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May 25, 2024 - Epoch Times
19:11
Man Sentenced to 2-Years of Jail for 'Elaborate' Voter Fraud Scheme
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Over in the state of California, a man who was previously a sitting member of a city council, he was convicted and sentenced to jail for running an elaborate voter fraud scheme.
Specifically, using his deep connections within the local community, this man allegedly falsified voter registration documents and pressured people into voting for him during the 2020 election cycle.
Although, to really explain what happened here, let me back up for a quick moment and set the stage for you properly right after you take a super quick moment to smash those like and subscribe buttons so that the YouTube algorithm will be quite literally forced to share this information out to ever more people.
Now, with that out of the way, to start with, early last year, a man named Shakir Khan of San Joaquin County, he was arrested on multiple felony charges related to voter fraud.
Now, at the time, Mr. Shakir Khan was a member of the Lodi City Council.
However, according to the local Sheriff's Office, Mr. Khan was discovered to be stashing at least 41 filled-in mail-in ballots at his home, registering at least 23 people to vote using his home as their address, as well as using his email and his phone number to register 47 others.
And according to footage that was obtained by the Sheriff's Office, who actually went out into the community and spoke with the local residents, the people explain how Mr. Khan, again allegedly, pressured them to vote for him, as well as how he, again allegedly, falsified their voter registration documents.
Now initially, when he was first arrested, the San Joaquin District Attorney charged Mr. Shakir Khan with the following, procuring false voter registration, falsely filing a declaration of candidacy, voting more than once, registering a fictitious person to vote, among several other election-related crimes.
These charges stem from a long and thorough investigation that was conducted by the local sheriff's office after they were tipped off about an election racket that was taking place in their own backyard.
In fact, when he was announcing the findings in his investigation, Sheriff Patrick Withrow, who is the sheriff of San Joaquin County, he said the following in a statement, quote, Councilmember Shakir Khan attempted to undermine, manipulate, and violate one of our most fundamental rights here in our country, and that is the right to free and fair elections.
It appears Councilman Shakir Khan has targeted members of his own community, our Pakistani community, in the North County.
Now, in terms of how exactly this alleged targeting played itself out, well, during a press conference, the Sheriff's Office, they laid out how their investigation started, as well as what they actually discovered in the course of their investigation.
And so to start with, this is what the Sheriff's Office said began happening in the year 2019.
And just for your reference, I'm gonna speed up the video press conference a little bit, so that way we can get through it faster.
It started back in 2019.
We began to see a spike in criminal activity on the Waterloo Corridor in East Stockton.
And some of the violent activity that we saw was, you know, robberies, assault with deadly weapons.
There was even a homicide out there.
So we tasked the team to find out what the root cause of that violent activity was and began an investigation to find out what was going on and if there was anything that we can do to restore order in that area.
So as my team began to investigate and look into the matters of what was going on out there, they located a series of illegal internet gambling locations.
These are locations that are set up in random buildings, back of stores and shops.
Some of them were even set up in a garage of somebody's house.
So we put together a plan to shut down these illegal gambling locations.
And most of them complied, but there was one that refused to comply on a minimal action level, and that was the American Smokers Club on Waterloo Road.
During our investigation, we found that that was owned by Shakir Khan.
He is, as you know, a sitting council member of the city of Lodi.
And as we began to do our investigative techniques, we looked into, you know, doing undercover operations, doing search warrants, things of that nature, surveillance on it, And we even hired a forensic auditor to look at some of the evidence that we were collecting.
There was indications that Shakir Khan was laundering money to Pakistan and had contacts down in Southern California.
And so, just to summarize, there is an increase in crime in the local area.
The sheriffs come in, and among other things, they attempt to shut down locations engaged in illegal gambling.
Almost all the locations comply, except for the one outfit that happens to be owned by Mr. Shakir Khan.
And so the next step was to get warrants for both the business as well as Mr. Khan's home.
