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Adam Laxalt, the Trump campaign co-chair in Nevada, is fighting fiercely against his state’s decision to reward his six electoral votes to President-elect Joe Biden, alleging widespread electoral fraud and exciting litigation to overturn Biden’s victory.
But a nonprofit ethics and transparency group affiliated with Laxalt, the former Nevada attorney general, has already conceded Biden’s victory and is looking to the new administration.
“It has become clear that we are going to have a Biden team and a Biden administration in 2021,” Caitlin Sutherland, Americans’ executive director for Public Trust, said in an interview on Tuesday. The new administration is “what we will stay focused on next year”.
Sutherland pointed out that Laxalt’s work with Trump’s re-election campaign and his efforts to overturn Biden’s victory in Nevada were entirely separate from his work with APT, a tax-exempt nonprofit that is banned by the law to engage in political or partisan activities. “It’s something he does in a personal capacity outside of his role with the APT,” Sutherland said. “As 501c3, we and Adam when he works with us, do not engage in anything with a partisan or political inclination.”
But Laxalt maintains his position as the APT’s outside lawyer and frequent spokesperson even though he works with the Trump team in his personal capacity. And the fact that the group he works with is planning a reality he refuses to concede underlines how much divergence has developed within the conservative movement at large. One faction seems unable to recognize the reality of Joe Biden’s victory – perhaps for fear of offending Trump. Another does not want to be caught off guard when this reality occurs.
Illustrating the political complications these two assets can create for the president’s political allies, Sutherland followed up on his initial interview with The Daily Beast to clarify his statement and cover his opinion on the election outcome. “As Biden works to strengthen his team, the APT will ensure transparency and oversight, even though disputes over election results are ongoing,” she wrote.
As the chief official in the Trump campaign in Nevada, Laxalt has been a face of the campaign’s efforts to overthrow the state’s presidential race. Last month, he appeared at a press conference in North Las Vegas – alongside former Trump intelligence chief Ric Grenell and GOP lobbyist Matt Schlapp – to raise allegations of widespread voter fraud and preview a lawsuit demanding that a state court declare Trump the winner, despite his flight. by more than 33,000 votes.
As part of this lawsuit, the campaign submitted a list of thousands of voters who it said voted in Nevada while living out of state. Many of those voters turned out to be military personnel and their families stationed outside Nevada, but who are legally entitled to vote in the state.
Like nearly every election-related trial of the Trump campaign over the past month, Nevada’s effort has so far failed. Last week, the Nevada Supreme Court certified Biden’s victory in the state. Campaign efforts persist nonetheless, and the president and his lawyers continue to complain about a non-existent conspiracy against him perpetrated by senior government officials – including Republicans – and voting machine companies with nebulous ties to him. foreign dictators.
These voting machine conspiracy theories, which largely focus on the Dominion Voting Systems company, did not extend to Nevada, nor to Laxalt’s efforts there. But on Tuesday, the president hailed a Nevada court ruling allowing the two presidential campaigns to inspect voting machines used in the state’s largest county. In one Tweeter on the decision, Trump tagged Grennell, Schlapp and Laxalt.
Founded this year, APT uses open case requests and other transparency tools to eliminate apparent conflicts of interest and breaches of ethics between government officials and interest groups. The APT is a conservative-leaning group, although Sutherland, a former research director at the Congressional Republican National Committee, has said he has and will continue to investigate Republicans and Democrats.
“We demanded accountability and transparency from various groups and politicians on both sides of the aisle. This momentum will not change as we move towards a Biden administration, ”she said.
APT has already started filing open case requests for documents related to new officials in Biden’s administration, Sutherland said. “We’re looking at each person who will be appointed to cabinet, and with whom President-elect Biden surrounds himself, what this network has done in the past, and what that would mean in a Biden administration.”
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