Academia, Bizarre, Lawyering, Media, Politics

Law Professor Compares Questioning Voting Results To Holocaust Denial [Updated]

We have been discussing how the celebration of Joe Biden’s election as a “unifying” and “healing” moment has been lost on many who are calling for blacklists and retaliatory actions against anyone viewed as “complicit” in the Trump period.  Indeed, for years, I have been writing about a rising McCarthyism in our country  and the growing threat to both free speech and academic freedom. This hateful or unhinged rhetoric has on occasion come from law professors, but most academics have retained a modicum of restraint and tolerance.  For that reason, it was disappointing to read a bizarre attack from University of Colorado Law Professor Paul Campos who compared my discussion of possible voting irregularities to Holocaust denial.

Professor Campos writes for a legal site called Lawyers, Guns and Money and clearly took umbrage over my discussion of recent challenges filed over the 2020 presidential election this morning. The segment addressed the recent ruling in Pennsylvania that the Secretary of State violated the law in extending a deadline.  I also addressed President Obama’s comments about how these challenges may be undermining democracy. I noted that confirming the vote count only reinforces democracy, particularly in identifying problems for future elections.

My comments on the software controversy in Michigan was the focus of the posting and generally my statement that we need to review the actual evidence that emerges from these cases. I have repeatedly stated that I do not believe that the current challenges are likely to overturn the election of Biden as the president-elect. However, I have stated that there is no reason why these challenges should not be considered and problems addressed. There have been irregularities ranging from the improper order in Pennsylvania to a small number of identified deceased voters in Nevada to the controversy over the tally error in Michigan.  Again, I have emphasized that these remain localized problems and there remains no evidence of systemic problems that would overturn the results in various states.

On the software, I have addressed the Michigan issue repeatedly in interviews and noted that the votes were given back to Trump and we do not know if such human error occurred outside of that district.  I have repeatedly stated that it was caught and corrected. The Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson confirmed that an Antrim County clerk reported the glitch that miscounted 6,000 Trump votes as Biden votes. The wrong designation of Trump votes as Biden votes was quickly corrected.  That is why I have repeatedly said that this was not a case of fraud or nefarious purpose. The point is that there is a valid reason to check to see if others made such mistakes of human error. The “vulnerability” of the system was a reference to the fact that there was clearly a stage where the ballots could be wrongly assigned by human error. (In this morning’s interview, one of the hosts repeated that this was human error and stated that this problem had no impact on actual votes. I had already noted that this involved one district and was attributed to human error. The host added that it appears that only five counties had computer issues and only one involved the Dominion software). The reason for noting that Dominion is used in many other districts and states was a reference to the allegations that if system is vulnerable to such human error, it could impact other ballot tabulations around the country.

Campos however ignores the very interview that he references and falsely claims that I am “going on national TV telling lies to promote a paranoid conspiracy theory believed by tens of millions of Americans: that the presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump by massive amounts of voter fraud.”

Every interview that I have given has included a statement that there is no such evidence and that it is unlikely that such evidence will emerge.  However, while some were claiming the absence of serious irregularities within 24 hours of the race being called for Biden, I have noted that we are still waiting to see any underlying evidence in these cases.  At the same time, I have criticized the Trump legal team (in the very interview Campos references) and previously said that it was time for the team to produce claimed evidence. I have also criticized President Trump for his rhetoric.  Indeed, liberal sites have cited my interviews as expressing doubt over the evidence of widespread fraud.

Yet, Campos declared that this commentary amounts to Holocaust denial. (By the way, he includes a tweet from a person falsely suggesting that I failed to reveal that the software in Michigan may actually have been the result of human error. I said expressly in the interview that it appeared to be human error and that there was no evidence of any nefarious purpose. I was not “corrected” by the host who noted that it was human error and one district because I had just stated those facts). I argued that it would be useful, regardless of the findings, to look at the performance of new systems and software:

“What I don’t understand about this rush to end all challenges is what is being achieved here? People treating the president-elect as the president-elect. Most of us are supporting his going forward with the transition.

But we also don’t see the great harm to democracy in guaranteeing that votes were counted. If nothing else, not just for his election but for future elections. This is a very different election. We used new systems, new software; shouldn’t we take a look at that and resolve these questions?”

