Speaker 1: Somebody who testified yesterday in court.
Speaker 2: The second witness.
Speaker 1: He is now the executive director of the Colorado County
Speaker 1: Clerk's Association, former clerk of Arapahoe County, a republic, and
Speaker 1: he testified as himself. He wasn't representing his organization, but
Speaker 1: he joins me now, Matt Crane, welcome.
Speaker 2: Back to Kowa.
Speaker 3: Hey, Jimmy, good to see you.
Speaker 2: Good to see you, my friend.
Speaker 1: Now, first of all, why were you a participant in
Speaker 1: the testimony? Why did you testify yesterday? What is your
Speaker 1: relation to all this?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, I was subpoenaed by Eric Komer's
Speaker 4: attorneys to show and testify for two reasons. One because
Speaker 4: Eric and I have been friends and I've worked with him,
Speaker 4: you know, professionally he worked for Dominion, as you know,
Speaker 4: and so from when I became clerk up until you
Speaker 4: know when I you know, when I lost in eighteen,
Speaker 4: we had worked together on various projects and building out
Speaker 4: the new version of the voting system so that we
Speaker 4: could make sure it was more auditible, more secure.
Speaker 3: And then also with my.
Speaker 4: Role as executive director of the Callelroado Ninny Clerks Association,
Speaker 4: I was able to provide unique perspective on the impact
Speaker 4: of the lies of Lindell and what they had on
Speaker 4: election officials here in Colorado across the country, what it's
Speaker 4: done to undermine voter confidence, those types of things. So
Speaker 4: that's why they subpoenaed to bring me in to talk about.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that they were showing in
Speaker 1: the trial, and they asked you questions about this, and
Speaker 1: this is sort of what Oltman had made a big
Speaker 1: stink about, going back to November of twenty twenty, getting
Speaker 1: the ball rolling for what Eric Kumer in a number
Speaker 1: of lawsuits it's Mike Lindell against Oltman against others is
Speaker 1: alleged is defamation. There were a number of these very controversial,
Speaker 1: vulgar at times posts, mostly from his private Facebook page.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there were a few tweets that he responded to
Speaker 1: Trump or to Milania Trump, very left wing. Talk to
Speaker 1: us about your understanding and working history with Eric Komer
Speaker 1: as particular as a clerk but also head of the
Speaker 1: County Clerk's association, and how you sort of may have
Speaker 1: come across some of these more hostile seeming political views
Speaker 1: that Oltman painted this picture and said, look, this is
Speaker 1: a guy who you can see as a villain who
Speaker 1: might just want to steal the election.
Speaker 4: Sure, So, as I mentioned, I met Eric I think
Speaker 4: in twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen when I became clerk
Speaker 4: in a Rapahoe County. One of the first things that
Speaker 4: we started working on was trying to get a better
Speaker 4: post election tabulation audit for our county and for Colorado.
Speaker 4: So we had signed up to do a pilot project
Speaker 4: with the EAC Election Assistants Commission in DC and with
Speaker 4: the Secretary of State's Office under Secretary Guestler, where we
Speaker 4: would work on the risk limiting audit concept and try
Speaker 4: to try to crack the nut because it hadn't really
Speaker 4: been done in completion before. And we learned some great
Speaker 4: lessons through that process, including that the voting system that
Speaker 4: we were on before, which was an older Sequoia voting system,
Speaker 4: wouldn't enable us to do a full risk limiting audit.
Speaker 3: And so one of the things I'm talking with Dominion
Speaker 3: was I.
Speaker 4: Let them know of what changes we needed to the
Speaker 4: voting system so that we could better audit it and
Speaker 4: provide the public greater confidence. And how these tabulation systems
Speaker 4: worked and functioned during the course of an election. So
Speaker 4: it was during those meetings and discussions with Dominion when
Speaker 4: I first got to know Eric. After that, I would
Speaker 4: see him at various clerks conferences, at various national conferences,
Speaker 4: you know, whether it was you know, in sessions or
Speaker 4: maybe you know, have at the bar later having a drink.
