Desperate Fetterman Turns to Russia Hoaxer Marc Elias to Force Pennsylvania to Count Undated Mail-in Ballots

Marc E. Elias, the Democrat lawyer notorious for his role in co-creating the “Russia collusion” hoax and forcing changes to voting laws nationwide in 2020, has sued Pennsylvania in federal court on behalf of the Senate campaign of Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D).

Elias filed the lawsuit Monday, according to his “Democracy Docket” website, to challenge a Pennsylvania state law that requires voters submitting absentee ballots or voting by mail to provide the correct date on the envelope in which they submit their ballot.

The lawsuit takes issue with a recent decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court — on which five of seven justices are Democrat appointees — to order local election officials not to count ballots that arrive by mail that are undated or incorrectly dated.

“The plaintiffs allege that not counting undated and wrongly dated mail-in ballots violates the Materiality Provision of the Civil Rights Act by denying an individual the right to vote for a reason that is not material to determining that individual’s eligibility,” according to the Democracy Docket website. “The plaintiffs argue that the date requirement is immaterial … [and] that not counting undated or wrongly dated mail-in ballots violates the First and 14th Amendments by placing an undue burden on the right to vote.”

The complaint was filed by the Elias Law Group, which split from the Democrat-aligned Perkins Coie law firm ahead of a criminal indictment of former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer and former Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann by Special Counsel John Durham in his investigation into the origins of the “Russia collusion” hoax. Elias testified at Sussmann’s trial that he had authority to direct the Fusion GPS opposition research firm, which created the fraudulent “dossier” on then-candidate Donald Trump and Russia.

Though Sussmann was acquitted, Elias was implicated in the “Russia collusion” hoax, one of the most notorious “dirty tricks” in the history of American politics. Elias also sued states across the nation to impose liberal vote-by-mail rules in the 2020 election, using fear of the coronavirus pandemic to push changes that favored Democratic Party turnout operations. The conclusion over voting by mail — especially the late reporting of ballots that had been mailed in or dropped off — undermined public confidence in the result.

Since then, Elias has been sanctioned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Legal scholar Jonatan Turley added:

Elias has also been criticized for challenging elections when he and other Democratic lawyers denounced Republican challenges as a threat to democracy.  Elias later came under intense criticism after a tweet that some have called inherently racist. He was denounced for a tweet where he suggested that Georgia voters could not be expected to be able to read their driver’s licenses correctly — a statement that seemed to refer to minority voters who would be disproportionately impacted by such a requirement.

Byron York of the Washington Examiner called the Fetterman lawsuit by Marc Elias an “11th hour move” to challenge voting rules.

Elias gloated Monday that Republicans had lost in a variety of other cases about voting laws and procedures thus far this cycle.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.