Campos however called for my termination for stating such views:

Should a history department continue to employ a Holocaust denier? Let me sharpen that up a bit: Should a history department continue to employ a Holocaust denier whose academic speciality is the Holocaust?…

To pursue this analogy further, Turley is the kind of mendacious troll who would just ask questions about whether the gas chambers and the death camps really existed, while of course acknowledging that many Jews — maybe even hundreds of thousands! — died because of “harsh conditions” in the concentration camps etc. etc. so you’re actually libeling him by calling him a Holocaust denier etc. etc. (BTW before anybody gets to that I don’t know or care whether Turley himself is Jewish, or whether he lost family in the Holcaust [sic] etc. etc. because the analogy is valid in any case m’kay snowflakes?).

Campos goes on to call for my shunning by my faculty and professors everywhere.  He also notes that I would ideally be fired for such an interview:

“If Turley were a contract faculty member it would be appropriate to fire him immediately for promoting paranoid conspiracy theories directly related to his area of purported professional competence…. It’s s tricky question, but it’s a real one, and Turley should at a minimum be excoriated and shunned by anyone in legal academia in possession of a brain and a conscience.”

We have been discussing efforts to fire professors who voice dissenting views of the basis or demands of recent protests, including an effort to oust a leading economist from the University of Chicago as well as a leading linguistics professor at Harvard.  It is part of a wave of intolerance sweeping over our colleges and our newsrooms.

It is therefore an ironic moment as someone who has been writing about the growing intolerance of dissenting views on our campuses and efforts to fire academic.  Some have been targeted for engaging in what is called “both sides rhetoric” rather than supporting a preferred narrative or viewpoint.

Campos is arguing that it “would be appropriate to fire” any professor who stated that we should allow these challenges to be heard even though they have not and are unlikely to produce evidence of systemic fraud to overturn these results.  That is a view of academic freedom and viewpoint tolerance shared by some in academia.

I am not the first academic that Campos called to be terminated for his views. In the end, I would defend Campos in his posting such views. Unlike Professor Campos, I do not believe that he should be fired for holding opposing views or even calling for others to be fired. That is the cost of free speech. Indeed, Professor Campos is the cost of free speech.

Update:

Notably, CNN Legal Analyst and Stanford Professor Rangappa has sent out a link for people to contact the law school over my interview, presumably to follow up on the calls for my termination.  Just for record, I have criticized Rangappa previously for doxxing a student who criticized her and a baseless attack on Nikki Haley. She has also called for sanctioning Trump lawyers.

188 thoughts on “Law Professor Compares Questioning Voting Results To Holocaust Denial [Updated]”

  1. I agree with what you say, Professor Turley. I will respond to Mr. Sandman’s comments: I am a “far left, Progressive”, further to the left than Bernie, and we loathe the same media Sandmann loathes. It is about eyeballs, and “if it bleeds, it leads” and clicks, not the pursuit of truth. It is a manifestation of what the great journalist and public intellectual, Chris Hedges, calls “late stage Capitalism”. Ironically, that same msm made Trump! In the words of Les Moonves: “I don’t know if Trump is good for America, but he’s damn sure good for CBS.” Indeed! Much of his base would not know really know him were it not for his long stint on NBC’s “The Apprentice”. As for Nikki Haley: Her speech was excellent, and the personal attacks on her childish and designed for clicks and eyeballs…for $$$$. Having said that, Haley is a vile, right wing, Zionist and she is complicit by way of her anti-Palestinian tenure at the UN in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. She refuses to even recognize what Bishop Desmond Tutu did: Israel is an Apartheid State. She is a Jewish Supremacist…even though she, herself, is not Jewish. She genuflects at AIPAC, in a way perhaps more extreme than the rest of the political whores we have in our government and running for office, with only a few exceptions. So, to nitpick and split hairs: Haley gave a fine speech but that does not wash away all the blood on her hands in regard to Israel/Palestine. It is a bit like defending Hitler by saying he was a vegetarian and nice to dogs and kids, while ignoring all the injustice and inhumanity he stood for and implemented.

    1. It is a manifestation of what the great journalist and public intellectual, Chris Hedges, calls “late stage Capitalism”.

      ‘Late-stage capitalism’ is a nonsense term with a vaguely Marxist inspiration. Hedges knows nothing of political economy, staged or otherwise.