Speaker 4: He and I very quickly after knowing each other, you know,
Speaker 4: we quickly realized we were on very opposite ends of
Speaker 4: the political spectrum. You know, I'm very conservative, he is
Speaker 4: very progressive, and so we would have debates and have
Speaker 4: a lot of fun doing so, and sometimes they would
Speaker 4: get heated, but never never in a crazy fashion. You know,
Speaker 4: it was really just robust debates where we would have
Speaker 4: these conversations.
Speaker 2: So would people around, you know, to expect this.
Speaker 4: One hundred percent, like, okay, here goes Eric and Matt.
Speaker 4: Put it on an egg timer and see which one
Speaker 4: starts yelling first, and so we would have a great
Speaker 4: time doing it. So, you know, I know how progressive
Speaker 4: Eric is, but I also know, through the context of
Speaker 4: working with him through these meetings and working on the
Speaker 4: voting system, how seriously he takes his work working in elections,
Speaker 4: how dedicated he is to making sure that dominion customers
Speaker 4: have the best possible systems to be able to provide
Speaker 4: fair and secure elections, and just what the work, what
Speaker 4: it meant to him to work in elections, to know
Speaker 4: that we are helping people be able to cast a
Speaker 4: ballot let their voice be heard.
Speaker 3: That was sank or sank to him. That meant more
Speaker 3: to him than anything.
Speaker 2: So he checked his politics at the door.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he did. He absolutely checked his politics at the door.
Speaker 4: So when some of the you know, I saw one
Speaker 4: of the posts they had brought up on Facebook, we're
Speaker 4: Facebook friends, and my thought was, okay, Eric, that's really
Speaker 4: over the top.
Speaker 3: But I knew it was Eric.
Speaker 1: Now, is this the one where he said unfriend me
Speaker 1: and trump me now and drop F bombs and other
Speaker 1: vulgar language about Trump? And this was round twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, right, I.
Speaker 4: Think it was July of twenty sixteen, Okay, And so
Speaker 4: I had seen that, I'm like, oh, Frevn's sakes, Eric,
Speaker 4: you know, that's way over the top. But again I
Speaker 4: know Eric, and you know, did I ever think for
Speaker 4: one single moment that that meant he couldn't come in
Speaker 4: and be objective when working on election systems and helping
Speaker 4: people conduct elections.
Speaker 3: Never in a million years, And I'm not the only one.
Speaker 4: Other people who knew Eric also knew that they could
Speaker 4: trust him to work on elections and be upfront and
Speaker 4: honorable in the way that he conducted and worked on
Speaker 4: these systems.
Speaker 2: Matt Crane joining us here in studio.
Speaker 1: He testified yesterday in day three of the trial of
Speaker 1: Mike Lindell. My Pillow and Frank Speech, both companies of
Speaker 1: Mike Lindell, and there Komer brought this case and Matt
Speaker 1: when we look at the claims being made, so the
Speaker 1: defamation that is being alleged by Coomer isn't just that
Speaker 1: you know, he was named and attack was that the
Speaker 1: implication was he was the trader used. That word was
Speaker 1: used as trader. Lindell talked about melting down the voting machines,
Speaker 1: and he would be the first behind the bars that
Speaker 1: would be made of the metal from the voting machines.
Speaker 2: And so forth. That was all in the context of.
Speaker 1: Eric Kumer's the main guy, the sort of the ring
Speaker 1: leader of stealing the election. The two things, one, what
Speaker 1: do you make of that claim regarding Klumer?
Speaker 2: And then more broadly, when you.
Speaker 1: Look at the allegations that we've seen for five years
Speaker 1: now just about of stolen election from twenty twenty, how
Speaker 1: do you look at whether at determining whether that's the case,
Speaker 1: let alone that it isn't the.
Speaker 4: Cases you've concluded, Well, the claims from Lindell and others
Speaker 4: about Eric and calling him trader and saying that he's
Speaker 4: going to be in jail versus, it's laughable on its
Speaker 4: face for a number of reasons. One, you know, the
Speaker 4: election community knows Eric knows he would never do anything
Speaker 4: like that. Too, It's impossible for one person to change
Speaker 4: entire federal election like that. In three, we know that
Speaker 4: with the security and defense and depth posture that we
Speaker 4: have around our voting systems, that it wasn't possible if
Speaker 4: something the fairies had happened, we would have discovered it.
