{"id":7241,"date":"2009-06-19T18:40:02","date_gmt":"2009-06-20T01:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=7241"},"modified":"2009-06-20T01:19:10","modified_gmt":"2009-06-20T08:19:10","slug":"with-friends-like-this-another-guilty-plea-in-clay-county-ky-election-fraud-conspiracy-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=7241","title":{"rendered":"With ‘Friends’ Like This: Another Guilty Plea in Clay County, KY, Election Fraud Conspiracy Case"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following on the heels of this week’s guilty plea<\/a> to voter registration fraud charges by Mark Anthony Jacoby, the man who headed the company which ran the GOP’s voter registration efforts in 2008, and last month’s guilty plea<\/a> by Republican election official Paul Bishop for his part in a broad election fraud conspiracy in Clay County, KY (and, oh yeah, we’ll have more on the latest voter fraud allegations against Ann Coulter<\/a> in the next day or two<\/em>), comes this new disturbing development tonight in that KY case…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

From the Lexington Herald-Leader<\/i><\/a>:<\/p>\n

A Clay County man has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in a case related to vote-fraud charges against several local officials.<\/p>\n

Richard Brian Hubbard was charged with sending a threatening photo of himself holding a gun to two people who have cooperated in the investigation of the officials. Investigators say the photo was sent via MySpace.<\/p>\n

Hubbard later told the FBI that he was on the witnesses’ friends list and that he had not learned their identities from Charles Wayne Jones, an election official charged in the vote-fraud case.<\/p>\n

Those statements were not true, Hubbard acknowledged in pleading guilty Monday in federal court in London.<\/p>\n

Charges related to threatening the witnesses will be dropped when Hubbard is sentenced in October, according to his plea agreement.<\/p>\n

Those charged with scheming to buy votes in Clay County are Jones; former Circuit Judge R. Cletus Maricle; school Superintendent Douglas Adams; county Clerk Freddy Thompson; William Stivers, who has been an election officer; and Bart Morris and his wife Debra, who own a waste-hauling company.<\/p>\n

All have pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n

Paul Bishop, a former election officer, has pleaded guilty.<\/p><\/div>\n

In addition to their vote-buying, said to have gone back as far as the 2002 elections, the conspiracy also alleged included changing votes on touch-screen electronic voting machines made by ES&S — the nation’s largest supplier of such unverifiable voting systems — without the knowledge of the voters.<\/p>\n

Judge Maricle, said to be the “ringleader” in the conspiracy, had been held in jail longer than the others charged, due to concerns of witness intimidation from the powerful official. He was eventually released<\/a> earlier this month, as the case is still pending trial, but it looks like the concerns weren’t for naught.<\/p>\n

Here’s some of The BRAD BLOG’s<\/a> previous coverage of that criminal conspiracy:<\/p>\n