  2. Localized instances of election fraud are a lot like mostly peaceful protests.

  3. One might assume this Campus guy with his Hitler like facial hair is aiming to have doofus Joe name him chief book burner and exterminator of non-nazi approved speech.

  4. He is trying to intimidate you into not opining on the recount issue, even though you’ve done so with caveats. I hope you don’t roll over or give up weighing in on this issue. It’s sad that apparently some attorney(s) that were doxed have dropped helping on the recount case, and now the mob is celebrating how their intimidation tactics work. Be brave.

    1. Kellyanne Conway in 2016: “306. Landslide. Blowout. Historic.”
      https://twitter.com/KellyannePolls/status/803336493469204481

      Trump in 2018: “The Dems have tried every trick in the playbook-call me everything under the sun. But if I’m all of those terrible things, how come I beat them so badly, 306-223? Maybe they’re just not very good! The fact is they are going CRAZY only because they know they can’t beat me in 2020!”
      https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1038604758582484993

      306 EC votes isn’t the landslide that Trump made it out to be, but if Trump thinks he beat Clinton badly, then Biden beat Trump badly.

  6. Just one example of Turley misstating the record is that Doocy piped in to correct Turley’s clear implication that Dominion software changed Trump votes to Biden votes. Had Doocy remained silent, Turley’s unsupported and incendiary implication would’ve remained unchecked for the morning Fox News viewers, and then soundbit throughout social media. So, a Fox opinion host was the voice of reason and a law school professor the sensationalist.
    I’m an old fan of Turley because I agree with his libertarianism in the face of societal norms. For instance, if three women wish to be married to one man, so be it. This time, however, he is basing his iconoclastic opinions on nonexistent evidence. Everyone agrees the president should be able to pursue remedies in court, but he is subject to the same evidentiary thresholds as everyone else. Where there is no evidence, there is no claim. Judges should start taking Rule 11 more seriously.

      1. And by Doocy of all people Fish. This is very difficult to do. You really have to have your head up your butt to pull that off.

        I’m tired from all the winning.

        1. I’m tired from all the winning.

          Said by every NPD throughout history. Turley’s blog archive is filled with all your domestic enemy winning. LOL!

  8. I thought I’d heard this man’s name before. His nemesis is Brian Leiter. There’s an Iran-Iraq War pairing of faculty blowhards.

  9. Jonathan, you were on the faculty when I attended law school (although I did not end up in your classes). At the time we still had some opportunities for civil discourse, although the Bork the hearings occurred then, and it was clear where all this was headed. My wife was a professor at a major university and I watched the intolerance there rise. There now is simply no place for dissenting views at virtually all institutions of higher education. The intolerance has been exported to the private sector. Now we see major law firms caving to the cancel culture and withdrawing from representing the Trump campaign. And yet this still seems to surprise you. Look around. It is now acceptable for lawyers to argue that some people don’t deserve their day in court, and it’s not going to stop there. I appreciate that you are one of the sane voices remaining on the left, but that’s why they’re coming for you too.

    1. There now is simply no place for dissenting views at virtually all institutions of higher education.

      Which severely vitiates their value. So lets break out the chainsaw and cut costs by cutting faculty.

    2. A thoughtful comment to which I subscribe. I have been around for a long time. Marine Corps, Vietnam Vet, Political Science degree, Foreign Service Officer. And it still surprises me too! It seems that the breeding ground has been at our teaching institutions? But what motivated that element to move away from the fundamentals of our Republic and preach contrary to the foundation of our society and the Constitution that binds us together?
      You suggest that you are not surprised. Help me understand how this has happened over the past dozen or so years that I have been retired. It seems to have progressed a mach speed.

      1. A lot of it was laid out by Alan Bloom in “The Closing of the American Mind” (1987). In the 1960s, the universities caved to pressure from student groups who demanded that the curriculum fit their views. Education has been watered down and serious subjects pushed aside to accommodate political piffle. Higher education no longer has a foundation, and the faculty know that dissenting voices are likely to collapse their rickety structure. When you set aside the pursuit of truth, or even deny that such a thing could exist, it becomes just a question of who shouts the loudest.

        2. Who shouts the loudest? That would be Mark Levin, the so-called, “Great One,” of course. He follows in the tradition of another infamous historical shouter named Judge Roland Freisler. Search YouTube.