Speaker 3: So that part, you know, we knew it.
Speaker 4: Was garbage from the very first minute it started coming out.
Speaker 4: But then when you start to use words like trader
Speaker 4: and belong in jail, then that leads to death threats, intimidation.
Speaker 4: Eric had people camping outside his house putting videos online
Speaker 4: threatening his life. He's you know, he had to leave
Speaker 4: his house Ultimately he had to leave the country for
Speaker 4: a while because the death threats that were coming against him,
Speaker 4: all because it was based on a lie. So I think,
Speaker 4: you know when you talk about the impact, And of
Speaker 4: course Lindell he may not have been the first one
Speaker 4: to start this. I think we know Joe Oltman was
Speaker 4: the first one to start these lives. But what Lindell
Speaker 4: had was the largest platform and the most money, and
Speaker 4: he hired he worked.
Speaker 3: With with oatmen, right.
Speaker 4: He brought in others like you know, Sharona Bishop started
Speaker 4: Cause of America with other bad actors from Colorado to
Speaker 4: go and they kept perpetuating these lines about Eric, about dominion.
Speaker 2: A couple of things.
Speaker 1: One to be clear, you said, so before you were
Speaker 1: a Republican, you were the clerk in Arapo County. You
Speaker 1: were appointed in twenty thirteen, then elected to a full term,
Speaker 1: and then you were unsuccessful in your re election bid,
Speaker 1: and then a couple of years later ended up as
Speaker 1: the executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association.
Speaker 2: But your experience goes back twenty five years.
Speaker 1: Yes, So when you look at that, what is sort
Speaker 1: of the cornerstone of our system particularly and let's say Colorado.
Speaker 1: Since there are so many allegations from for example, Tina Peters,
Speaker 1: the convicted former clerk of Mesa County, and others like
Speaker 1: Joel and so forth about Colorado in particular, what sort
Speaker 1: of the cornerstone that from your twenty five years of
Speaker 1: experience you look at and say, Okay, if we just
Speaker 1: crosscheck this and this, you could.
Speaker 4: Tell that it's legit election right, Well, certainly, I mean
Speaker 4: when you look at the when you look at the
Speaker 4: chain of custody, the access controls we have around these
Speaker 4: voting system components, the way that we they are certified
Speaker 4: and tested before they ever get to be used in
Speaker 4: an election, and then the way that we audit the
Speaker 4: election through the through the risk limiting audit. After the fact,
Speaker 4: a lot of counties do extra auditing beyond the risk
Speaker 4: limiting audit to validate that the results are accurate and true.
Speaker 4: And so, you know, when people put out claims like this,
Speaker 4: it's always interesting because they may say, oh, well, this
Speaker 4: part of the system is vulnerable, but they never talk
Speaker 4: about the ways the mitigations that we put in place
Speaker 4: to protect that vulnerability and others. They always take one
Speaker 4: one or two aspects cherry pick on that, and they
Speaker 4: purposely leave out all of the rest of the detail
Speaker 4: because the goal here, right is to scare people, right,
Speaker 4: they want political change, and many of them are doing
Speaker 4: this for financial gain, so they keep saying even though
Speaker 4: they show no real instances of fraud, they say, well,
Speaker 4: keep giving me money because the big reveal is coming.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want I want to play a little example
Speaker 1: of this. I played it earlier, so maybe this is
Speaker 1: an event to give I give an advertisement. But this
Speaker 1: was at the end of the interview, yes, or on
Speaker 1: Tuesday that I saw outside and.
Speaker 2: Again, and I'll post pictures.
Speaker 1: On my x account at saying center saying with an E,
Speaker 1: not an a center. But I saw him give this
Speaker 1: interview to his own outlet, Lindell TV. And the end
Speaker 1: of the interview with of course a classic Mike Lindell promotion, says.
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Speaker 2: Huh. Isn't that interesting?
Speaker 1: You're giving an interview during the lunch break to your
Speaker 1: own outlet, which I don't know.
Speaker 2: The related if Lindell TV.
Speaker 1: I think it's under it's maybe a new name of
Speaker 1: Frank Speech, but I'm not clear on that either way,
Speaker 1: it's clearly is his media property, right and there you go,
Speaker 1: that's what he's doing.
