The Election Heist Read online

  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR

  THE ELECTION HEIST

  “A political thriller that will keep you at the edge of your seat, unable to put it down.”

  —LADY BRIGITTE GABRIEL, bestselling author, founder and chairman, ACT for America

  “Americans will be shocked to learn that even their paper ballots are not secure if the software that counts them can be compromised. In addition to being top rate entertainment, The Election Heist was a real eye opener.”

  —REP. JOHN RUTHERFORD, FL-4

  “In 2020, governments still do not take the threat of a major election security breach seriously. Ken Timmerman gets it! His scenario in this book is all too plausible, which means the realities are chilling… A good and timely read.”

  —TOM MALATESTA, nationally recognized cyber security expert

  “If you don’t think election security is important, think again. Ken Timmerman’s new book shows why all of us should be worried about the 2020 election.”

  —STEPHEN MOORE, economic advisor to President Trump and Heritage Foundation senior fellow

  “Ken Timmerman has written another page-turner, with all the suspense of election drama, voter recounts, and political high-stakes poker the way the game is played in today’s super-charged political reality. If you enjoy the scheming of talented but devious political operatives, media personalities angling to make their careers on a ‘gotcha’ moment, and the winner-take-all gambles today’s candidates for political office must take, this is a book you can’t afford to miss.”

  —JEROME R. CORSI, PH.D., bestselling author of The Obama Nation, Unfit For Command, and other books

  “Every American voter who cares about the integrity of our election processes, regardless of political affiliation, should read The Election Heist. Only someone who has been in the political warfare trenches like Ken Timmerman could write such a timely, political thriller ‘work of fiction’ like this.”

  —HON. JOSEPH E. SCHMITZ, former Inspector General of the Department of Defense and author, The Inspector General Handbook: Fraud, Waste, Abuse, and Other Constitutional “Enemies, Foreign and Domestic”

  “Thank God voting machines in America are secure for now, otherwise The Election Heist provides a fictional account of a horrible disaster very different from the nightmare we already face of corrupted voter rolls, absentee ballot fraud, and administrative incompetence in election offices across the country.”

  —J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS, member of President Donald Trump’s advisory commission on election integrity, President of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, Department of Justice voting veteran and New York Times bestselling author of Injustice

  ALSO BY KENNETH R. TIMMERMAN

  FICTION

  ISIS Begins

  Honor Killing

  The Wren Hunt

  NONFICTION

  Deception: The Making of the YouTube Video Hillary and Obama Blamed for Benghazi

  Dark Forces: The Truth About What Happened

  in Benghazi

  Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender

  Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran

  The French Betrayal of America

  Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War on America

  Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson

  The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq

  La Grande Fauche: La Fuite des Technologies vers l’Est (Gorbachev’s Technology War)

  Fanning the Flames: Guns, Greed, and Geopolitics in the Gulf War

  www.kentimmerman.com

  A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

  ISBN: 978-1-64293-573-8

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-64293-574-5

  The Election Heist

  © 2020 by Kenneth R. Timmerman

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover art by KC Jones

  This is a work of fiction. While a number of public persons, places, and institutions make appearances in this book, they are used fictitiously. With one exception, as noted in Chapter 12, their character and dialogue are solely the product of the author’s imagination and are not intended to portray real persons, places, or organizations. Please do not call the FBI with the secret location of the hackers who plot to steal the 2020 election. It does not exist.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  Post Hill Press

  New York • Nashville

  posthillpress.com

  Published in the United States of America

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Nelson Aguilar, Republican congressional candidate

  Brady Aguilar, his fourteen-year old son and campaign IT director

  Ken Adams, aka “the Crocodile,” campaign consultant

  Annie “AB” Bryant, campaign manager

  Camilla Broadstreet, volunteer coordinator

  Rep. Hugh McKenzie, incumbent Democrat congressman

  Williston (“Willie”) Adams, his wife

  Morton Nash, campaign consultant

  Jennifer Lindh, campaign manager

  Nader Homayounfar, IT director

  Stan Harris, director of opposition research

  Gov. Cheryl Tomlinson (“Mrs. T”), Democratic presidential nominee

  Sen. Vincent Bellinger (“Uncle Vinnie”), her running mate

  T. Claudius Granger (“Granger”), campaign fixer and talking head

  Navid Chaudry, Granger’s IT director, in charge of the “secret switch”

