Judicial Election Interference, Part 3

In Part 2, in 2020, Justice Lore Skjerven Gildea dismissed this case (DocumentCloud), A20-1486 (Justia) even though Justice Gildea was not originally on the case; Judge Dietzen had been assigned for an opinion and was replaced. Justice Gildea retired in October of 2023.

The state canvassing board did not pause, instead it went forward with certification (MPR) on Tuesday November 24, 2020. Five days later, SOS data showed that 734,000 absentee ballots were still not connected to a voter, convincing some that the election should not yet have been certified. (Biden's certified vote count eclipsed Trump by 233,000 votes.) The post-election review in precinct 4950 (Dakota County) revealed 800 ballots were missing (over half), and two Dominion printers had arrived the day of the audit. The election manager overseeing that audit has since resigned.

Back to the canvassing board itself: Of note, one member of the 5-person canvassing board—which also included Steve Simon, Gordon Moore, Regina Chu, and Christian Sande—which the petition was trying to restrain was Justice Margaret Chutich, whose daughter was found dead (Ames Tribune) in January, only weeks later. The canvassing board had voted 5-0 to certify.

Years later, we are now in 2024, Justice Dietzen—has been assigned to a Minnesota Lawyer Board case involving the attorney who drafted and filed the certification case above as well as election contests—election contests are the legal way to challenge elections in Minnesota, and must be filed within seven days of certification.

The seven-day window meant Attorney Susan Shogren-Smith worked much of Thanksgiving holiday weekend preparing the election contests. She was working with attorney Jose Jimenez, of MNEIT, to draft and file the election contests. Of importance to this story and upcoming posts is the fact that Jimenez was in direct contact with the contestants who signed affadavits to come onto the election contest as contestants.

Here's where things start to get interesting and are worth reviewing for all Minnesotans.

These contests led to an opening which it appears was exploited by a corrupt players in a corrupt system. Corrupt players in a corrupt system will be carefully laid out as these posts unfold.

Now, in the hearing on March 26, 2021, Susan Shogren-Smith was determined incorrectly by Judge Leonardo Castro, the Chief Judge of Ramsey County, to have committed a fraud upon the court when three contestants desired to be taken off the election contests after the cases had been closed.

During that hearing, Smith was not allowed to question the Contestants and Castro threatened Smith with contempt for trying to state the facts. This and other facts and events makes it actually look like it was Castro who ultimately has committed fraud on the court, as we shall see.

Nevertheless, Castro's decision was the beginning of a chain of events leading to a Lawyer Board case currently in progress, a pivotal hearing for which is to be held in April 2024.

One of the contestants wishing to be removed was Corinne Braun (legal name: Nick Brown) despite having joined the election contest under penalty of perjury, was in fact not living in Minnesota, but in Arizona, and may have been conflicted about appearing on the election contest in Minnesota whilst in litigation (still multiple cases of this writing) in Arizona.

Readers can hopefully now appreciate that this is likely to be a multi-part series as there are several years of information, decisions, and events to unpack that congregate around interference with what should be a simple process, casting, counting, and reporting votes, but for which there are high stakes.

The following document, a transcript from the hearing where the 3 contestants want to get off the case, will be examined in upcoming reports.

Readers are recommended to begin by reviewing this transcript:

Next up, we will discuss why attorney Susan Shogren-Smith was not allowed to question the contestants during the hearing, and try to understand better why attorney Jose Jimenez, who was very involved in the preparation of the election contests, was not allowed to speak by Judge Castro, even though Jimenez had filed an affadavit admitting to mistakes that were directly relevant to the very issue under discussion.