Meet the Not-So-Independent Women Who Help Mainstream Trump’s Big Lie
The Independent Women’s Forum and Voice have used their “independent” veneer to market claims about election fraud to a broader audience
By Alyssa Bowen and Ansev Demirhan
January 6, 2022, marks the one-year anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump-supporters driven by the Big Lie that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election.
Dark money has been central to the spreading of the Big Lie. The “Stop the Steal” rallies in D.C. preceding the insurrection counted on the support of dark money groups, like the Republican Attorneys General Association (which made thousands of robocalls promoting the event), Turning Point USA (which organized buses to Washington D.C.), and Women for America First (which toured the country leading up to January 6 and obtained the permit for the D.C. rally that day).
Other dark money organizations, like the Independent Women’s Forum and Voice (IWF/V), have helped to repackage claims about widespread election fraud–which used to be a fringe conspiracy theory tactic to make it harder for Americans to vote–into something more palatable to moderates. IWF/V are pay-to-play groups that use their “independent” branding to aid partisan right-wing politicians and the legislative wish lists of corporations.
Between 2011 and 2018, IWV received $4.2 million in funding from two groups belonging to the network of Leonard Leo, the right-wing operative who has helped deploy secret funders to pack the Supreme Court and other courts, as detailed by Robert O’Harrow and Shawn Boberg in the Washington Post. The Leo-tied Judicial Education Project (JEP, now the 85 Fund) also goes by the legal alias “Honest Elections Project,” a voter suppression group that peddles claims about voter fraud. JEP has passed $610,000 in secretly sourced funds to IWF since 2018. As of 2017, IWF/V had also received more than $1 million in recent years from the Bradley Foundation, which Jane Mayer reported had spent $18 million supporting eleven right-wing groups involved in election issues since 2012.
IWF/V have benefited from presenting themselves as “independent” while promoting far-right politicians and policy positions. IWF/V’s Heather Higgins has told funders at an event with the controversial David Horowitz: “We have worked hard to create a branded organization… that does not carry the partisan baggage,” adding “being branded as neutral but actually having the people who know, know that you’re actually conservative puts us in a unique position.”
Given their financial links to the Leo dark money network, it may come as no surprise that IWF/V have used their apolitical veneer to pitch claims about voter fraud to a broader audience. Such claims continue to undermine public faith in our democratic institutions in advance of the 2022 and 2024 elections and are used to justify state voter suppression bills that disproportionately disenfranchise Democratic voters.
IWF/V Pushed the Big Lie Before the 2020 Election
IWF/V publicly condemned the violence incited by the January 6 insurrection, but some IWF/V leaders, staff, and fellows actively cast doubt on the integrity of the 2020 election. Here are some examples of the latter:
They justified the right of “faithless electors” to “exercise independent judgement” in voting for a presidential candidate other than the one they pledged to their voters to support
They argued that Trump was not a threat to democracy leading up to the 2020 election.
IWF/V echoed Trump’s playbook in casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election results well before the November 2020 election, such as when IWF staffer Kelsey Bolar argued that “any reasonable American would be concerned” with voter fraud, because “you have mass mail-in voting that opens the door” for it, even though voter fraud is exceedingly rare. She also planted a seed of implicit guilt by questioning “why this is not a top concern for [Democrats],” even though Republican “solutions” to statistically non-existent fraud make voting harder for millions of Americans, especially for Americans in minority communities.
(IWF has also opposed ranked choice voting and electing the president based on the popular vote, arguing that the electoral college looks out for a “diverse group of voters.” They seem to define diversity in voting by “geography,” despite the disproportionate weight of votes in largely white rural states compared with larger, more racially diverse states in the Electoral College count, for example. They also appear to take the position that disparate racial impact is unworthy of redress if a law is not expressly intended to be racist, regardless of outcomes that disproportionately harm people of color.)
IWF/V Played Up Unsubstantiated Claims of Voter Fraud After the 2020 Election
IWF/V ramped up their baseless allegations of voter fraud after the election on November 3, 2020. The day after the election, then-IWV President Tammy Bruce argued that the election system “failed Americans” and claimed that Trump had massive leads in states not being called. She accused the establishment of lying and cheating. A day later Bruce insinuated that Democrats were stealing votes because they were the ones doing most of the counting. She called on Trump to do “everything in his power…[to make this] a fair and free election.”
