Democrats are decrying last week’s FBI raid on the headquarters of an Ohio “voting rights” group as a political witch hunt, an “intimidation” investigation by a Trump administration fixated on probing election fraud.
But buried in the breathless corporate media coverage is the fact that the Soros-funded Ohio Organizing Collaborative has a track record of voter registration fraud and ties to a for-profit political canvassing company with a history of suspect voter registration activities.
‘Unfounded Speculation’
According to multiple reports, the FBI late last week executed search warrants at the OOC’s Cleveland offices. Agents simultaneously questioned several employees at their homes, OOC board member Prentiss Haney told CBS News. The far-left community organizer, who formerly served as the collaborative’s co-executive director, described the law enforcement operation as a “full-on assault,” insisting that “we haven’t seen anything like this since” the 1965 civil rights battles in Selma, Alabama.
An FBI official did not return The Federalist’s request for comment on Monday. A Department of Justice official in a previous statement to the media declined to comment on the investigation.
“Search warrants are authorized by a judge and anything said by any organization or others in the media is unfounded speculation, as the target of any investigation is not privy to the search warrant affidavit until after the indictment,” the DOJ official wrote in a statement.
Democrats, without a shred of information about the investigation to back their claims, blasted the probe as “another example to suppress voting rights and voter registration.”
“Any attempt to intimidate Ohio voters is wrong, and will not work,” huffed former Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who, refusing to take no for an answer from Buckeye State voters, is making another Senate run two years after losing his seat.
What Ohio Democrats didn’t mention in their overheated, ignorant statements is that the Ohio Organizing Collaborative has garnered a “bad reputation” for its actions in pursuit of a leftist mission to “build enough power to advance a shared political agenda in Ohio for racial, economic, and gender justice.”
In 2017, Rebecca Hammonds, a canvasser for the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, was convicted of falsely registering voters, including deceased individuals. Hammonds, who originally was charged with 35 counts of election fraud, was sentenced to six months in county jail. Public defender Jennifer Gorby chalked up her client’s actions to “a lack of judgment” in an effort to keep her job with the leftist voter turnout group.
Hammonds told Judge C. Ashley Pike “that she felt pressure to sign up as many registered voters as possible after being told the canvassers’ failure to meet certain goals could result in the OOC’s local funding being pulled,” the Salem News reported at the time.
“I just felt I needed to keep the numbers up,” she said.
As The Federalist reported in a 2024 investigation, one of OOC’s board members, left-wing activist Kirk Noden, founded the Ohio-based “engagement firm” which was investigated for turning in “stacks” of suspicious voter registration cards to county election officials.
‘Outright Fraudulent Behavior’
Noden is a “veteran community organizer who has successfully founded community organizations in Chicago, Birmingham England, and Ohio,” according to his bio on the webpage of the Democracy & Power Innovation Fund. The DPI Fund is a partnership of some very far-left groups, including Voces de la Frontera, Wisconsin-based BLOC (Black Leaders Organizing Communities) and the Ohio Organizing Collaborative.
“Currently, Kirk directs a set of movement aligned and owned LLCs including a consulting co-op that advises an array of national and state donors, a field vendor executes large scale electoral programs, and a social justice taproom and Mexican Kitchen that houses the Drink Your Values project,” the bio asserts.
In one case, the Hamilton County Board of Elections received a registration form in the name of deceased former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. At a board meeting, the county’s top election official presented a thick stack of voter registrations that all appeared to be in the same handwriting, and were submitted by the same canvasser.
“The first thing I want to point out is, you know, we use words like ‘anomalies,’ ‘suspicion,’ and everything else because we try to be PC, I guess. But this is fraud, outright fraudulent behavior,” Hamilton County Board of Elections member Alex Triantafilou told fellow board members at the time.
Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Director Anthony Perlatti told members at a June 21, 2023 meeting that “multiple counties have encountered issues with potential registration cards being submitted from deceased individuals,” according to the board’s minutes.
“Black Fork Strategies has had a bad reputation for a while, and it’s no secret that we’ve referred its operatives to the appropriate authorities for further investigation and possible prosecution,” Dan Lushek, spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose told The Federalist in 2024. Nothing much became of the referrals.
“Five alarm 🔥 over at @OHDems. Do they always react this way when there’s ‘nothing to find?’ Asking for a friend,” La Rose wrote on X in response to Ohio Dems’ statements on the recent FBI raid.
Big Left Money
The OOC is tied to myriad left-wing activist groups and claims to be building “a broad-based movement to end the criminalization of poverty.” Its policy focus, according to the group’s website, is on “young people, low income people, and Black people.” As charity tracker InfluenceWatch reports, OOC’s sister group, the Ohio Organizing Campaign, “focuses on registering and mobilizing voters of the same demographics.”
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the collaborative has received significant funding from groups such as far-left sugar daddy George Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society (at least $2 million), Arabella Advisors-linked nonprofits, the Voter Registration Project, and big labor outfits like Service Employees International Union, according to InfluenceWatch.
The OOC is a major player in the coalition behind the so-called “Ohio Voters Bill of Rights.” Opponents consider it an attack on election integrity. The proposed constitutional amendment would require automatic voter registration and same-day registration, expand ballot drop boxes, and water down voter ID requirements.
Another proposed amendment on this November’s ballot, passed by the Republican-controlled legislature, would enshrine the state’s photo ID law into the Buckeye State’s constitution.
In its latest tax filings, Ohio Organizing Collaborative reported revenue of $10 million and $8.95 million in expenses. The collaborative reported more than $35 million in revenue between 2020 and 2024.
‘Free from Illegal Meddling’
The FBI is reportedly also investigating Milwaukee County’s handling of the rigged 2020 election in which swing state Wisconsin was inundated with election irregularities.
Earlier this month, Wisconsin Public Radio reported that the county is bringing in leftist law firm Democracy Defenders Action to provide outside legal counsel. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who is also a Democrat candidate for governor, told the news outlet that the outside firm founded by Obama campaign adviser and diplomat Norm Eisen will “help protect any of our workers or employees that may be targeted, but also to help make the argument, quite frankly, that the Trump administration has no reason to try to seize our 2020 election ballots.”
A year ago, President Donald Trump called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the 2020 election, polluted by everything from suspect absentee ballots to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s “Zuckbucks.”
The U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division late last year filed a lawsuit demanding Fulton County, Georgia, turn over 2020 election records. In January, FBI seized election ballots from Fulton County’s election administrators. And the Justice Department is seeking ballots from the 2024 election in Wayne County, Michigan.
Last month, federal law enforcement officials charged a California woman with paying individuals – including homeless people living in the Skid Row area of downtown Los Angeles – to register to vote.
“False registrations undermine Americans’ faith in elections – even more so when payoffs are involved,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. “This Justice Department is committed to ensuring that all U.S. elections are fair and free from illegal meddling – so that all Americans can accept the results with confidence.”
