Virginia’s attorney general has had enough, demanding that a conspiratorial state senator provide evidence for her “baseless” assertions that the upcoming election results will reflect Democratic cheating.
The senator, Republican Amanda Chase, has said for months that Democrats cheated to win the White House in 2020, and now, as a surrogate for 2021 Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin, she’s rolling out the same playbook. Attorney General Mark Herring (D), apparently, is sick of it.
“Let’s be clear: these kinds of baseless, false claims are simply designed to undermine confidence in our democracy and our elections,” Herring, who himself is running for reelection this year, said in a statement Thursday.
“If Senator Chase has any evidence of cheating or voter fraud then she has an obligation to bring it to the attention of authorities who can do something about it rather than secretively sharing this supposed ‘evidence’ with political allies.”
An accompanying letter to Chase, from Herring’s office, asked her to share “evidence of ongoing election fraud, cheating, or misconduct” — if she has any.
In recent days, Chase has pushed such claims without details or evidence.
“I know how Democrats are cheating, and that information has been given to the Youngkin campaign,” she said in a recent Newsmax interview cited by Herring.
During another appearance on the channel flagged by The Washington Post, Chase said an unnamed man had showed her “exactly how they’re stealing elections in Virginia.”
“They’re moving, in cyberland, they are switching inactive voters to active voters, all in the same week, it’s undetectable. I know what they’re doing, John, and now the Youngkin campaign has all that information and they’re not going to get by on us this year, I’m telling you.”
Chase, who’s called herself “Trump in Heels” and was an unsuccessful contender for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, is a leading figure in the Big Lie scene: In December, she wrote that Biden “cheated to win” and urged Trump to institute martial law. Chase was in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 for the Trump rally that turned into an assault on Congress; she was later censured by the Virginia state Senate for calling Capitol attackers “patriots.”
In August, at MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s “Cyber Symposium” — where the bedding millionaire promised, and then failed to show, evidence of Chinese election meddling — Chase announced the formation of a nationwide, state-level “Election Integrity Caucus” alongside Arizona State Sen. Wendy Rogers (R).
Chase wrote on Twitter that she would be “issuing a full report,” the contents of which she did not describe.
A spokesperson for Chase told TPM Friday that the senator would be releasing the report on Tuesday. Asked why Chase wouldn’t just publish the report immediately, the spokesperson, Shayne Snavely, said there was “no reason” to do that.
“We don’t owe Herring a thing,” Snavely said.
This post has been updated.
