Judge rules in favor of defendants in Colorado voter intimidation case

A view of the Alfred A. Arraj U.S. Courthouse in downtown Denver on May 30, 2023. (Quentin Young/Colorado Newsline)

A federal judge on Thursday ruled in favor of defendants in a case involving three Colorado election conspiracy theorists who’d been accused by a coalition of voting rights groups of violating civil rights laws by conducting “voter verification” canvassing in the summer of 2021.

Voter intimidation trial

Read more from our reporting on the USEIP case here .

Judge Charlotte Sweeney said that the plaintiffs had failed to present credible evidence of voter intimidation.

“The court finds that there is simply insufficient evidence to proceed any further in this matter,” Sweeney said.

Ashe Epp, Shawn Smith and Holly Kasun, through their work with the group U.S. Election Integrity Plan, were accused of voter intimidation in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Enforcement Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court of Colorado in 2022 by attorneys with the liberal nonprofit Free Speech For People, on behalf of the Colorado NAACP, the League of Women Voters of Colorado and Mi Familia Vota.

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All three defendants, through their work with USEIP and other groups, are or were associates of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, one of the the nation’s most prominent election conspiracy theorists and a leading benefactor of election denial causes. Alongside other far-right activists and media figures, they’re part of a constellation of Colorado-based conspiracy theorists who amplified debunked claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election, which former President Donald Trump lost, in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Plaintiffs sought to tie USEIP’s activity to “our nation’s troubling history of voter intimidation and disenfranchisement.” Their witnesses included Chris Beall, Colorado’s deputy secretary of state, and Beth Hendrix, director of the League of Women Voters of Colorado, both of whom testified that the campaign raised concerns and relayed secondhand reports of voters feeling intimidated by canvassers.

But the plaintiffs produced only one witness, Yvette Roberts, who purported to have been personally intimidated by canvassers at her home. Roberts is a Grand Junction resident, and although USEIP organizers had a volunteer “captain” in Mesa County and communicated with likeminded activists there, the defendants maintain that the canvassing activity was a separate effort by a different group. Under cross-examination on Tuesday, Roberts acknowledged that she “didn’t know what organization it was.”

While Sweeney said that she found “no ill will” in Roberts’ testimony, she called it “wholly unhelpful to the plaintiffs.”

The judge’s findings came in response to a motion from the defense for an early end to the trial, after the plaintiffs acknowledged on Wednesday that they had no further evidence to present on the issue of intimidation.

The defendants, joined by a dozen or so supporters who had attended the trial throughout the week, celebrated what Epp called an “amazing” outcome.

“We are disappointed in this ruling and are exploring all appeal options,” Courtney Hostetler, legal director of Free Speech For People, said in a statement.

Attacks on plaintiffs

Sweeney said that both the plaintiffs and the defendants had sought to make the trial about “sideshows” like election conspiracy theories, the integrity of Colorado’s elections systems and the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“It seems that all parties want this case to be something that it is not about,” Sweeney said.

As the trial continued following Roberts’ testimony on Tuesday, the defendants stepped up their attacks on the lawsuit’s legitimacy, claiming that the groups behind it, in part by “collaborating with local journalists,” helped spread “alarmist” rhetoric to gin up fears about intimidation among Coloradans who may have been canvassed by USEIP.

They even accused the office of Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a forceful critic of election conspiracy theories long villainized by the defendants, of coordinating with the plaintiffs — a charge Beall flatly rejected from the witness stand.

The League of Women Voters of Colorado, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, sent a “voter intimidation notice” regarding USEIP’s efforts to thousands of subscribers on its email list in September 2021. During cross-examination on Tuesday and Wednesday, Hendrix said she had relied on media reports to form most of her impressions of USEIP and its canvassing activity.

“Did you file a lawsuit based on impressions?” Cameron Powell, an attorney for Kasun, asked Hendrix.

“No, we filed a lawsuit based on multiple media reports, as well as eyewitness reports, as well as the organization’s own statements and playbook,” she replied.

Portia Prescott, president of the Colorado NAACP, called Thursday’s outcome “sad and scary.” Hendrix said she was disappointed, and rejected the accusations that any of the plaintiffs or their attorneys acted in bad faith.

“We were doing our jobs,” Hendrix said. “Standing up for the voters of Colorado.”

More than 4,000 voters contacted

Records of USEIP canvassing activity entered into evidence in the case show that volunteers with the group contacted more than 4,000 voters at over 9,000 residences in at least four Colorado counties in the summer of 2021.

Using voter data obtained from the secretary of state’s office, they hunted for “discrepancies” and “anomalies” that would substantiate their allegations of fraud. In some cases, USEIP submitted affidavits documenting alleged evidence of fraud to local law enforcement, but no action was taken.

Claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent or compromised have been debunked by elections officials , experts , media investigations , law enforcement , the courts and former Trump’s own campaign and administration officials .

Epp and Smith, who helped organize USEIP’s efforts and personally canvassed voters, and Kasun, who co-founded the group and served as its spokesperson, maintained throughout the trial that the group’s canvassers had always been polite and courteous, and at no point intended to intimidate voters. They also rejected claims by the plaintiffs that they had targeted “low-propensity” voters who might include higher percentages of Democratic voters and voters of color.

In his testimony, Smith said that while he may have been armed while knocking on doors, he typically carries a concealed firearm and that it wouldn’t have been visible to any contacted residents.

The plaintiffs focused extensively on Smith’s comments during a speech at a Castle Rock church in February 2022, in which he claimed he had evidence implicating Griswold in election fraud and said that anyone involved in election fraud “deserved to hang,” adding that “sometimes, the old ways are the best ways.”

“The court of course does not condone this type of language, nor the reaction that it apparently elicited from the crowd,” Sweeney said. “But … plaintiffs have established no connection between the statement and an attempt to intimidate any voter or group of voters.”

All three defendants were present in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, and Smith was captured on video as part of a pro-Trump mob that clashed with police outside the U.S. Capitol. But Sweeney repeatedly shut down lines of questioning during trial testimony relating to the insurrection and other matters, including attempts by the defendants to question Beall over a list of well-worn talking points used by conservatives to cast doubt on Colorado elections.

“Being associated with the Klan for I don’t know how many years has been awful,” Kasun said in an interview. “It’s destroyed my life. It has been completely unfounded, and today was the day that it all came to light.”

Earlier this year, Smith’s attorneys moved for Sweeney’s recusal, arguing that her political contributions to President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, among other factors, would create a “perception of bias.” But Kasun said Thursday’s result helped restore a measure of her faith in the system.

“It absolutely does,” Kasun said. “I thought the judge was extremely fair. She was calling balls and strikes.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 11:02 a.m., July 18, 2024 to include additional details of the trial and reactions to Thursday’s outcome. It was also updated to clarify the nature of the case’s resolution.

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