MAGA Republican Who Backed Trump’s False Voter Fraud Claims Gets $5K Fine For Voting Illegally 9 Times
Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as people try to storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. Demonstrators breeched security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the 2020 presidential election Electoral Vote Certification. | Source: Brent Stirton / Getty
Right now, MAGA Republicans across the country are claiming there’s a “two-tiered justice system” in America, all because their orangey-white nationalist messiah has been drowning in criminal indictments for months. It’s ironic because Black people have been talking about how there are “two Americas” for generations based on generations of demonstrably being treated more harshly in the justice system only for those same white conservatives to dismiss it as a false anti-American narrative every time.
Meanwhile, a judge has found that a GOP official who has been a fierce promoter of Donald Trump’s thoroughly debunked claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, Brian Pritchard, voted illegally not once, not twice, but nine times.
From NBC News:
Brian Pritchard, first vice chairman of the Georgia Republican Party and a conservative talk show host, was fined $5,000 for voting illegally and registering to vote while serving a sentence for a felony conviction. Pritchard was also ordered not to commit further violations, to face public reprimand for his conduct and to pay the State Election Board’s investigative costs.
In a 25-page ruling Wednesday, Administrative Law Judge Lisa Boggs affirmed the board’s finding that Pritchard had voted illegally nine times in defiance of his extended probation in connection with a pair of felony convictions dating back nearly 30 years.
Waaaait a minute, let’s back up a bit. Prichard’s penalty for voting illegally nine times as a felon was—*double checks notes just to make sure*—a $5,000 fine? Y’all already know where I’m going with this right?
Remember Crystal Mason?
In 2018, Mason, a Black woman from Texas, cast a provisional ballot in 2016 while on supervised release for a federal conviction, which, unbeknownst to her, made her ineligible to vote. She was sentenced to five years in prison. That’s five years up against Prichard’s $5,000. Mason’s attorneys had to appeal the decision multiple times before her obviously unjust conviction was finally overturned Wednesday, nearly six years after her conviction. Speaking of six years…
Pamela Moses, another Black woman, was sentenced to six years in prison in January 2022 after she was convicted of registering to vote while being ineligible to do so because of past legal issues. That conviction was thrown out a month later after a judge ruled that the Tennessee Department of Correction, where she previously served time, had withheld information that proved Moses—a BLM activist and former Memphis mayoral candidate who indicated in January that she plans to run for the U.S. Senate—hadn’t duped a probation officer into signing a form that said she was eligible to vote when she knew she wasn’t, as prosecutors (absurdly) argued.
During the same time period when Moses and Mason were fighting for their freedom, numerous Republican white men and at least one pro-MAGA white woman were caught voting illegally for Trump, and all of them were treated with leniency by the courts. (Also, it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that for all Republicans’ blustering about Trump getting cheated by widespread Democratic voter fraud, in the relatively few cases where illegal voting did happen in 2020, virtually all of the perpetrators were Republicans who voted for Trump.) Most of them never saw the inside of a jail cell while Black and brown people were thrown in jail in Florida in 2022 just for registering to vote while ineligible unbeknownst to themselves after Gov. Ron DeSantis launched the Office of Election Crimes and Security to crack down on virtually non-existent voter fraud. (It should be noted that most of these Black victims of systemically racist injustice were arrested just for registering to vote, not actually voting like their white Republican counterparts.)
Anyway, in case anyone is interested, here’s a little more background on Pritchard and his criminal past. More from NBC:
Pritchard was initially sentenced in 1996 to three years’ probation in connection with felony forgery charges in Pennsylvania, according to the ruling.
Pritchard’s probation was revoked three times: in 1999, when he moved to Georgia, and again in 2002 and 2004. A judge in 2004 imposed a new seven-year probationary sentence, which made Pritchard illegible to vote in the state until 2011.
In 2008, Pritchard filled out a voter registration form with Gilmer County’s Board of Elections and signed a sworn statement asserting that he was “not serving a sentence for having been convicted of a felony involving moral turpitude.” Pritchard cast a series of Georgia ballots, including four that year in primary and general elections and runoffs and five more in 2010 in special elections and primaries and the general election.
Pritchard testified that “he was not aware of anything that would have prevented him from registering to vote when he signed the application” and that he didn’t believe three years of probation remained in his sentence, according to court documents.
And for all of that, Pritchard only needs to come out of his pocket with a paltry $5,000. So, yeah, there are, indeed, two justice systems in America, just not in the way Republicans think (or are pretending to).
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