  Gordon Utz, Maryland state IT manager, Annie Bryant’s boyfriend

  Lisa Rasmussen, Maryland state supervisor of elections

  Jim Clairborne, FBI deputy supervisory agent in charge of Cyber Division

  Tyrone Masterson (“Rone”), his partner

  Gail Copeland, volunteer attorney helping the Aguilar campaign

  Harvey Simon, DNC lawyer assigned to McKenzie campaign

  Kirk Norton, governor of Florida

  Shelley Hughes-Jackson, Florida secretary of state

  Lula Rowe, Florida director of elections

  Catherine Herrera, supervisor of elections, Nassau County, FL

  Milford Gaines, supervisor of elections, Okaloosa County, FL

  Ricky Brewer, host of The Razor’s Edge, MSNBC

  Benjamin Bryant, host of Fox News Sunday

  Galen Beaty, Kristina Brower, co-hosts of Fox News election coverage

  Matt Hall, Aaron Duffy, on-air personalities, Fox News

  Keith Cobb, host of CNN election night coverage

  Rick Hoglan, CNN numbers man

  To all true patriots of whatever party, who recognize that our representative democracy depends on free, fair, and verifiable elections. No one should be afraid to identify themselves at the polls, or fear that their votes will not be counted as they were cast.

  And to the campaign volunteers who give of themselves for what they believe: Thank you for all you have taught me and know that you do not labor in vain.

  “…I do not know whom to believe. If we win, our methods are subject to impeachment for possible fraud. If the enemy wins, it is the same thing exactly—doubt, suspicion, irritation go with the consequence, whatever it may be.”

  –GEN. LEW WALLACE, writing to his wife, Susan, while serving as a partisan observer during the 1876 presidential election recount.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PART I: THE CAMPAIGN
>
  PART II: THE ELECTION

  PART III: THE RECOUNT

  Acknowledgments

  About The Author

  PART I

  THE CAMPAIGN

  1

  Rep. Hugh McKenzie, a four-term incumbent from a liberal Maryland district in the Washington, DC, suburbs, was not looking forward to this meeting. He had cruised through every election he had ever contested, thanks to political savvy, connections, and lots of special interest cash. But now, for the first time in his political career, he was in trouble.

  He had been redistricted. And the new district threw in more than a hundred thousand hard-core Republican voters from rural and upper class areas. It was a disaster.

  The party leadership didn’t so much as hiccup when the court handed down its decision. Even as he cooled his heels on the ornate tile of the majority leader’s anteroom, with its magnificent view over the National Mall, Hugh McKenzie was simmering. Gus did this to me for a reason, he thought. He could feel himself going red at the gills. Control. Deep breaths. Focus on the ask.

  By the time Majority Leader Clarence (“Gus”) Antly welcomed him into his enormous office, McKenzie was all business.

  “Why isn’t the party contesting this court order?” he said. “We’re going to lose one seat, for sure. Maybe two.”

  “You’ll be fine, Hugh-boy,” Antly said. “You’ve got $2 million in the bank, a shot at leadership, and you keep telling me how much the Jews love you.”

  If there was one thing McKenzie hated more than the Jews in his own district, it was being reminded of his bullying father, who had called him Hugh-boy all of his life. He felt the heat returning to his cheeks.

  “Besides,” the South Carolinian went on, putting on a drawl, “if we contest Maryland then the Republicans are going to contest Iowa and Pennsylvania, where we win big.”

  McKenzie pulled out a color-coded map of the new district from his leather document folder and laid it on the table. “Those yahoos up there hate us. They hate me!” he said forcefully, slapping at the large rural areas on the map.

  “What do you care,” Antly said. “You call it fly-over country when you mock the president.”

  McKenzie persisted, pointing elsewhere on the map. “Down here, along the Potomac, the median income is over two hundred thousand dollars a year. And they hate me there, too.”

  “Stop your whinin’,” Antly said. “I’ve seen the numbers. You’ve got fifty-point-two percent registered Democrats. That’s a lock.”

  “Yeah, but many of them don’t vote. Hispanics never vote. I’ve got thirty-five percent Hispanic, ten percent Asian, and only five percent African American.”

  “So make ’em vote,” the Majority Leader said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Antly stood up and walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window framed in light walnut, stained and smoothed from generations of politicians massaging the wood as they schemed.

  “Just go out and do your job, Hugh-boy,” he said. “You’ll figure it out.”

  2

  McKenzie’s predicament deepened four months later when the Republicans nominated a strong, well-funded candidate to oppose him in the November election. It was the first time he had ever faced real opposition in his entire political career, at the state level or in Congress, and an uncomfortable ache started to gnaw at his stomach.

  He was going to have to fight. Walk the parades instead of drive. Marshal real volunteers instead of paid campaign workers. Actually debate. Maybe even go door-to-door. And all of this while he was trying to do the People’s business in the House.

  “Look, we’ll just lean on our friends,” Willie said. “You won’t have to do house parties except with big donors. And don’t even think of door-to-door. Citizens United is the gift that keeps on giving.”

  Williston (“Willie”) Adams, his wife of twenty-one years, came from a patrician family near Baltimore but did everything she could to hide that fact. She worked as the legislative coordinator for the biggest federal workers union in Maryland: AFGE. They had discussed the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United on and off for years. Early on, McKenzie had campaigned against it and had joined a dozen Democrats and a Republican in sponsoring legislation (“Bipartisan legislation!” he always insisted) that would walk back Citizens United and ban “dark money” from politics. But they always knew there was a perverse flip side to the decision, since it allowed McKenzie and fellow Democrats to raise unlimited money from labor unions and trial lawyers as long as those donors didn’t give the appearance of “coordinating” their expenses with the campaign.