On November 12th, 2020, IWF fellows Heather Madden and Michelle Vogt published a video on IWF’s YouTube channel arguing that “election integrity is critical'' and that vote-by-mail increases the risk of fraud. In fact, vote-by-mail has been shown not only to not increase voter fraud overall, but also to increase legitimate bipartisan democratic participation.
They also made a claim from the playbook of discredited Trump election fraud commissioner Kris Kobach that the voter rolls are out of date, casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election. Meanwhile, purging voter rolls can result in the deletion of hundreds of thousands of American voters, which could then lead to them being turned away at the polls or prevent their votes from being counted on election day (being set aside as a provisional ballot) as we have seen in Florida and other states.
IWF/V leaders Heather Higgins and Carries Lukas also signed the Conservative Action Project’s “Count Every Legal Vote” memo which legitimized Trump’s failure to concede the election and claimed “there [were] open and compelling disputes about [the] electoral outcome.”
IWF fellow Ashley MacLeay, who was appointed Co-Chairman of the RNC’s Committee on “Election Integrity,” helped to organize the “Stop the Steal” march in Washington D.C after the election. She described the goal of the march as “want[ing] to confront antifa and hopefully at the end of the day keep [the] current president in office.” Notably, analysis of new evidence suggests that part of Trump’s strategy was anticipating a violent confrontation between Trump supporters and Americans who oppose fascism that could be used as a basis for declaring martial law and blocking the certification of the presidential election.
MacLeay and her Committee Co-Chair, Florida state Senator Joe Gruters, who met with Trump lawyer and Big Lie-fundraiser Sidney Powell in November and later claimed Powell “brought up a lot of good points” about “what really happened” during the election, released a memo on behalf of the committee in August. The memo recommends voter suppression tactics similar to those promoted by Leonard Leo’s Honest Elections Project and its “precursor,” the GOP-backed American Center for Voting Right (ACVR).
ACVR was created in 2005 by operatives linked to Karl Rove’s efforts to promote fears about voter fraud and to push laws that would make it harder for Americans to vote in the aid of George W. Bush and the GOP. Before its sudden disappearance in 2007, for about two years ACVR wielded outsized power impacting “even the Supreme Court’s thinking about voter-ID laws,” according to law professor Richard Hasen.
The tactics pushed by ACVR, HEP, and now the RNC’s so-called Committee on “Election Integrity” would affect the ability of poor and minority Americans to participate in our country’s elections. The RNC’s Committee recommended, for example:
Opposing federal legislation designed to protect voting rights (HEP notably submitted a brief opposing Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act). The memo also repeated an IWF-promoted claim used to justify opposition to federal election protections by arguing that “the decentralization of our elections is a natural deterrent to a central point of attack on our systems, which congressional overreach would endanger.”
Purging voter rolls, which (as discussed above) could remove voters from voting rolls without their knowledge and therefore prevent them from casting a vote or their vote from being counted. (Purging has been shown to disproportionately target people of color.)
Imposing stricter voter identification requirements, vote-by-mail, access to drop-boxes, and third-party collection of ballots, all of which make it harder for disabled, elderly, and other working-class Americans to vote in elections.
Imposing voter registration deadlines well before the election, even though millions of Americans move each year and still want to register to vote and be able to vote in elections.
IWF/V Defended Rioters and Downplayed Violence After the Insurrection, While Continuing to Spread the Big Lie
After the January 6 insurrection, IWF/V appeared to try to thread the needle between condemning the violence and defending those who supported the Big Lie that fueled the violence. Their statement on the riot argued that the concerns Americans have with the election results “are legitimate” and griped that the media lies and the justice system treats Republicans unfairly.
Erin Hawley, fellow at IWF/V’s Independent Women’s Law Center and spouse of U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (who refused to certify the 2020 election results and famously raised a fist in apparent solidarity with pro-Trump protestors before the storming of the capitol), spoke out soon after January 6. However, she didn’t condemn the insurrection or her husband’s contribution to spreading the Big Lie. Instead, she told Fox that she and her child felt threatened by the protestors who held a candlelight vigil outside her D.C. home opposing her husband’s actions. Erin Hawley later sued the event organizer asserting that these protestors intended to “terrorize” her family. She seemingly tried to differentiate the insurrectionists’ behavior from those of the protestors outside her home by suggesting that “protests at office buildings are both appropriate and protected by the First Amendment.”
