However, McInerney cautioned about having “GOP fingerprints" on the challenges.
"I would think we are less worried about ‘fingerprints’ if we have decent evidence that fraudulent ballots are being cast,” responded GOP strategist Christopher Guith. “I think the intent is to take the Board of Elections' list and challenge absentee ballots? At that point, isn't it more important to stop absentee ballots that we have a high certainty of fraud than avoid the hit?"
Griffin responded, "I guess we have to make sure we have bodies. It seems like it always comes down to bodies. Why don't you ask your peeps in each state at issue if they have the resources to do this? Then, I might/can put some resources in the states that are lacking."
"Caging is a reprehensible voter suppression tactic, and it may also violate federal law and the terms of applicable judicially enforceable consent decrees," the Whitehouse-Kenney letter read.
In a forthcoming book, In Justice: Inside the Scandal that Rocked the Bush Administration, former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, one of the nine federal prosecutors fired, said Republican officials in his state were far less interested in election reforms and more intent on suppressing votes.
"But there was a more sinister reading to such urgent calls for reform, not to mention the Justice Department's strident insistence on harvesting a bumper crop of voter fraud prosecutions. That implication is summed up in a single word: ‘caging.’
"Not only did the [Bush] administration stoop to such seamy expedients to press its agenda in 2004," Iglesias wrote. "It had the full might and authority of the federal government and its prosecutorial powers to accomplish its ends."
The controversies over the prosecutor firings and the alleged “voter caging” led Griffin to resign from his post as acting U.S. Attorney rather than undergo a bruising confirmation hearings.
But the RNC appears to value Griffin’s political talents enough to bring him back onboard to look for derogatory information that might damage Barack Obama’s campaign.
Griffin is "one of the best political operatives in the country," a Republican source told NBC’s FirstRead.
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