For some, there is a certain irony — if not outright conflict — that a leading purveyor of false claims that the 2020 election was rife with fraud is a key player in the national Republican Party's efforts to protect the integrity of the 2024 election. to protect.
But not for Bobb, and not for her closest allies — including Trump himself, who through a spokesman defended Bobb only by name among all 18 people charged in Arizona on Wednesday. If anything, Bobb's indictment reaffirms her identity as a committed Trump loyalist who fought fiercely to reverse his loss in the politically competitive state and could potentially elevate her role within the RNC to help him in November to win.
“Yet another example of the Democrats' weaponization of the justice system,” said the spokesman, Steven Cheung. “Christina Bobb is a former Marine Corps officer who served our nation and the President with distinction. The Democratic platform for 2024: If you can't beat them, try throwing them in jail.”
An Arizona grand jury on Wednesday indicted seven lawyers or assistants involved in Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign, as well as 11 Arizona Republicans who tried to cast the state's electoral votes for Trump despite Joe Biden's victory. All, including Bobb, face felony charges in connection with their alleged attempts to undermine that outcome. Other defendants include former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and John Eastman, and campaign aides Boris Ephsteyn and Mike Roman. Trump and several others were named as unindicted co-conspirators.
It is the fourth election interference case brought by state or county prosecutors against Trump allies, but the first against Bobb, a lawyer and former Marine Corps judge advocate who serves as executive secretary at the Department of Homeland Security worked while Trump was in prison. office and then launched a second act as a correspondent for the conservative network One America News. She volunteered to help Trump's legal team after the 2020 election and became an advocate for false claims of election fraud. While working for OAN, she focused heavily on a widely discredited post-election review of more than 2 million ballots cast in Arizona's most populous county. Bobb later wrote a book: “Stealing Your Vote: The Inside Story of the 2020 Election and What It Means for 2024.”
Bobb is also involved in an unrelated federal investigation into Trump's alleged illegal handling of classified documents after he left the White House. As custodian of some of those documents, Bobb signed a document in which she swore that she had been told that “a diligent search” had been conducted for boxes of documents sent from the White House to Florida when Trump left office.
According to the Arizona indictment, Bobb was an advocate for the electoral strategy in key battlegrounds that Trump lost and encouraged Trump's electors to meet, cast their votes for Trump and send certified records of their votes to Washington to give Congress a chance to count Trump's electoral votes instead of Biden's.
Bobb testified to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that she learned about the election plan “shortly before, probably a day or two before” the electors met.
According to a December 12, 2020 email from Bobb to a Trump campaign official: she took part in a campaign phone call that day discussing plans for a meeting of contingent voters in seven states Biden won, including Arizona. The email was published as part of the parliamentary committee investigation.
“Here are my notes from the call,” Bobb wrote, before listing the status of voter canvassing in each of the seven states.
“Arizona – all 11 electors are prepared to meet Monday,” she wrote. “Kelli Ward will be there. Access shouldn't be a problem. AZ law does not require a specific location, so they can change locations if the building is closed.”
Bobb communicated with numerous Republicans during that time, in some cases sharing claims of fraud or irregularities that ultimately turned out to be false.
“On December 14, the states of Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia will appoint Democratic electors to cast their votes for Biden,” Bobb wrote to campaign officials on December 13, 2020. has clear demonstrable evidence of voter fraud significant enough to change the outcome of the election.”
Bobb was also at the informal campaign headquarters at the Willard hotel in Washington with Giuliani on January 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol.
Bobb declined an interview request from The Post.
Bobb began her new role at the RNC in March, shortly after the Trump campaign cleaned out the House of the Republican Party's top political committee, firing longtime operatives and encouraging others to leave voluntarily. She is part of a new department within the RNC that includes lawyers and political operatives focused solely on election integrity. Their mission includes ensuring that state and local election administrators follow the law — and filing lawsuits if they believe they are not — and recruiting and training tens of thousands of activists to volunteer as poll watchers and poll watchers in battleground states.
“Having our own stand-alone permanent department within the RNC has been a real game changer,” said Josh Helton, an attorney and senior adviser on election integrity for the RNC, in a February podcast. Helton did not respond to a request for comment this week. “It gives the department the attention, resources and bandwidth to develop a truly national program.”
Some who left said they fear the party's new election integrity operation, especially with Bobb in its midst, will move toward embracing baseless conspiracy theories that alienate more moderate Republicans.
“That was a bad appointment,” Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, said in a television interview about Bobb's new job. “Christina Bobb is part of the fringe element that I don't think helps build credibility, not just in our party, but across the country.”
Stephen K. Bannon, the former senior Trump adviser, said in an interview Thursday that he recommended the Trump team hire people like Bobb and others with strong ties to the election integrity movement to the RNC because “we need those kinds of people '. will to fight – someone who will participate in elections everywhere.”
With direct access to Trump by phone, Bobb can also serve as a direct link between the RNC and the former president, taking his input and sharing internal strategy with him, Bannon said. But that could go either way if Bobb pushes the party's election integrity operation toward activities that require legal review, several Republicans said, speaking candidly on condition of anonymity.
Until 2018, the RNC operated under a federal consent decree that prohibited the committee from participating in Election Day operations — the result of a 1982 election debate. lawsuit against Democrats accusing the commission of discouraging black voters from casting ballots through targeted mailers and placing armed, off-duty officers at polling places in minority neighborhoods.
“What we're worried about is Christina Bobb going rogue and doing something stupid, and we're going to end up back in the consent decree,” one GOP strategist said.
If volunteers or campaign workers make a mistake, “Marc Elias and his well-funded allies will try to reinstate the consent decree, and that's something we're all concerned about,” another GOP operative said, referring to the attorney for the Democratic elections.
Yet another employee said the new team is well aware of that risk and plans to carefully train activists to avoid legal trouble. The reason the party is building such a large-scale election integrity operation is precisely because the consent decree has expired. No one wants to screw it up, the person said.
Last Friday, the party announced that it plans to recruit 100,000 activists nationwide to serve as poll watchers, poll watchers or lawyers who can watch or participate in the electoral process — or flag violations that warrant legal action. The party is already involved in more than 75 ongoing lawsuits against election administrators across the country protesting or defending various election rules.
The operation will focus on seven major battlefields – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – and will add six more over the course of the year: California, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Texas and Virginia .
“President Trump has said that the Republican victory in November must be too big to manipulate,” RNC attorney Charlie Spies said in a statement at the time of the announcement. “The political team will work to ensure a huge victory for Republicans at all levels, and RNC Legal wants to ensure that victory cannot be manipulated.”
Meanwhile, many Trump allies are rallying around Bobb. “It's a false charge,” Trump senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita said. “And Christina Bobb served her country honorably as an officer in the United States Marine Corps, served its president and is an expert in dealing with election integrity.”
