Episode 108: So much fraud…Too little time? With Kenneth Blackwell
Bill Walton: 00:07 Welcome to the Bill Walton Show. I'm here with my friend, the Honorable Ken Blackwell, who is a senior advisor to the Trump campaign and former secretary of state for the state of Ohio and also a former mayor of Cincinnati. And we're here to talk about the state of play with the Trump re-election. Welcome Ken.
Ken Blackwell: 00:28 It's good to be with you Bill.
Bill Walton: 00:32 Let me start with sort of the obvious questions. What's our timeline? Is there a chance for a Trump victory? And we're going to get into a lot more of what's happening with each state by state, but could you give us an overview of how you feel about where we are?
Ken Blackwell: 00:46 Let's start with the clock and a schedule. The great Vince Lombardi once said that his good teams never lost a game, sometimes the clock just ran out on them. One, there is a mountain of evidence that's materialized in four or five of the battleground states that are now being presented, not only to the courts, but to legislative bodies that have the authority to name the electors. Tomorrow, the Safe Harbor period began for those states that have no controversy surrounding their decision. In states where there has been a legal contest or a contest being prosecuted before the state legislature, they in fact actually have to January the 6th. On December the 14th, those states that have no dispute will send their Certificates of Ascertainment, signed by the governor and the secretary of state in their respective states, to the archivist at the Library of Congress.
He then sends that to the officials at the US Congress and they then certify on January the 6th. If in fact there is still disputed seatings of electors from given states, this could play out all the way to January the 20th. So the art here is not to prematurely give up, but to be sensitive to the real clock, the real schedule and continue to prosecute the cases in those states where there are now mountains of evidence of anomalies as well as irregularities.
Bill Walton: 03:00 So we've got five states that matter, or four states. We've got Pennsylvania-
Ken Blackwell: 03:07 Michigan.
Bill Walton: 03:07 Georgia, Michigan-
Ken Blackwell: 03:09 Wisconsin.
Bill Walton: 03:10 And Arizona?
Ken Blackwell: 03:11 Yeah. And some [inaudible 00:03:14] still in Nevada.
Bill Walton: 03:16 Okay well, the fraud there was incredible, but...
Ken Blackwell: 03:21 Yeah. Bill, this is it. One, we can't throw in the towel. We have to continue to collect the evidence, play it out in the public arena and before the courts. Judge Alito is going to... He's already told the folks in Pennsylvania that they have to respond to the charges of corruption, irregularities and fraud. And then I think that the evidence is compelling and that he will in fact decide that matters should be presented to the full court.
Bill Walton: 04:05 Well, he's already moved it up a day, hadn't it? To give more time or to jump ahead of a premature certification?
Ken Blackwell: 04:12 Yeah. He wanted to make sure, given that the date that he originally said was the date that the Safe Harbor began, he then moved it up one day to make sure that he didn't get caught in that trap of having to say, "Oh. We didn't get this contest. We didn't hear this before the Safe Harbor commenced." So that was, one the right move on his part and a move that I think bought us enough daylight, enough of an opening and schedule to make the Pennsylvania case. And it's a compelling case. I mean, there were not just irregularities and tracks of fraud, there was a violation of the constitutional authority of the state legislature in that state, as well as a violation of their state constitution in terms of how an election should be carried out.
Bill Walton: 05:17 Well you've got enough subject matter expertise as secretary of state and mayor of a big city. I mean, you know how those machines work. We could dig into all the weeds. But let me just understand where we are with the court of public opinion. There are a lot of people that supported Trump that seemed to have already been acting defeated. And they say, "Well look. The results for example, in Cincinnati or in Pennsylvania, we've got 60,000 vote margin. There's not enough evidence to convince a judge. It's going to be a big challenge. We got to overcome these numbers and in three to four states." I hear that. And I think, A is that true? And B if it's not true, how do we fight that?
Ken Blackwell: 06:05 Bill, I was a linebacker and I was always coached that it was important to keep my knees bent and my feet moving. Because as soon as I straighten up, soon as I stopped my feet from moving, I was just going to be pushed around the field by those butts and tackles. And so that's what I try to tell our team. Look, we in fact had to keep our beat moving. We have zeroed in, and it's time for us to make the big tackle. And we can do that both in the court of public opinion, and I think, in the Supreme court as well as other federal courts.
