DALLAS (Legal Newsline) - In the months leading up to the 2020 presidential elections, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg was creating a ballot harvesting operation in Louisiana under which the government was being turned into an arm of the Democrat Party, according to that state's top law enforcement official.
“We sued them,” said Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry. “It is from that suit that you saw all of the other information come out. And that's the problem you see in socialist countries where basically the government is married to one party. That's what happens in China.”
Landry made the remarks at the 2022 CPAC conference in Dallas on Aug. 5 while participating in a panel discussion called Socialists Cheat: Mandating Election Laws.
Landry
| Jfairley/CPAC
“That's exactly what Mark Zuckerberg's attempt was," he said. "To bring the election in a way that favored Joe Biden, that sprinkled all this money out and turned our election officials into arms of the Democrat boards in Louisiana. We said, no.”
The grant program, administered by the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), was brought to Landry’s attention in late September 2020.
The CTCL allegedly poured $350 million into local election offices in heavily Democratic areas in battleground states to increase voter turnout. Critics have said that corrupted the presidential elections with purported disguised 'get out the vote' drives for current President Joe Biden.
“Our Secretary of State alerted us to the grant applications that were going out in Louisiana parishes,” Landry told a packed audience at the Anatole Hotel. “He was concerned and so we started looking at it. What we found was this organization was giving out these grant applications and looking to give money directly to our elected officials.”
However, the grant money wasn’t going to all elected officials, according to Landry.
“It was really only going to parishes that had a high concentration of Democratic voters,” he said. “It's important to recognize that it's not the government's job to entice people. You vote and it's the government's job to perform the elections and ensure that every eligible voter has an opportunity to vote and that every legal vote is counted.”
Landry subsequently sued CTCL in the Parish of St. Martin on Oct. 2, 2020, to prevent the injection of unregulated private money into the Louisiana election system.
The Parish of St. Martin 16th Judicial District Court dismissed the lawsuit while the 3rd Circuit appellate court reversed and remanded the ruling. CTCL appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court. On June 28, the Louisiana Supreme Court denied CTCL's petition for review. The parish of St. Martin 16th Judicial District Court will rehear the case.