President Joe Biden’s latest judicial nominee blamed voting machine irregularities and other "errors, inconsistencies, and systemic violations" for his loss in a House race several years ago.
Former Rep. Anthony Brindisi (D., N.Y.) sued for a recount after his narrow loss to Republican Claudia Tenney in 2020. Marc Elias, a controversial Democratic elections lawyer who represented Brindisi, argued there was evidence that "voting tabulation machines misread hundreds if not thousands of valid votes as undervotes," and that the errors "disproportionately affected Brindisi."
Now, Biden has tapped Brindisi to serve on the federal district court in the northern district of New York. Brindisi, who served one term in Congress, has worked on the New York state claims court since 2022.
The nomination could undercut a key line of attack Democrats have deployed against Republicans who challenged the 2020 election results. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and other Democrats have portrayed Republican nominee Donald Trump as an existential threat to "democracy" throughout the 2024 campaign.
"Democracy cannot survive when one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election: Either they win or they were cheated," Biden said in a primetime speech in September 2022.
"Today and every day, we must continue the fight to protect our democracy," Harris said earlier this year.
Brindisi conceded his loss to Tenney after a months-long legal battle with New York’s elections board. But he continued to blame voting irregularities, lamenting in his concession announcement that his race was "riddled with errors, inconsistencies, and systemic violations of state and federal laws."
"My one disappointment is that the Court did not see fit to grant us a recount," Brindisi said.
The ruling marked another setback for Elias, the Democratic elections lawyer. In 2021, Elias unsuccessfully lobbied House Democrats to overturn Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks's (R., Iowa) victory over his client, Rita Hart.
In 2022, a federal judge laughed Elias out of court over his lawsuit to redraw New York state congressional maps in favor of Democrats. Judge Lewis Kaplan, a Clinton appointee, said Elias’s lawsuit was a "Hail Mary pass" aimed at undermining free and fair elections.
Elias is perhaps best known for commissioning the infamous Steele dossier on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016, which falsely accused the Trump campaign of colluding with Russia to influence the presidential election. The Federal Election Commission fined the Clinton campaign for falsely labeling the payments to Elias as "legal services."
Brindisi and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.