          1. “Shouting the loudest” is what’s called a metaphor. I used it to refer to people who have no coherent argument but just an overheated reaction, like comparing Turley to a Holocaust denier or Mark Levin to Roland Freisler. Freisler liked to shout, but his only historical significance is in presiding over the People’s Court and having political opponents executed. I don’t believe Levin has done anything comparable.

    3. MFR,

      If you’ve the time you could show your support for the USA’s USC & show up for the pre Trump rally tomorrow, 11/14/2020, in DC @ 12:00 noon outside the Whitehouse. POTUS says he may stop by.

      If you wish to check in on the current battle lines in the US check: Infowars.com/show & archived their material @ Banned.Video

      I wish they had video sections cut out so I could save people time & post short clips…. but with big tech hiding behind section 230… & with old media censorship were lucky we’ve got what we have.

      If interested also bone up on USC Article 2, Section 1…. it’s coming up fast.

    5. MFR: tolerating good faith dissenting views is one thing, but we should not tolerate demonstrable lying. One gets sanctioned in court for lying because it defeats the pursuit of truth and justice. Why then should we tolerate Trump’s lies and those who lie on his behalf in the court of public opinion? I am not suggesting censoring them but rather censuring them.

  10. My hair is on fire, at least that which I have left. What has happened to common sense? Professor Turley constantly supports freedom of speech, freedom of expression and upholding the fundamental values that support the foundation of our Republic. At what point did so many of our universities and their professors leave the path? I am at a loss to understand how so many in our society have moved so far left and out of sight of our Democracy.

    1. At what point did so many of our universities and their professors leave the path?

      The faculty fancy free speech is for peers, and we are not peers. Have a gander at David Benson’s posts. He has no engagement with any other poster, even the sort of rude and mendacious engagement favored by Gainesville. He just drops supercilious little turds into threads, then leaves.

  11. It’s another example, in case we needed one, that graduate school and institutional hiring practices generate a lot of garbage faculty. Look around you, professor, and you can see who is responsible for this.

    So, what’s to do? QUIT USING THESE PEOPLE TO SORT THE LABOR MARKET.

  12. The word professor takes on new meaning.

    It is unfortunate, by orders of magnitude, that all professors aren’t as intellectually gifted and in possession of an abundance of acumen as Professor Turley.

    Al Gore is a Holocaust denier.

    Good to know.

  13. They are desperate….absolutely DESPERATE, to de-legitimize any inference, no matter how slight, that something fishy may have affected the election.

    “Investigate? Ridiculous. What is there to investigate? The very people responsible for preventing a massive failure in election integrity have absolutely assured us that they’ve seen no evidence of a massive failure in election integrity…they pinky swear it; therefore no investigation is necessary. Right? Right? Please? C’mon Man!”

  14. Some of these comments are priceless. At times one wonders is these persons actually read the post or if they simply received some talking points in their morning e-mail

    A source of humor during these “trying times”.

  15. When will Professor Turley accept that his colleagues are not merely intellectually dishonest, they are simply dishonest? That someone who takes such an obviously perverse position: that transparency is the enemy of the common good, is a pervert in all his ways? It’s a fearful time when someone with these perverse edicts is part of a larger group that stumbles over each other, trying to outdo the other one in their profane rantings, as they march towards their new authoritarianism.

  16. JT, you seem a bright fellow. Why would you, then, support a party that has members as fascist-like and willfuly ignorant as this fellow?

    It is getting painful to watch your contorted efforts to remain loyal to a democrat party thay no longer exists

  17. You know, Trump had appointed a whole commission to investigate voter fraud in the 2016 election headed by Kris Kobach. They quietly disbanded when they found nothing.

    You know, Trump claimed he had investigators in Hawaii looking into Biden’s birth certificate and “you would not believe what they are finding.” We never heard from them again, because they found nothing. Probably those investigators did not exist.

    Currently, Trump is filing a lot of lawsuits alleging fraud and when it comes time to present proof there is nothing.

    You cannot give a proven con man the benefit of the doubt.

    2. Amen, Second Verse! Trump is the least trustworthy person in politics. I would not trust him to give me the time of day. Even now he is conning Republicans to send him money for a legal defense fund which monies are being diverted to pay off other debts. Suckers.

  18. Turley writes:

    “This hateful or unhinged rhetoric..”