In a recent interview, Carrie Sheffield conceded that Trump did lose the 2020 election but she contended that it was a shame that legal challenges were not raised sooner and claimed that the pandemic was used to cover “a multitude of sins.” Sheffield also suggested that it is “important to look forward and not back,” urging Republicans to focus on [changing] election laws, which Trump called for on January 6, as well.
IWF/V also downplayed the gravity of the insurrection in a multitude of ways:
IWF fellow Emily Jashinsky attended the “Stop the Steal” rally as “media” (she is an editor with an online rag called “the Federalist” that counts the man behind the now infamous coup powerpoint, John Eastman, as an author). She was outside the Capitol’s East entrance as people violently rushed the building. The following day she argued that only a minority of the group in attendance rioted and that the majority of those who protested were “normal people.” So far, prosecutors have charged more than 750 people with committing federal crimes that day.
Months later Jashinsky accused Democrats of using the January 6 insurrection to detract from Trump’s policies and even claimed the Dems were “creating a new Russiagate out of January 6” (even though the Mueller report and the U.S. intelligence community thoroughly documented the efforts of Russia to distort the 2016 election, in addition to evidence in the criminal prosecution of Trump insiders who lied about those connections, like Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, whom Trump pardoned).
IWF staffer Inez Stepman rejected the idea that it was a “coup” and insisted that it was a “riot” with “one tactical nerd with zip ties and 200 guys with big guts taking selfies.” Notably, she is also a fellow at the Claremont Institute, a California-based right wing operation that has apparently tried to whitewash Eastman’s memo providing Trump with a legal roadmap for overturning the election. (Eastman, who clerked for Clarence Thomas, was funded to create an entity at Claremont to try to legitimize his reactionary views as constitutionally sound).
On her podcast, IWF fellow and Fox regular Lisa Boothe spoke out in defense of insurrectionists in jail for their involvement in January 6’s storming of the Capitol. Echoing Trump’s claims and Tucker Carlson’s propaganda, she referred to them as “political prisoners.” She also declared that several of those arrested did not enter the capital, commit any acts of violence, or vandalize property, yet they were indicted for federal crimes based on evidence of doing those very things. Her guest, Julie Kelley took it a step further by suggesting that an attempt to overthrow democracy is not an actual crime, even though sedition is a crime and the Constitution’s 14th amendment expressly disqualifies from public office anyone engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” against the United States.
IWF staffer Charlotte Hays recently referred to January 6 as “disgraceful but not an insurrection” as she promoted a Wall Street Journal editorial by IWF board member Tarren Bragdon, that claimed that liberal dark money was undermining Americans’ trust in our election.
As the anniversary of January 6 has approached and as the January 6 House committee has obtained additional damning evidence about the orchestration of events that day, IWF/V staffers have defended and downplayed the riot and attempted to discredit the 2020 presidential election results. However, they have not challenged the congressional elections on the same ballots of people like Reps. Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, people they have lauded as “champions” despite their numerous inflammatory and discredited claims.
IWF/V Have Financed Ads about and Promoted Legislators Who Pushed the Big Lie
Beyond their rhetorical support for the Big Lie, IWF/V has also purchased ad buys that aid, built relationships with, and profiled GOP members who actively threw doubt onto the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. Here are some examples:
In 2020, IWV purchased over $500,000 in advertisements that aided politicians who later supported overturning the election, including outgoing Georgia Senators Loeffler and Perdue who initially opposed certification, and Representatives Burgess and Herrel who voted to overturn the election results.
IWF profiled twelve elected officials in their “Champion Women” series who challenged the results of the 2020 election, most of whom were profiled after casting their votes to delegitimize the election results.
Colorado Rep. Boebert, a sympathizer of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory whose followers believe the outlandish lie that Trump is fighting a war to save the country from a cabal of liberal child-sex trafficking celebrities and political elites, was featured by IWF in December 2020. Boebert declared that once sworn into Congress, she would formally challenge the election results, and she did. IWF staffer Laura Carno worked as Communications Director for Boebert, who faced calls to resign after tweeting information about Nancy Pelosi’s whereabouts during the January 6 insurrection. (See our original reporting on that timeline here, debunking Boebert’s claim of innocence in that matter)
Representative Claudia Tenney was featured on IWF’s She Thinks podcast on “the importance of election security,” in May 2021 where she claimed that an entire county’s “computer system got hacked,” even though multiple computer systems were used and FOX and others have been successfully sued for lying to the public about those systems. Tenney argued against H.R.1, with provisions to protect the right to vote from voter suppression such as through restrictive ID requirements that impose new obstacles on Americans who have voted for years. She even accused Democrats of “voter integrity suppression.”
