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Ken Block is an election security expert. In 2020, Donald Trump hired him to look for election fraud. After a careful search, he didn't find any and told Trump. He also told then-Chief-of-Staff Mark Meadows. So what did Trump do? He lied and has been saying for 3 years that there was fraud. Block finally had enough and wrote an op-ed for USA Today telling his story. He also wrote a longer version of the story as a book that will come out March 12.
Block also gave a deposition to the Jan. 6 Committee. The Committee gave all its material—including the transcript of Block's deposition—to Special Counsel Jack Smith. So when Trump tries to argue at his trial that there was fraud, so he was the lawful president, Smith is going to counter with: "The election security expert you hired told you that there wasn't any fraud, so you knew all along that you lost." Smith also subpoenaed the data from Block, which he turned over as required by the subpoena. The nice thing about computer data is that you can give it away and still have it. So did anybody else subpoena the data? Yup. Fulton County DA Fani Willis also did, and Block gave it to her as well. So both Smith and Willis now have the data and Block's analysis and conclusions.
The documents Smith and Willis have also discuss how Block came to his conclusions and why he believes there was no systematic fraud. And of course, he is available for in-person testimony in any courtroom where the prosecutor wants him.
In the op-ed, Block also talks about (and condemns) the constant stream of lies from Trump and Rudy Giuliani about the election. He noted that a judge determined that Giuliani had lied about two Georgia election workers having committed fraud and ordered him to pay the workers $148 million. Giuliani repeatedly said that he had evidence of fraud. Block said that if such evidence existed, his study would have turned it up and it didn't.
Block said that in cases where there is fraud, it is generally detectable, quantifiable, and verifiable. His analysis of the 2020 election doesn't show any serious fraud and he hasn't seen any evidence of serious fraud from anyone else's study and analysis. He also noted that although there was a very small amount of double voting, it was bipartisan, with as many Republicans as Democrats voting twice. He also found a very small number of deceased people voting and even these may not have been fraud. Eight states have statutes specifically allowing early votes by people who subsequently die before Election Day to be counted. Eleven states have statutes saying that an early absentee vote of someone who dies before Election Day may not be counted. In the other states, the law does not deal with this possibility. In no state is casting a vote and then dying before Election Day considered fraud. In practice, once the ballot is removed from the signed envelope and put into the hopper of the counting machine, there is no way to retrieve it, even if the local election board learns that a voter died before Election Day in a state where such votes may not be counted. Of course, if a person dies and then someone else casts a vote in his or her name, that is definitely fraud, but Block said very few votes were cast by dead people. Block is not a Democratic sympathizer. He ran for governor of Rhode Island in 2014 as a Republican and lost. (V)