Speaker 3: To your point, well, yeah, not surprise, grifters are going
Speaker 3: to drift.
Speaker 1: So when we look at this, uh, well, actually two things.
Speaker 1: One paper ballots. I mean to me, that's the corner,
Speaker 1: the real cornerstone of being able to verify the results.
Speaker 4: And I'm glad Eric's attorneys asked me this on to
Speaker 4: redirect yesterday. Because the way, the biggest way that we
Speaker 4: know all of this is a farce, right, and all
Speaker 4: of it is you for those political and financial motives,
Speaker 4: is because if somebody really questioned the twenty twenty election
Speaker 4: or any election, and you're worried about the way, you
Speaker 4: think there's something wrong with the voting systems, the clearest, cleanest,
Speaker 4: most direct way to validate whether the voting system performed properly,
Speaker 4: after all the audits had done everything else is to
Speaker 4: put in an open records request for the ballots. They're
Speaker 4: available under KORRA under the Colorado Open Records Act, so
Speaker 4: you can. It may cost some money to do that,
Speaker 4: and it may be very expensive if you want all
Speaker 4: the ballots, depending on how long you know you want
Speaker 4: them available for.
Speaker 3: But you can do that.
Speaker 4: And Lindella spent forty million dollars in the last four
Speaker 4: years he said something like that on this or it
Speaker 4: would have been a drop in the bucket for it.
Speaker 4: But do you think that he or anybody else has
Speaker 4: actually gone in before the ballots were destroyed after the
Speaker 4: necessary retention period to say, hey, let me see those ballots.
Speaker 4: This was always Tina's biggest mistake. But I'm not surprised
Speaker 4: she didn't know the job. She could have always hand
Speaker 4: had handcount of those ballots after the election.
Speaker 3: She never did. And there's a reason they don't do that.
Speaker 4: To me, it's because they know their whole life falls
Speaker 4: apart if they go back to the original source, which
Speaker 4: is those paper ballants.
Speaker 2: That's abundantly important.
Speaker 1: Also yesterday, I have to say, at least for the
Speaker 1: first the two days that I watched, you.
Speaker 2: Had the line of the trial.
Speaker 1: I think that got a laugh from everybody, maybe even
Speaker 1: Liddell in the court room.
Speaker 2: Where they were trying to say okay.
Speaker 1: So you went into the witness room during the break,
Speaker 1: and then Eric Komer and his attorney came in after
Speaker 1: you again we're talking with Matt Crane came in after you,
Speaker 1: and then by the time you needed to come back out,
Speaker 1: the three of you came out together. And so one
Speaker 1: of Lindell's lawyers, who was doing the cross examination with
Speaker 1: you on the witness stand, was talking about that and
Speaker 1: trying to give the implication like something's going on here,
Speaker 1: and you said, if you to come in, I would
Speaker 1: have hung out with you too, which I thought was excellent.
Speaker 4: That was fun and it was I mean, I didn't
Speaker 4: know they were going to follow me into the room.
Speaker 4: They just said I didn't have to stay on this stand,
Speaker 4: and so I got up went to get a new
Speaker 4: bottle of water. They all came in to get another
Speaker 4: bottle of water and a little something.
Speaker 3: To eat too.
Speaker 4: They all made very clear, we cannot talk about any
Speaker 4: of your testimony, so don't say anything, and we didn't.
Speaker 3: We were in there, I don't know ten minutes, and
Speaker 3: then we went back out together.
Speaker 4: I was a little surprised they tried to make something
Speaker 4: of that, but you know, I was able to have
Speaker 4: a little bit of fun with it too.
Speaker 1: And I saw after the courtroom his attorneys came up
Speaker 1: to talk to you, and we're a very pleasant conversation,
Speaker 1: it seemed, yes, so real quick, because we're just about
Speaker 1: at a time Matt Crane joining us, I want you
Speaker 1: to put your hat on as the Colorida County Clerks
Speaker 1: Association head and former clerk of Rapaho County, the county
Speaker 1: that you oversaw elections for, has now been back in
Speaker 1: the news, not as much as in the news as
Speaker 1: in the midst of a new conspiracy theory over this
Speaker 1: published document. Called a cast vote record that had issues
Speaker 1: with redactions. I'll just say real quick that Colorado law
Speaker 1: requires you're supposed to keep the an anonymity a secret ballot, right,
Speaker 1: And so that means when you release this cast rote
Speaker 1: cast vote record that shows how voters had voted without
Speaker 1: identifying the voter for really small precincts that may just
Speaker 1: have a few people living there, you're supposed to just
Speaker 1: delete those, right. But something else happened, and this is
Speaker 1: from the twenty twenty election. Talk to us real quick
Speaker 1: about that as briefly as you can.
