EXCLUSIVE: Judge in South Carolina Grants TRO in Election Lawsuit
Pending a hearing on an injunction, this will prevent election officials from getting rid of records from the 2020 election.
South Carolina Judge Alison Renee Lee has granted a TRO for the plaintiff SC Safe Elections (SCSE) barring the defendants from destroying any evidence SCSE seeks via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The order granting the TRO reads,
The Plaintiffs request that Defendants be Ordered by this Court to take reasonable measures to secure and safely hold the requested materials and that the Defendants be enjoined from damaging or destroying, or allowing others to damage or destroy, the CVR [Cast Vote Record] requested as described in the Complaint until such can be safely provided to the Defendant or the disclosure requests in the Complaint can be fully adjudicated. The Defendants have been served with the Complaint and Motion for Temporary Restraining Order notified of this requested relief as indicated by filed Certificates of Service.
You can read the full TRO here!
This relief comes at the 11th hour since states are only required to maintain a record of all election materials, documents, records, information, etc for 22 months following an election. Any potentially guilty parties would have been legally allowed to dispose of the election records capable of proving any illegal action on September 3rd.
The TRO will remain in place pending a hearing where the defendants will seek a preliminary injunction. We are now less than a week from the deadline date. The attorney representing the plaintiffs, Lauren Martel responded to our request for comment by saying,
I think it is very important to do an audit. We don't know what we don't know, but we do know that the system has vulnerabilities and we do know that in this last primary, numerous violations and anomalies of the law occurred along with a serious recalibration issue. This is a way to not have them hand-pick which counties get audited but to [decide them] on a neutral basis. Let's get some counties that they haven't pre-selected to be audited by them and let's get the Cast Vote Records back to the people.
Following the 2020 election, there were numerous allegations of irregularities across many swing states where Biden had come-from-behind victories. Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Nevada received the most attention from attorneys and right-wing media. However, according to Lauren Martel, it seems that even states where Trump ended up winning such as South Carolina could have experienced tampering with the election process.
We still have a lot to learn regarding the alleged misconduct by election officials across the state, but this could potentially be a huge moment in the efforts to secure our elections around the country.
A common argument that has been used to defend, “the safest and most secure election ever,” is that nothing was ever proven in any of the cases filed following the 2020 election. This is only a half-truth, all of the cases were dismissed due to lack of standing, and therefore none of the legal teams were able to provide the evidence their teams had gathered. As someone who worked with the attorneys who helped compile these cases, let me assure you there was plenty of evidence a reasonable person would have considered damning.
The idea the 2020 election was so perfect is even disproven by democrat's fervent attempts to nationalize the election process - via the infamous H.R. 1 - as soon as the 117th congress was sworn into power. Even on the congressional website, in the first sentence of the summary of the bill, it reads “his bill addresses voter access, election integrity, and security.”
We asked Lauren Martel why she thought this was important, she summed up the importance of their fight for election integrity by saying,
It's basic, fundamental law to cast your vote in secret but count it in public. What we have right now is they just stop and no one is allowed to do a forensic counting on it.
This is a developing story, we will update you as more information comes to light.