CLEVELAND — Representative Shontel Brown and the other four Democratic members of Ohio's congressional delegation penned a letter Wednesday to the FBI demanding answers regarding the bureau’s raid targeting the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, an organization supporting voting rights and voter registration efforts in Ohio.
"The question is what happened, how did we get here?" asked Brown at a news conference with community and faith leaders at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.
Brown has strongly criticized the FBI raids as an effort to deny and suppress the vote in Northeast Ohio. She said the raid involved hundreds of agents and didn't stop at the Ohio Organizing Collaborative's Cleveland offices.
"They went to homes, they followed people in their cars, they knocked on doors, they tried to enter homes, and five days later, there is still so much we don't know, including how much of this was covered by a warrant," she said.
The FBI and Department of Justice have not commented on the raid, which is their policy in investigations like this.
"I'm worried this isn't just about an investigation into one organization. It was an attempt to send a message to a specific community," said Brown.
It is a notion Republican lawmakers scoff at.
"Well, I mean, those are outrageous claims. They have no idea what they're talking about," said Sen. Bernie Moreno. "They have no idea what the underlying evidence was. They just reflexively make incendiary comments like that."
Last fall, we told you how Secretary of State Frank LaRose referred 1,200 cases to the DOJ for possible prosecution, including more than a thousand people "who appear to have registered to vote unlawfully in Ohio."
News 5 asked the director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, Anthony Perlatti, if he recalled any issues with the group.
"Nothing has come in under their name, I think, since 2024, and to our agency and I don't remember at that time, even at that point, having any issue with their cards," said Perlatti.
We don't know, and the secretary of state's office isn't saying whether this raid was related to the cases referred to the DOJ last fall, which dated back to 2018. Secretary of State Frank LaRose acknowledged at the time that most of those were ones that both local prosecutors and the state attorney general passed on prosecuting, but he hoped at that time, even if they seemed small, the DOJ would.
"I am encouraging them to do so because again, it's kind of like jaywalking, right? If you don't think there's going to be consequences, well you're more inclined to do it," said LaRose last October. Moreno agreed.
"Look, we should all agree on one very simple thing, if anybody, anybody Republican, Democrat, Independent, Martian or otherwise conducts any activities that lead to voter fraud, they should be prosecuted," he said.
Brown agreed.
"If there is voter fraud, we want it addressed, we want it confronted, we want it dealt with, so that is not the issue at all here," she said. "But to utilize that number of agents in an organization that is simply trying to help their fellow neighbor register — voter registration is not a crime."
