June 18, 2018

Kris Kobach Gets What He Deserves

Kris Kobach in happier days with his pal Donald Trump.Peter Foley/CNP via ZUMA

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Here’s something to cheer you up. A few years ago, Kris Kobach, the odious immigration hardliner who is currently Kansas Secretary of State, shepherded a voter ID bill through the Kansas legislature. Today, a Republican federal judge struck down the law in an opinion so incendiary it’s a wonder Kobach himself didn’t go up in flames. She ruled that the law was unconstitutional; that Kobach produced no real evidence of voter fraud; that Kobach’s “expert witnesses” were cretins; and that the law prevented tens of thousands of legal voters from casting ballots.

But that’s not the best part. Kobach chose to personally represent Kansas in this case, and he persistently flouted the rules of evidence by failing to disclose documents and repeatedly trying to introduce new data that he had not given opposing lawyers a chance to see:

The disclosure violations set forth above document a pattern and practice by Defendant of flaunting disclosure and discovery rules that are designed to prevent prejudice and surprise at trial. The Court ruled on each disclosure issue as it arose, but given the repeated instances involved, and the fact that Defendant resisted the Court’s rulings by continuing to try to introduce such evidence after exclusion, the Court finds that further sanctions are appropriate.

Rick Hasen tells us about these “further sanctions”:

Ha! There’s no one more deserving of being humiliated like this than Kris Kobach. The only question left is whether the voters of Kansas will interpret this as a well-deserved rebuke that makes him unsuitable to become their governor in November; or if Kobach will somehow convince them that it was the act of an elitist judge who loves voter fraud because she’s black. I can hardly wait.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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