Other politicians who voted against election certification that were favorably profiled by IWF in the following months include Representatives Herrell, Malliotakis, Cammack, Miller, and Van Duyne. IWF conducted interviews with Representatives Lummis and Walorski , who both supported overturning the presidential election results.
IWF also profiled South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem. While other South Dakota Republicans said they did not see any evidence of voter fraud, Noem quickly called into question the 2020 presidential election.
IWF/V Also Hired a Lawyer After January 6 Who Then Promoted Voter Suppression Bills
In the wake of the 2020 election, Republican officials have mobilized the Big Lie by pushing a cross-country effort to impose new voter restrictions. IWF/V staffers have written in favor of these restrictions and against voting reforms that would increase voting access.
Leading the charge on their effort has been Maya Noronha, whom IWF named a fellow in July 2021. Noronha previously worked for Hans von Spakovsky, a notorious GOP partisan who has spent years promoting claims of voter fraud through the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation.
Noronha is not the only IWFer with connections to von Spakovsky, who Slate called “the dark prince of voter fraud alarmism.” In March 2021, IWLC Director Jennifer Braceras moderated a panel on mail-in voting with von Spakovsky as the invited speaker.
Noronha has supported some of the country’s most aggressive state voter suppression laws, specifically those in Florida, Texas, and Georgia, as an IWF fellow.
She celebrated Florida’s S.B. 90, which would create burdensome restrictions on mail-in ballots, arguing that “voters across Florida—whether minorities, seniors, or voters with disabilities—can have increased confidence in their voting rights as a result of these election reforms.” Yet S.B. 90 forces people to submit vote-by-mail requests more often than previously required, retroactively cancels voters’ current mail ballot requests, and criminalizes assistance with ballot pickups and drop offs–disproportionately affecting working, elderly, and disabled people.
Studies have shown that prior to S.B.1. passing in Texas, it was harder to cast a ballot in Texas than any other state in the country. And S.B.1 created even more barriers, including, but not limited to, banning drive-thru and 24-hour voting and curbing early voting. Meanwhile, Noronha repeated Trump team talking points that claim that S.B.1. “make[s] it easy to vote and difficult to cheat.”
Noronha also wrote on behalf of IWF in support of Georgia’s new voter suppression law, claiming that it is now “easier for citizens to vote” in the state. However, the provisions found in Georgia’s voter legislation make voting more difficult. Some of these measures include requiring an ID number to apply for an absentee ballot and cutting off absentee ballot applications eleven days before an election. In addition to Noronha, Heather Higgins signed the Conservative Action Project memo celebrating Georgia’s voter suppression law.
IWF/V has also staunchly opposed federal legislation that would guarantee free and fair elections at the federal level. For instance, they have attacked H.R.1., or the For the People Act, and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, known as H.R. 4, which would restore key protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 gutted by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) and Brnovich v. DNC (2021), protecting people of color against discriminatory voter legislation. The groups and their Independent Women’s Law Center (IWLC) have written to Congress to claim that H.R. 4 is “an unconstitutional federal takeover of elections that threatens to dilute the votes of American citizens.”
They even suggest that H.R. 4 is inherently racist. Noronha has written that “the bill undermines civil rights by limiting state election reforms that expand minority voting rights and by weaponizing nondiscrimination laws for partisan gain.” In fact, this bill would provide the Federal oversight needed to make sure states did not implement discriminatory legislation by restoring preclearance through the Department of Justice prior to changing voting laws.
Conclusion
Dark money women’s organizations, like Women for America First, have largely become the face of the January 6 protests. But other dark money groups, like IWF/V, have also sought to legitimize the Big Lie that led to the violent riot and insurrection on January 6.
Today, IWF/V is reportedly hosting an event on their “Independent Women’s Network” with a former Trump administration national security official called “Insurrection or Exaggeration” questioning the seriousness of the attempted coup.
By marketing claims about voter fraud to their target audience of independent women through their facade of political neutrality, IWF/V has contributed to the continued belief that Trump won the 2020 election and that Democrats colluded to steal it from him, despite the mass of evidence against such claims. The Big Lie, and its proponents, will continue to throw doubt on the integrity of America’s democratic institutions in the elections to come, regardless of how many times such claims have been debunked.
This article has been updated.
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