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President Joe Biden speaks about voting rights at the National Constitution Center on July 13, 2021, in Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaPhoto by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

This article was originally published by the WND News Center

(WND News Center) — It was only days ago that WND reported on a very “troubling clue” to President Joe Biden’s little known executive order demanding every part of the federal government actively promote “voting rights” this year.

According to the order, a team of leftists had been advising on actions for the president to take, recommendations that so far are being kept secret from Americans.

Now Stewart Whitson, legal director for the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), which is fighting Biden for access to his scheme in court, said his organization isn’t giving up on its plan to expose the Democrats’ strategy.

In a column at The Federalist, Whitson noted Attorney General Merrick Garland recently remarked that “no person is above the law in this country.”

But, Whitson said, “based on the recent actions taken by the Department of Justice under the attorney general’s leadership, some organizations are, including Garland’s DOJ.”

He explained that his organization launched an investigation months ago into Biden’s “unprecedented scheme” to influence the election with federal agencies and dollars.

The group thus pursued a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case to obtain copies of the plans, and after the DOJ stonewalled the request, the FGA went to court to obtain the documents.

The DOJ said 5,500 records might respond to the FGA’s questions, but it could not turn them over until next year, and when a judge ordered immediate action, produced only 135 pages, mostly blacked out.

“Even more troubling was DOJ’s refusal to turn over a 15-page strategic plan FGA requested through FOIA, claiming the plan is protected by the deliberative-process privilege and the presidential-communications privilege. This is a dubious claim since the strategic plan is a finished (post-decisional) product, a copy of which was merely forwarded to the White House,” Whitson explained.

He promised his organization will continue to fight for information to be made available to the voters, noting that if the GOP takes the majority in Congress this fall, members “should have little trouble securing a copy” of Biden’s scheme.

But, importantly, he said, there remains a significant question.

“If the plans really are about ‘promoting access to voting,’ as the president has claimed, then why not share them with the American people? Why keep the plans secret?” he asked.

Continuing, Whitson stated that “through the stonewalling of our initial FOIA request, and now through this latest action, it is clear that the current politically appointed leadership at DOJ, either on its own or more likely at the behest of the White House, is doing everything it can to avoid transparency and compliance with the FOIA law. Why? If there is nothing sinister in the strategic plans, why not share them with the American people?”

WND’s earlier report noted that it was Chief Political Correspondent Byron York at the Washington Examiner who raised questions about Biden’s order.

He pointed out that virtually no information has been made available to the public, except that only leftists were part of a conference offering advice.

Those representatives include officials from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Campaign Legal Center, Demos, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Black Lives Matter, the Leadership Conference of Civil Rights, all of which are far-left to extreme-left organizations.

York explained that it all comes from Biden’s March 2021 executive order “promoting voting rights” and mandating an “all of government” scheme, meaning every federal bureau, agency, and office would be involved.

Although Biden claimed it was to increase voter registration, York pointed out that it focused on “groups that have historically been part of the Democratic coalition.”

The evidence was in Biden’s own words: “Black voters and other voters of color have faced discriminatory policies and other obstacles that disproportionately affect their communities.” “These voters remain more likely to face long lines at the polls and are disproportionately burdened by voter identification laws and limited opportunities to vote by mail.”

All this, said York, was simple leftwing “boilerplate,” as Democrats still claim Republican “voter suppression” at every turn, despite data proving the claim to be a myth.

Biden’s executive order followed the failure in Congress of two measures, each designed to give the federal government control of America’s elections, which constitutionally fall to each of the states.

Biden’s executive order was purposely vague, filled with “platitudes,” according to York, who added that Republicans, suspicious of Democrats in general and Biden specifically, wonder what the order will realistically achieve.

Biden’s direction was for the heads of all agencies to send the White House their “strategic plan” to help with elections.

And, York reported, that’s just about where the information stops.

“Remember that the main concern of the Foundation for Government Accountability is that the Biden administration is using the power of the federal government for partisan political purposes to influence elections. There are also fears that the administration might be taking on a federal role in elections that the Constitution leaves to the states,” York noted.

“The American people deserve to know if the Biden administration’s unprecedented action is fair and non-partisan, or if it is designed to help one political party over the other,” Tarren Bragdon, head of the foundation, said in a statement. “Why are they ignoring public record requests for strategic plans on federal voter registration efforts? Why are they treating these documents like they are classified information dealing with nuclear weapons? Midterms are approaching, and the DOJ’s failure to disclose information raises troubling issues. They need to reveal these public documents to keep our elections fair.”

Reprinted with permission from the WND News Center.

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