illegal CT absentee voting. But it would not be the first time he would play a roll in this continuing saga...

In May 2007, after the Palm Beach County Sheriff declined to prosecute, and dismissed the charges, it was revealed that the reason given for the dismissal was the intervention of FBI agent John Fitzgerald. A phone call made by Fitzgerald on Coulter's behalf, to the rookie detective looking into the local case of voter fraud, included a claim that Coulter had used the address of her real estate agent, Suzanne Frisbie, because she was being stalked by Borchers.

Had she been found guilty of the charges, she might have faced a $5,000 fine, and three years behind bars for the one third-degree felony alone.

As we pointed out at the time, when the Palm Beach County Sheriff had dismissed the charges, even if the allegations of Borchers being under investigation for stalking were true --- and evidence shows they are not --- it would have been incredibly inappropriate to reveal the name of someone who was the target of such an active FBI investigation. At the time, the FBI promised an internal probe into the incident. The BRAD BLOG has been unable to receive information on that investigation, and if it was ever even carried out, despite several attempts to reach the FBI on the matter.

Moreover, Coulter's expressed fears of being stalked are belied, and revealed as extraordinarily disingenuous, by yet another incident involving Coulter and a BRAD BLOG guest blogger. In November of 2005, Coulter posted the private address and family phone number of Lydia Cornell, an actress and citizen journalist who had filed a story critical of the GOP superstar on these pages.

Coulter had access to Cornell's personal information, after our blogger had sent her a private email requesting comment on the story before it was published. Though Coulter didn't reply to the email prior to publication, she later posted it, in full, after the story ran here.

After news of the dismissal of the case by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's office, the matter was picked up by the Florida Election Commission who took long enough looking into the issue, that they were eventually able to to dismiss it in late 2007, on the basis that Florida's two-year Statute of Limitations had run out.

While the Associated Press incorrectly reported that Coulter was "cleared" of the charges, following the intercession of the FBI's Fitzgerald, she had decidedly not been. Nonetheless, as they never issued a correction to the story, a number of media outlets have since mis-reported the AP report, as fact, while covering the more recent charges in CT.

Borchers, the founder of CoulterWatch and Citizens for Principled Conservatism, told The BRAD BLOG this morning that he was "surprised" by the number of media outlets which have contacted him for interviews since the recent story of his CT complaint broke in Sunday's New York Daily News. He was quoted by the Daily News as saying "For over 10 years, Ann Coulter has gotten away with illegal, immoral and unethical behavior, ranging from plagiarism to defamation, perjury to voter fraud."

In our phone call with him this morning, he once again dismissed the notion that he was under investigation for stalking Coulter, despite have been a years-long critic of hers, documenting, among other things, her frequent use of violent, eliminationist rhetoric against political foes, and positions that he alleges are hypocritical in that they are neither Christian nor Conservative.

In regard to the stalker allegations against him, made via her attorney and her former boyfriend at the FBI, Borchers notes that, "even if that were true, it doesn't make sense that she'd put her realtor in jeopardy, as well as her parents in Connecticut," by using their respective addresses on official voter forms, rather than her own. Coulter's FL realtor Frisbie had said she had no idea that Coulter used her address to fill out her Voter Registration Application in Palm Beach, until after the story had broken in the media.

Borchers told us that, since the story broke yesterday, he has received "dozens of emails, and only two of them were not supportive" of his efforts.

Unlike in FL, there is no Statute of Limitations for voter fraud charges in CT, Borchers notes. He also added that he was told by the CT Election Enforcement officer that "anybody, anywhere," could file for an official investigation of such crimes. Borchers is a resident of Maryland.

Voter Fraud and the GOP

The voter fraud allegations against Coulter are particularly troublesome for the GOP, given that their election strategy has long been to allege massive Democratic voter fraud --- despite evidence to the contrary --- in hopes of furthering legislation that would require Photo ID restrictions for voters at the polling place.

Such legislation, countless non-partisan and bi-partisan studies have shown, would adversely disenfranchise minorities, the elderly, and students --- all of whom tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic --- due to the fact that anywhere from an estimated 20 to 30 million of such legal voters in the United States do not currently possess the type of ID which would be needed to meet the restrictive voting requirements of such laws.

To date, we are aware of none of the Rightwing media outlets who routinely decry "massive Democratic voter fraud" (without actually providing such evidence) having called for Coulter to be held accountable for her very well-documented voter fraud crimes in Florida, and now in Connecticut.

• • • Articles and evidentiary documents from the entire Coulter Voter Fraud saga have been indexed, from over the years, at this BRAD BLOG Special Coverage page. We told the entire story in full, for the first time, including additional information from Borchers and more, in this article, as published in the April 2008 edition of Hustler magazine.

Borchers' official complaint, filed on January 29, 2009, with the CT State Elections Enforcement Commission, follows below. We've redacted some of his personal information, and the version submitted to CT was notarized, as per state law...

                 

Article Categories: Ann Coulter, Election 2004, Florida, Election Fraud, Connecticut, Election 2002, Accountability, FBI, Republicans, Election 2005, Vote-by-Mail