Mule admits guilt?

 Monica Showalter:

Election fraud is real. And there was a lot of it in the 2020 election. 

But the mainstream media in general, and the Washington Post in particular, would have you think that angry, Trump-deranged, radical Democrats, steeped in a "by any means necessary" revolutionary ideology, as well as long entrenched machine politics, would never dream of such a thing.

Unfortunately, (for them) yesterday's news from Arizona tells a different story:

Arizona woman admits guilt in ballot collection scheme

PHOENIX — An Arizona woman accused of illegally collecting early ballots in the 2020 primary election pleaded guilty Thursday in an agreement with state prosecutors that saw the more serious forgery and conspiracy charges dismissed and limited any potential for a lengthy prison sentence.

Guillermina Fuentes, 66, could get probation for running what Arizona attorney general's office investigators said was a sophisticated operation using her status as a well-known Democratic operative in the border city of San Luis to persuade voters to let her gather and in some cases fill out their ballots.

The Washington Post ran this Associated Press story, not bothering, despite its stable of well paid reporters, to report the matter itself.  The AP, based on what I could tell from a Google search, was the only non-local news outlet that did.  A few outlets cribbed from the AP story, but nobody else on the national scene put the hours in to cover the actual story.

Filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza felt a measure of vindication to see the story on the Washington Post's site....

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The story itself was that a longtime Democrat operative engaged in "ballot abuse" or illegal "ballot-harvesting" and managed to plead down to some minor charges, admitting to some 12 ballots harvested and filled in by her, much of which was described in D'Souza's film 2000 Mules:

Investigators wrote that it appeared Fuentes used her position as a powerful figure in the heavily Mexican American community  [that's 98.7% Hispanic, according to Census records  -ed.} to get people to give her or others their ballots to return to the polls. Fuentes and her co-defendant were seen with several mail-in envelopes outside a cultural center in San Luis on the day of the 2020 primary election, the reports show. The ballots were taken inside and dropped in a ballot box.

She was videotaped by a write-in candidate who called the Yuma County sheriff. The reports said the video showed her marking at least one ballot, but that charge was among those dropped.

An investigation was launched that day, and about 50 ballots checked for fingerprints, which were inconclusive. The investigation was taken over by the attorney general's office within days, with investigators collaborating with sheriff's deputies to interview voters, Fuentes and others.

Although Fuentes was charged only with actions that appear on the videotape and involve just a handful of ballots, investigators believe the effort went much farther.

While the story unavoidably made the Post's claims of free and fair elections in 2020 look pretty skeezy, given that there was videotape, the AP story itself was pretty biased.

The AP's account focused not on the fraud that verifiably took place in that swing state, but on all the charges the prosecutors could not or did not pin on the woman charged, such as conspiracy, forgery, and paying voters for their unmarked ballots.  The AP concluded that it was just a little localized fraud, no major issue.

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The mainstream media is too invested in trying to protect the Biden presidency to dig in and investigate the alleged fraud.  Rather than seeing the case as a tip of an iceberg, they are still in a nothing to see here mode.