    How many times have we seen this term used at the beginning of a column about Trump?

    What a phony Trump/GOP tool. Get lost!

    1. Joe:

      “Get lost”?

      Seems to me that you are on Turley’s site.

      Means that it is up to you to leave.

      Kind of arrogant for you to tell a site’s owner to get lost.

      But that is the Dem understanding of property rights (and the First Amendment).

  19. “People treating the president-elect as the president-elect. Most of us are supporting his going forward with the transition.”

    “Most of us” and “people” does not include the vast majority of Republicans in the Senate and House. It does not include Putin. You are feeding into their conspiracy theories.

    1. He’s lying Nonsense. He’s not “supporting his going forward with the transition.”

      He writes 2 columns a day attacking some minor BS he digs up about Biden or Democrats. Meanwhile he and the GOP are trying to wreck confidence in our election system and democracy while his and their leader is missing in action and in the bunker hiding out.

      What a crock this guy lays out.

      1. You couldn’t possibly be reading Turley with anything like an open mind and write such nonsense. One doesn’t have to support Trump (I don’t) to say we have a process, and the process should be followed. There is no evidence of widespread fraud. Biden appears to have won, but the only thing that “proves” that is the EC. Gore had his day in court (albeit with a staggeringly smaller margin); Trump gets his. It’s not about Trump. It’s about process. We have a process to follow and it has nothing to do with conspiracy theories. Campos is unhinged. Turley is not. Turley defends academic freedom and free speech. Campos does not. I know which side I prefer.

        1. Anonymous, Turley is supposed to be a smart lawyer. “Letting the process play out” while knowing full well that Trump’s BS claims are just BS and giving him the “benefit” of being proven wrong when it’s already abundantly clear that trump is just peddling BS. Judges presiding over these cases are tossing them out like the nonsense they are. Turley is a lawyer and he’s well aware of just his stupid and ridiculous the claims are. All Turley is doing is making sure you can hear him kissing Trump’s rear end loud and clear. He makes remoras look cute in comparison.

    2. In the humble opinion of this Independent voter I do not consider Biden or any candidate the ‘President-Elect’ until every state has certified their election and the Electoral Congress has voted. Just sayin’

  20. The media does not decide who wins an election.

    Academics do not decide who wins an election.

    Actors do not decide who wins an election.

    When votes are tallied, lawsuits are completed, results certified, and the electoral college casts their votes, then you have the official results of an election.

    Professor Paul Campus is yet another example of an academic suffering from delusions of grandeur.

    1. Yes!
      Let the process play out.
      Alas, Campos is not unique, and the bile he spews is, sadly, not at all uncommon in the hallowed halls of higher education.
      Being educated does not guarantee wisdom or decorum or a moral compass.
      Just a degree.

          1. Jonathan Turley, joined Fox and Friends to echo another insane conspiracy theory (promoted by OAN, Trump, and Hannity) claiming a software glitch by Dominion voting machines made Trump lose thousands of votes to Joe Biden.

            This of course is nonsense, but that didn’t stop Turley, a law professor (who lost his legal mind during the Trump administration) from spewing this garbage as if it was a verifiable fact.

            That’s not shocking, but then a Fox and Friends co-host came out and thoroughly told the Fox News viewers this was false, right to Turley’s face.

            Turley was asked by Brian Kilmeade about the conspiracy that there was “a problem” with Dominon’s software.

            Turley very calmly said, “We have had glitches in this, in Michigan, you had thousands of votes that were given to Biden that belonged to Trump. Now, that doesn’t mean it was a nefarious purpose. This is a new software that apparently is vulnerable to human error.”

            Turley used this idiocy to boost Trump’s calls to investigate all votes that were counted against him.

            Kilmeade said, “The president tweeted that out.”

            However, stop the presses.

            Your mind will be blown.

            Fox and Friends co-host Steve Doocy then jumped in and said, “Right, [Trump] retweeted it.”

            Doocy continued, “I looked into it. With that Dominion software, five counties in Michigan and Georgia had problems, and the Dominion software was used in two of the counties and in every instance largely it was human error, a problem, but the software did not affect the vote counts.”

            Boom!

            And it doesn’t help Turley’s case that Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has assured the public that the 2020 election was secure.

            So, Turley basis his “knowledge” on Trump tweets! lol

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