President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has repeatedly claimed Ohio elections are “rigged” and accused his Republican opponent of actively “rigging” the election against him, according to resurfaced tweets.
While running for Ohio Attorney General, attorney Steve Dettelbach claimed in 2018 that Republican Dave Yost “is part of this mess … secret meetings. Rigged elections …”
6/ Don’t let Yost distract you. He is part of this mess. ECOT. Secret meetings. Rigged elections. Now he’s spreading made up stories about a campaign ‘rally’ in Columbus that took place on a day I was in Cleveland.
— Steve Dettelbach (@SteveDettelbach) April 11, 2018
The “Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow,” (ECOT) an online public school in Ohio, voted to recover $60 million of alleged overpayments to the school in 2017. Dettelbach went on to allege Yost ignored ECOT’s lack of attendance record, according to Sandusky Register, making him unfit to hold the position he ultimately won.
“Who has ever heard of a school that doesn’t take attendance?” Dettelbach reportedly said, before again claiming people are “often … right” that the system is rigged.
Dettelbach then claimed Yost was involved in a 2011 hidden effort with “partisans to rig Ohio election maps.”
In a 2017 op-ed, Dettelbach accused the state’s voter registration as having “purged” 1.2 million Ohioans from the voter rolls as the case was being argued in the Supreme Court. Dettelbach said the state was purposely excluding Ohioans from voting because of “politics” and called the claim from state officials that the rolls were cleared of voters who either died or moved “disingenuous.”
“Ohio’s purge is not about properly cleaning up voter rolls, which is allowed,” Dettelbach wrote. “It’s about whether elected officials can rig the political system to get a partisan edge.”
The Supreme Court later ruled in favor of Republicans and ruled removing voters from the rolls did not violate federal law. (RELATED: Biden Expected To Release New ‘Ghost Gun’ Rules Within Days)
“The notice in question here warns recipients that unless they take the simple and easy step of mailing back the readdressed, postage prepaid card – or take the equally easy step of updating their information online – their names may be removed from the voting rolls if they do not vote during the next four years,” the Supreme Court ruled.
Dettelbach’s persistent claim of “rigged” elections was first brought to light by The Reload.
Dettelbach also has a history of supporting gun control measures and spent his 2018 unsuccessful attorney general campaign promoting firearm restrictions, such as a ban on so-called “assault weapons” and universal background checks.
Biden withdrew his nomination of David Chipman to the ATF in September after allegations of racist comments and bipartisan pushback over his attitude toward gun owners came to light. Chipman supported banning the AR-15 and pushed a definition of “assault weapons” many viewed as being more extreme than that used in the European Union.