Bill Walton: 06:50 Now, the Supreme Courts already... We've already got the case in Pennsylvania with absentee ballots received after election day and Pittsburgh and Philadelphia not meeting the state voting law requirements. Are there cases in front of the court and the other battleground states, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada? What's the state of play there with the Supreme Court?
Ken Blackwell: 07:17 Again Bill, this has being two-tracked. One is the court track. The other is the track within state legislatures. I think ironically, the most solid case that can be made, based on evidence, hardcore evidence, of video and court records from eyewitnesses of the fraud is in Georgia. Ironically, there is resistance by the governor and the secretary of state to open up the system. The governor said, he's not going to call a special session of the state legislature. And so he shuts down the court avenue and he shuts down the state legislature, the state where we have the most evidence of fraud, Fulton County for instance, that's that problem. Pennsylvania is on a good track. I think it will be held in court, heard by the Supreme court. Michigan, I think there's a great chance that will have the state legislature, see the Trump electors. Which means that there will be two sets of electors, those that have been signed off by the governor, and then those that are signed off by the state legislature. Which brings us back to January 6, when the Congress has to sort that out.
And a thing, this is a battle of political wills. And it sounds academic, it sounds too simple, but that's what this is coming down to. It's coming down to political wills, and whether or not we are ready to take a stand for this 74 plus billion people who cast ballots for Donald J. Trump. And we don't want their voices to be muted and gated about illegal ballots. And it's important coming back to Georgia, that we understand that we have to continue to aggressively prosecute this, on both tracks, or we can wind up being bit by the same dog in the special election on January the 5th.
Bill Walton: 09:54 Well yeah, the Georgia governor's been a catastrophe in both the presidential and the two senate races, but this is... You talk about political will. This is the public opinion question I ask and we're just... Bill Burr coming out and saying in the face of everything, he should know that he sees no evidence of fraud, is just egregious. And we've got a blackout on the news in terms of what these fraud cases are. You read it about maybe Epoch Times or Washington Times. Some of the other writers'center organizations, but their market share is not very big. And most Americans don't really know about this fraud.
Ken Blackwell: 10:36 Yeah. And that's why we have to keep our feet moving, keep our voices elevated, keep telling the story and using every tool in our toolbox. The president has an audience of millions. You have an audience of tens of thousands in terms of your webcast and your radio. Look, we just have to continue to use it. I have half a million followers on Facebook. We have to constantly tell the story and build the demand for principal action. And we can get there. But the last thing we want to do is prematurely give up, surrender to this assault. All we need to do is to remember that for four years, for four years, the left has said that Trump is an illegitimate president.
Bill Walton: 11:37 Well, it's funny Ken. I was thinking about the pundits and the journalist and the lawyers. And lawyers are always sort of backward looking about the law is written, that which they should be. But they tend to be good at analysis, but they don't understand that you got to move the ball forward. The distinction I heard Mark Levin say, he's not a journalist, but he's a partisan, or he's an advocate. And it seems like more of us have got to be just flat out advocates right now, instead of just reporting out so-called facts, which could be overturned. Give us... We got just a couple of minutes here. What would be your advice about what people need to be saying to each other and to anybody who will listen about getting the right outcome for the selection?
Ken Blackwell: 12:27 So let me put it this way as we wrap up. I've used football analogies, I was a golden gloves boxer, and I won my first four bouts, with [inaudible 00:12:42] of each fifth bout I got hit so hard in the nose that I had to go home and tell my dad who was a meat packer, that I was going to find him a scholarly career pursuit and stayed away from boxing arenas until I was a freshman in college, when I went to a boxing match with a Jewish friend of mine and father Jay O'Connor, a priest who had been marine. And we went out, we watched 10 bouts.
The 11th bout a Irish Catholic kid from the west side of Cincinnati came out, and before his fight, he made the sign of the cross. And Benchy Swoopes, my Jewish classmate bent over to father and said, "Father, what's the significance of that?" Father said "Tiger, it ain't enough if he can't fight." So I'm just telling you, we need to pray out, we need to pony up, but more importantly, we need to continue to fight because none of that means anything if we, if we surrender. So do what you can, where you are with what you have. Nothing is too literal, nothing is insignificant. Make sure that you use the tools that you have. No excuses.
Bill Walton: 13:57 Exactly. Ken Blackwell. Thanks. Words to live by. Anyway thanks, we'll be talking again soon and thank you for listening. We love to hear what you think. Let me know on Parlor, Facebook and Twitter, where you can find the Bill Walton Show. For previous episodes, you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube, and of course it's the thebillwaltonshow.com.
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