Speaker 3: Sure, So a Rapo.
Speaker 4: County created a redacted cast vote record and as a
Speaker 4: transparency document to be able to if people want to
Speaker 4: go through and see they can see it. Now we
Speaker 4: do have to go back and redact, as you said,
Speaker 4: that's under state law that we have to do that.
Speaker 4: I think there were only something like fifteen ballots that
Speaker 4: were impacted, so certainly out of a I think there
Speaker 4: were over three and fifty thousand votes. Casting a Rapo
Speaker 4: fifteen ballots is basically nothing. It really does nothing demonstrable
Speaker 4: to the file. So a Rapo County post they created
Speaker 4: that file on December tenth. Now that date's important because
Speaker 4: twenty twenty. Yeah, it was after the election was certified,
Speaker 4: and so they did it, they sorted it, they put
Speaker 4: it up as they have in years past. They didn't
Speaker 4: know that there was either an error made in the
Speaker 4: sorting process or some kind of other error maybe made
Speaker 4: with a file transfer to an FTP site, where the
Speaker 4: rose inside the file got shuffled.
Speaker 3: The overall vote totals for.
Speaker 4: The candidates remained intact, but the votes got shuffled between precincts.
Speaker 3: The rose got shuffled.
Speaker 4: Nobody noticed this, although there were some people that had
Speaker 4: pulled down the file and analyzed it and said, hey,
Speaker 4: the way the vote trans are happening and pro Trump
Speaker 4: pro Biden precincts aren't matching up, and so that's a
Speaker 4: problem in particular.
Speaker 3: A professor for MEA, yeah, well, I think there was
Speaker 3: a guy.
Speaker 4: Named Edd Solomon who's using the mistaking cast but record
Speaker 4: in a lawsuit in Nevada. So then four years goes
Speaker 4: by a professor from Yale's looking at the file. He
Speaker 4: contacts the county head says, hey, I think I see
Speaker 4: an error here, kind of looks at it and says, yep,
Speaker 4: there's some kind of error there, so they pulled down
Speaker 4: the erroneous file, reached the redaction, and then reload the
Speaker 4: corrected file. Now, of course, because we know that there
Speaker 4: are bad actors there who will take anything, that's what
Speaker 4: we call malinformation, right, a little bit of truth, and
Speaker 4: they create a lie on it out of it. They say, well,
Speaker 4: look a Rappaho county changed this file. They were changing ballots.
Speaker 4: We can't trust the election. It's not auditible, all of
Speaker 4: these things, when truth in fact, it's a transparency file.
Speaker 4: The original cast vote record used for the audit and
Speaker 4: certification were not impacted.
Speaker 3: They're pristine, they're in good shape.
Speaker 4: They throw all these other legal citations out, saying counties
Speaker 4: can't redact, you're not allowed to do this. All of
Speaker 4: their legal interpretations, just like in the MESA counter reports
Speaker 4: is garbage, it's wrong. But that doesn't stop these bad
Speaker 4: actors from running around and creating narratives so they can
Speaker 4: continue their goals.
Speaker 2: And you don't have to.
Speaker 1: Say anything in this, but I'll say the failure of
Speaker 1: Clerk John Lopez to act quickly, I think precipitated the
Speaker 1: ability for these as you quit, so call the bad
Speaker 1: actors to take advantage of a vacuum and put out
Speaker 1: false information and give falseom ess. But I appreciate you
Speaker 1: clearing up some of what happened. There were way overdue
Speaker 1: for a break. Once again, I'm running behind today, but
Speaker 1: that was great.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. And great job yesterday, Matt Craig,
Speaker 2: thanks to me.
Speaker 3: I appreciate it.