Fox News anchor asks if Biden’s effort to protect voting rights is “weaponizing” the Justice Department “to enforce his moral views about voting”

Written by Eric Kleefeld

Published

From the July 13, 2021, edition of Fox News’ America Reports with John Roberts & Sandra Smith

JOHN ROBERTS (CO-ANCHOR): President Biden is going to be making a speech on voting rights, coming up in our next hour. Of course, the federal government taking aim at the new voting bill in Georgia. It's likely that it may also target Texas, Alabama, Arizona, among others.

…

ROBERTS: Jason, are you concerned that President Biden is weaponizing the DOJ to enforce his moral views about voting?

JASON CHAFFETZ (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): I am. I'm concerned about how Biden is using the Department of Justice. Look, they've lost at the Supreme Court. I don't think this bill at the federal level has any chance of passing. And if Joe Biden is going to give a speech today, tell me specifically, President Biden, what you are opposed to in Texas and Georgia -- because they talk in platitudes, but they won't offer specifics. Authenticate the vote. That is a winning proposition. That's where the president should be but he hasn't been in the past.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced last month that the Justice Department would be doubling the staff in the civil rights division, partly in an effort to combat the coordinated wave of voter-suppression laws being pursued in Republican-controlled states in the wake of the 2020 election. The Justice Department is also suing the state of Georgia, arguing that its recently passed election laws target Black voters.

Fox News, meanwhile, has waged a campaign to support these voter-suppression laws. The network has also aired misleading comparisons about voting accessibility in Democratic-controlled states and has attacked federal attempts to protect voting rights.

The network’s purported “straight news” side is also whitewashing former President Donald Trump’s continued lies about the 2020 election and covering up its own role in having assisted Trump in his efforts to subvert the election result.