Kris Kobach Will Be Investigated by a Grand Jury as He Runs for Governor

The Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the inquiry into the Secretary of State should go forward.

Kansas Sectary of State Kris Kobach, at a press conference in Kansas, after President Donald Trump endorsed him for Kansas governor ahead of the August primary.Shelly Yang/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The Kansas Supreme Court is allowing a citizen-initiated investigation of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to proceed. The grand jury investigation will focus on whether Kobach, a champion for restrictive voting laws and anti-immigrant policies, mishandled voter registration information in the 2016 election, the Lawrence Journal-World reported on Friday.

Kobach narrowly defeated Jeff Colyer last month to become the Republican nominee for Kansas governor in this Novemberā€™s election. He will now have to run for office while being investigated for whether his office was ā€œgrossly neglectful with respect to their election duties,ā€ and engaged in ā€œdestroying, obstructing, or failing to deliver online voter registration.ā€ Kobach denies the allegations.

The call for the investigation of Kobach began in 2016 with a petition from Steven Davis, a Democrat who unsuccessfully ran for state house in 2016 and 2018. Davis alleged that Kobach intentionally failed to register voters who tried to do so online in 2014. His petition was initially rejected by a state district court due to a lack of evidence. He filed a new petition in August 2017 after the Kansas state legislature allowed people to appeal petitions that are rejected.

The district court rejected Davis’ petition again, but a Kansas appeals court reversed the district court in June by ruling that it mistakenly required ā€œspecific allegations of a crime, when only general allegations are required by the statute.ā€ On Friday, the Supreme Court denied Kobachā€™s request to review the appeals court decision, meaning that a grand jury will be summoned.

In 2016, Davis, who was working as a freelance copy editor, said he didn’t have hard evidence to back up the allegation that Kobach’s office committed election fraud in 2014. ā€œAs a private citizen thereā€™s no way for me to actually get real evidence, but I could, however, circulate this petition,ā€ Davis said. ā€œā€¦I do think there will be evidence. Now whether thereā€™s enough to bring an indictment, itā€™s up to the grand jury.ā€

Mother Jones reported last month on Kobachā€™s long record of targeting immigrants and exaggerating the risk of voter fraud:

Kobach rose to national prominence as the architect of Arizonaā€™s extreme anti-immigrant bill, SB1070, in 2010…As secretary of state, Kobach pushed a voter ID law that required documentary proof of citizenship in order to vote. Kobach humiliated himself earlier this year when he defended that law in court; not only did he lose, but his team made so many basic legal errors that the judge ordered him to take six hours of continuing legal education on how to present evidence at trial.

ā€¦

Last year, Trump made him vice-chair of the presidentā€™s commission on election integrity, which Trump convened following his unfounded assertion that millions of people had voted illegally in the 2016 election. In January, Trump disbanded the commission, which was under siege from multiple lawsuits from government watchdogs and voting rights advocates. Documents released earlier this month show that Kobach and the other voter fraud alarmists on the commission were trying to document the threat of voter fraud even though theyā€™d found no evidence.

In 2016, Kobach defended the grand jury law after Davis targeted him. ā€œThe law doesnā€™t permit randomly going after a public figure with vague allegations unsupported by any facts,ā€ he said before adding. “I actually think our law is excellent.ā€

Kansas is one of six states that allows citizens to request a grand jury investigation. State law requires a petitioner to obtain the signatures of 100 voters plus 2 percent of voters in the county who voted in the previous gubernatorial election, according to the Kansas City StarThe law is designed to allow the public to force investigations of matters that prosecutors have been unwilling to pursue. 

In 2012, Kansans organized by the American Family Association, a Christian fundamentalist group, used the law to investigate whether a bronze of a mostly nude woman taking a selfie violated state obscenity law. The grand jury decided within a day that no indictment was needed. The American Civil Liberties Union labeled the case “Citizens of Johnson County v. Two Bare Breasts.” Lee Rowland, a senior ACLU staff attorney, wrote, “The AFA’s repeat attempts to morph art into obscenity perfectly illustrate the constitutional risk in turning the criminal justice system over to private citizens.”

The Kansas appellate court acknowledged the risk of the state’s grand jury law when it approved the Kobach investigation in June. “We are mindful that the mere calling of a grand jury directed at the actions of a public official or a private individual without probable cause to believe a crime has been committed and without the guiding hand of a professional prosecutor can have serious personal and professional consequences,ā€ the ruling said.

ā€œBut the Kansas Legislature has determined that it wants to provide for citizen-initiated grand juries and it wants them to have broad powers to investigate possible criminal activity. The wisdom of this law is not a concern of our court.ā€

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate