U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown and other Cleveland Democrats called out the FBI on Wednesday after the bureau searched an office and questioned staff of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. The progressive group is known for voter registration drives and ballot issue campaigns.
Brown’s staff prefaced the news conference at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections with this caveat: The speakers wouldn’t address the merits of the case, whatever those might be.
It would have been a guessing game. The Trump administration hasn’t said why it is interested in the group. Brown said the investigation “looks like intimidation” and the government owed the public answers.
Without case details to discuss, Brown, public officials, pastors and others mounted a defense of people’s right to cast ballots and sign others up to vote.
“Voter registration is not a crime,” Brown said. “It is not a crime.”
Some clues about the probe have emerged. Last year, investigators asked Cuyahoga elections officials about Black Fork Strategies, a canvassing firm linked to an Ohio Organizing Collaborative board member. Several county election boards — including Cuyahoga County’s — had raised questions about voter applications submitted by Black Fork.
“What my concern is is the way that this investigation was conducted,” Brown said when asked if she had any concerns about the collaborative’s work. “We were not looped in on this, and there has been no transparency.”
Brown and the other Democrats in Ohio’s congressional delegation sent a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel warning that the investigation could have a chilling effect on civic participation — in an election year, no less.
The letter demanded a copy of the FBI’s search warrant and asked several questions about the probe, including how many agents are working on it.
Brown reprised her message the next day at a rally in the Glenville neighborhood, where more than 100 people gathered in the parking lot outside Bethany Baptist Church. There, she said she would keep the pressure on the White House.
“I am going to take the fight to this administration in Congress,” she said, “because I will not let Donald Trump and Kash Patel steal your right to vote.”
Cuyahoga BOE backs away from news conference
Although the board of elections opened its space to Wednesday’s news conference, the board’s bipartisan leaders later distanced themselves from it. Director Anthony Perlatti had spoken at the event, telling voters that the board conducted elections fairly and with integrity.
The following day, Chair Henry Davis IV, a Republican, and Democratic board member Terence McCafferty issued a letter saying that their “expectations of non-partisanship were not met.”
Without specifically mentioning the board’s decision to refer Black Fork’s voter applications to state elections officials, they stood by the board’s investigatory referrals.
“The board takes its duties to identify nefarious actions and report them to the proper law enforcement entities,” the letter said. “In recent years it has identified such potential actions and referred them to the proper authorities.”
