. >>> joining me now is ben ginsburg. you call what happened in arizona overnight a crippling low for the claims that the former president has made. >> yes, absolutely, john. in arizona, they brought their partisans in to do an audit. they created rules that shredded the normal credibility that you give to audits. they took money from partisans. and still they could not prove that the election was fraudulent or rigged or that joe biden didn't win. so all in all, this was the state where donald trump had his best chance to prove the outlandish theories he's had about the elections being fraudulent or rigged and he swung and missed yet again. >> maybe they can get alabama to flip to joe biden at the rate they're going. in all seriousness, though, ben, i think if one is discussing this as if it is an affirmation or confirmation of joe biden's win, we're doing it wrong. that's not what you're doing or i'm doing here. the issue here is this audit had no grounds to begin with. this was a sham from the very beginning. >> it was.

maybe not -- ben ginsburg is anything but naive. i hesitate to ask, but is it naive? >> i don't know that i would say that about ben's comments. but one thing i will say, when i think about, so ben has been an election lawyer for many, many years, advised many republican presidential campaigns, one thing that, you know, professional republicans and, you know, people who worked on campaigns and elections for a long time, some of whom are co-opted by donald trump or became part of that world, but many of whom didn't or at least privately, you know, disagree with him, they're really worried this campaign will destroy their ability to win in general elections because there will be so much doubt that their people simply won't show up, they won't go to vote, they won't mail in their ballots. republicans used to be very comfortable with mail-in voting, usually democrats honestly felt like that was to the detriment of their party because they had to do more work to get their voters physically to the polls. so i think for big picture here, for people who still are -- view the

this is the announcement today from democratic party super lawyer been power and ben ginsburg, quotethis new resource comes just as we get the new reporting from routers detailing how state election workers are not just under attack by new laws passed by republican lawmakers, they are still frequently on the receiving end of just a barrage, an unending barrage, of death threats and harassment from pro trump voters. and donned by claims that the election was told -- stolen from him. i should say, one of the notable things about this new legal defense network is the long bipartisan list of election officials across the country who have signed on to its mission to help with what they are. doing for advisory board includes the republican secretary of state from georgia, ben raffensperger, who you will recall was denounced by trump for not succumbing to his pressure to toss-up biden's win in georgia. raffensperger were briefly forced into hiding from the death threats they receive thereafter. also the democratic secretary of state of washington jocelyn benson. you will recall that there w

joining me now is cnn legal analyst ben ginsburg. ben, let's start with arizona and then talk about the bigger problem because it's all intertwined. it is getting bigger. this was trump's best chance to prove his lies, as people believe. he swung and missed in arizona. what does this mean now in arizona? >> it means in arizona that the talk of reforming elections should be based on much more facts than has been so far. so in arizona, as a legal matter, i think some of the legislative reforms that republicans have wanted to push through will run into a roadblock. and as a political matter, this has left the party deeply divided going into a key election year. so as this plays out over the course of the upcoming campaign, i think republicans in arizona are going to see what a mistake taking on this cyber anyone. >>> project was. >> hmm. so, ben, though, this has metastasized. now you have in pennsylvania republicans trying a repeat there, in wisconsin, there's an effort going on there, in texas, as we were just talking about, trump lite

. >> you know, when bob bauer and ben ginsburg first wrote in "the new york times" about the need for this effort in june, they mentioned the threats against election officials but it felt to me or at least my understanding of it at the time was it it was more about new laws being passed in republican-controlled states essentially trying to intimidate people working in the elections system in a partisan way, making it a criminal offense or making it some sort of punishable offense for elections workers to do all the things they have to do in their job, sort of hanging a damocles over all of them. it is a two-lane idea, both that election officials may need to be defended from new forms of legal liability that are written as intimidation into these new laws but also to try to get them some sort of recourse against people that continue to make these threats. i guess having been through this yourself most acutely in december, did you think these threats would have eased out of by now and that wouldn't have to be so much of a concern any further? >> you know, i think in the weeks up to ja

ben ginsburg was on earlier and called this a crippling low for the claims that the former president has been making. >> it's crippling low to the extent that even hyper partisans who bought into the conspiracy at the very beginning and did this fraudit without any experience could not seem to doctor results. the real deal, though, it's never just been about overturning an election. it is sowing seeds of doubt in our democracy. that effort will continue apparently as the president's own insistence occurs and greg abbott being asked to do, he is going to do whatever donald trump tells him to do in this case. that is a fundamental problem for our democracy. this whole process has been a sham. don't take total skepticism in the results but the real game is to initial people's in the democracy. >> it didn't need it from the cyber ninjas. there was never any proof. there were never any legitimate questions the likes of which they were raising about it. but, harry, but. >> but. . >> and. >> and. >> it may very well be that the goals of the audit were achieved anyway. . >> right. they've so

joining me now are the cochairs of the organization cnn legal analyst and republican election lawyer ben ginsburgpaign and also election law attorney and former white house counsel in the obama administration bob bower. ben, to you first. tell us how you decided there's a need for this, we need to address this in a bipartisan fashion. >> bob and i got to know state and local election officials when we did a bipartisan commission several years ago. came away incredibly impressed with these people for their dedication and professionalism. and now they've come under attack in the 2020 election in ways that dedicated public officials, especially the people who called balls and strikes in our election should not be under attack. so, it's both criminalization of laws in certain states and the threats that have been made to them that inspired us to come up with this bipartisan effort. >> you know, bob, on one hand you have legislation that has been passed in some cases that just usurp the ability of some of these folks really to do the job that they did in the last election. then on the other hand you h

david jolly, i want to read you something that ben ginsburg wrote, long-time republican election lawyerot broken," said benjamin ginsburg, an elections lawyer who has represented past republican presidential nominees. "if anything, it's spreading. people i knew as rational and principled feel they have to say our elections are not reliable because polls shows this is the ante for contested republican primaries and motivating the base in general elections. california recall results aside, it comes at the expense of the principle that our leaders should not make allegations that corrode american democracy without any credible evidence." >> yeah, nicole, the ginsburg comments and the kinzinger comments are just one more time stamp in the devolution of the republican party. it's never tee late to ask people to amplify the truth but the litmus test was in 2015 and 2016 and 2018 and 2019 and 2020 and as much as i love adam and i love ben's writing, it's never coming back. i think it's because an element of what ben wrote is absolutely true. even the republicans that don't believe the big lie

ginsburg. former president trump appointed amy coney barrett to replace the late justice after previously appointing neil gorsuch and brett kavanaugh to the high court. on monday october 4, the juices will ben-- in person for the first time since the covid-19 pandemic required them to hear cases remotely. for more on how the court has changed and what's ahead, i spoke with amy howe, co-founder of scotusblog, a website covering the u.s. supreme court. amy, thank you so much for joining us. please give us an idea of how much this court has changed since the passing of ruth bader ginsburg just a year ago. >> theost immediate impact that we've seen of the death of justice ginsburg and the replacement by justice barrett has been on what's known as the shadow docket that request the emergency requests for the court to step in and block an execution to put a lower court ruling on hold. recently, one of the most recent examples has been the request by abortion providers in texas to put the texas law barring almost all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy on hold. and so, in that case, you had the chief justice, john roberts, joining the court's now three liberal justices to say we should interven