  “So you want me to benefit from the very thing I’ve been fighting against for so many years?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Why wouldn’t we?”

  “Because Aguilar is no dummy. He’ll figure that out in a heartbeat and roast me for acting contrary to my own principles.”

  “Since when have politicians not been hypocrites?” Willie asked.

  “Seriously?” He was hurt she could suggest such a thing so readily.

  “You’ll be fine. But this race is going to be expensive, maybe the most expensive in the nation.”

  “And even if I win, I’ve got to do it all over again in two years,” he said glumly.

  “That’s the nature of the beast. But you’re up for leadership. As long as we keep the majority, that means power. And money.”

  “A big if,” he said, letting his mind wander. “But then, maybe we’ll finally be able to afford sending Katie and Jack to Harvard and Stanford, instead of College Park.”

  That had always been their dream. Years ago, they bought a wildly over-priced bungalow on a leafy street—a ten-minute walk from downtown Bethesda—because it put their children in a tony public school district. Over the years, as they paid off the mortgage, they’d been able to expand it, though never to the McMansion size of many of his neighbors. Way too ostentatious, Willie had argued.

  But Harvard and Stanford? Nobody had to know. That could be their secret. And their gift to their kids, payback for all those soccer games and PTA meetings he’d never attended when they were small. No University of Maryland for them.

  Maybe there is an upside to this fight, he thought. Maybe it would be worth spending a sweaty summer campaigning.

  3

  By Labor Day, McKenzie’s internal polls were showing him below 50 percent, a deadly sign for an incumbent politician just two months from the election.

  Probably the worst moment had been the Wheaton street fair in mid-August. McKenzie had set up in a corner of the large tent for dignitaries at the back end of the central square. Wheaton was the heart of the heart of the barrio, a melting pot of Hispanic communities that regularly voted Democrat at 70 percent or more. Surrounded on three sides by gaily painted two- and three-story buildings, and on the far side by a street closed off with Jersey barriers, the square was filled with smoky food stalls and face-painters and souvenir sellers. Kids were running around with giant water pistols, spraying each other and their overheated parents. Two different mariachi bands competed with each other from opposite sides of the square. It was loud. No, it was raucous, McKenzie thought. Sweaty and raucous and very foreign.

  Willie had taken their two children to her family’s compound on the beach in Rehoboth for the month, so McKenzie was alone with his campaign manager, Jennifer Lindh, behind the long campaign table. About twenty paid volunteers were milling around, wearing dark blue t-shirts stamped with McKenzie’s handsome face and his auburn curls. (He liked to think of it as his JFK Jr. face, fresh and just slightly sun-burned.) The campaign workers made forays into the crowd, bringing in unsuspecting voters to meet the Congressman. Voters, really? McKenzie thought. Half of them didn’t speak English and were probably illegals. Sorry. Undocumented immigrants.

  He went along with the char
ade, shaking hands, patting the heads of the children, pretending to smile when some youngster turned a water pistol on him, leaving a long wet streak down his sweaty white shirt and dribbling down his khakis like flecks of pee. Then his campaign workers would give the voter—really?—a campaign t-shirt and off they would go, little water pistol monsters and all.

  After two hours of this, McKenzie was ready to call it quits.

  “How many t-shirts have we given away?” he asked Jenn.

  She looked up from foraging in the boxes behind the table. “At least four boxes of them. Say, maybe a hundred?”

  “Do you see a hundred people out there wearing our t-shirt? I mean, besides our own volunteers?”

  Jenn shook a finger at him. “You gotta stop this,” she said. “Sometimes I think you like making yourself depressed. You’re just overheated, that’s all. Drink some water.”

  “No, you’re right. I’m depressed,” he said.

  Behind him, on a dais beneath the tent, municipal employees were testing the sound system as the dignitaries started to gather. As the area’s United States Representative, he was expected to give a brief speech. Nothing political, of course, just congratulations on this wonderful event, how as Americans we celebrate our diversity, ya-di-ya-di-yadda.

  And when the chairman of the town council introduced him, that’s exactly what he did. He took the sweaty microphone and resisted the urge to find something to wipe it down and introduced himself. “For the past eight years, I have had the honor and the privilege to be your representative in the People’s House, the greatest House in the world, the Congress of the United States of America,” he said.

  Before he could start on his diversity speech, one of the mariachi bands started to play, only this time it sounded like they were inside the tent. It was so loud there was no way anyone would be able to hear him, but he pressed on anyway, holding the microphone closer to his lips. We’ll make this short, he thought. That’s all they want anyway, just to see me. Look, little monster, there’s our congressman.