Summit GOP wants Larose under oath
Republicans in Summit County are asking the Ohio Supreme Court for time to question Secretary of State Frank Larose under oath.
The local GOP and its chairman, Bryan Williams, filed a motion Thursday, seeking 10 days to request phone records and other documents they say will shed light on why Larose rejected Williams’ reappointment to the county’s board of elections.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, whose lawyers are representing Larose, replied Thursday with a request for a protective order that would shield Larose or his director of elections, Amanda Granjean, from having to sit for the depositions.
Larose denied William’s reappointment in a March 3 letter to the local election office. His reasons included traffic issues at the early voting center in the 2020 presidential election, more than 700 deceased voters left eligible to vote, the alleged voter disenfranchisement of convicted felons and a toxic workplace in which board members failed to implement an anti-harassment policy or communicate a process for notifying supervisors of potential election fraud.
Williams and the local party met last week and decided to file a suit seeking a court order compelling Larose to make the appointment. The Ohio Supreme Court on Monday agreed to take the case on an expedited basis as the election board will be voting on ballot language and candidacies for the May primary.
Williams is alleging that Larose is using his power as Ohio’s election chief to “exact political retribution” by denying the reappointment. Williams’ legal argument alleges that Larose twisted or omitted facts, failed to prove that Williams is incompetent and is upset that Williams hasn’t thrown more campaign support to Larose, who grew up in Summit County and moved to Columbus last year.
In a motion filed Thursday, Williams and attorney Steve Funk of Roetzel & Andress, which is representing the local party, asked the Supreme Court for a 10day extension on their next filing deadline of March 25, at which point they would lay out the substance of their legal dispute. If the court grants the time, Funk would request records under the discovery process and ask the court to subpoena Larose and Board Chair Bill Rich, a Democrat, to testify under oath.
“Discovery is necessary to determine the factual basis for the Secretary of State’s opinions and statements, and whether they are factually correct or a mere pretext to justify the Secretary of State’s decision,” Funk wrote in a memo to the court Thursday.
Lawyers for Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said the Summit County GOP and Williams are not “entitled to discovery or its undue burden.” Larose’s testimony would be “irrelevant” to the matter, the attorneys argued.
Larose’s office would not say Thursday whether the secretary plans to fill Williams’ seat as the litigation proceeds. Leaving the seat unfilled is apparently part of the state’s legal defense.
“Here, there is no need to depose the Secretary because he has not appointed another candidate to fill the seat,” Yost’s attorneys wrote. “The Secretary has already provided his reasons for Williams’ rejection and there is no need to depose him or Grandjean further.”
The state’s attorneys also are invoking executive privileges bestowed by the United States Supreme Court that protect “high-high ranking government officials” from being deposed or divulging the “deliberative process” by which they decide and set public policy. Those privileges typically apply to presidents and governors.
Lawyers for Williams would depose Larose “to determine whether the Secretary of State had knowledge of all of the relevant facts in making his decision or intentionally omitted this information in order to justify the Secretary of State’s decision,” Funk added.
The line of questioning will include “an examination of an alleged telephone communication” in which Rich asked Larose if a bipartisan team could collect absentee ballots from motorists before they turned their vehicles into a traffic jam on Grant Street, where the early voting center is located.
As voters applied for a record number of absentee ballots in the pandemic, some local county officials publicly asked Larose to allow for additional drop box locations and ballot collection points. Citing state law, Larose denied those requests.
Larose has until noon Friday object to Williams’ request for a 10-day extension and until Monday to file an initial response to Williams’ claims of politically motivated “retribution.”