And while the sheriffs were expecting to find items related to illegal gambling, what they weren't expecting is to find several dozen already filled in mail-in ballots.
Take a listen.
And in September of 2020, we executed a search warrant on Shakir Khan's Business, the American Smokers Club.
If you look on the left over here you'll see the search warrant that we issued and that's how we made our way into the facility and we were able to seize instruments and monies that were used for criminal activity.
If you look at the lower right hand side you'll see an internet gambling machine there, some of the cash that was on scene and up on top there's even rules of how to behave while you're in there gambling.
So after we saw that, we thought, okay, wait, does he have other stuff elsewhere?
And so that's when we decided, you know what we're going to do?
We're going to conduct a search on his residence.
Does he have equipment over there, things of that nature?
So we authored a search warrant and executed a search warrant on his home in Lodi.
It's a modest three-bedroom, two-bath, 1,500-square-foot home.
We learned that it was he that lived there, his wife, his elderly father, and two juvenile children.
Did he have a father-in-law or mother-in-law?
That was father and mother.
Okay, so as we're going through it, we've located a box and in the box we found something that was highly unusual.
We found sealed and completed ballots, 41 ballots in this particular box.
And we thought to ourselves, that is weird.
It doesn't seem right to us, but we're not election people.
We do other types of crimes and things of that nature.
But when we saw this, we thought, something's off here.
But we didn't know if we had a crime at this particular point.
Because there was a recent change in election law, and people could turn in ballots on behalf of another.
There were drop boxes, there was multi-day voting, things of that nature.
So we thought, you know what, let's just photograph them, leave them in place, let the election proceed unimpeded.
And so, as you just heard in that presentation, because this was taking place in California, the Sheriff's Office wasn't exactly sure whether finding 41 filled in mail-in ballots in someone's home constituted an actual crime.
That is, you can say, the beauty of California's election laws.
Regardless, though, the sheriff's office did wind up indicting Mr. Khan for other charges back in the year 2021.
Not for election-related matters, but rather for the matter related to the alleged illegal gambling operation.
However, their investigation into the local voter rolls and the local election integrity issues did not stop.
In fact, here's how the sheriff continued during that very same press conference.
Now, remember, this is back in 2021, and during 2021, people were complaining around the nation, like the sheriff had said, about their concern with the way the 2020 election had been run and the shortcomings therein.
And our county was no different, and we were aware of it, but we didn't have any proof or anything like that.
We had some anomalies here that just seemed weird, but we didn't know if it was illegal because of the change in the voting law.
So as the 2022 midterm election began to spin up, Some concerned citizens continue to reach out.
They would attend our local board meetings and voice their concerns and ask for a change back to the way things quote-unquote used to be with one-day voting, in-person voting, no drop boxes, things of that nature.
So they were very vocal at these board supervisors meetings and as we attend those we listened to what they had to say.
Ultimately A citizen contacted us and said, hey, I've gone through the voter rolls because I was looking into some of the stuff going on with my grandma.
And as I was going through the voter rolls, I noticed some anomalies and some weird things, and I'd like to have a meeting.
So ultimately, we did take that meeting.
We sat down with them, and this person showed us the voter roll analysis that they had conducted.
And sure, there was a lot of weird things that we saw in the voter rolls.
Things that we didn't really understand were legal, not legal.
It was just odd to us.
But when she pointed out a particular address in Lodi District 4, that's when it clicked in our head, wait a minute, that's Shakir Khan's address.
Those are the 41 ballots that we saw.
Is this legal?
Is this proper?
We don't know, but now we're going to look into it.
All right, just to pause here for a super quick moment, here's a question.
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Okay, so just to recap again.
A concerned citizen goes to the local sheriff's office with an analysis of the local voter rolls, showing that something was amiss.
And among the problems with the rolls was that Mr. Khan's address seemed to appear multiple times.
The sheriffs, who remembered seeing over 41 ballots at Mr. Khan's house when they were conducting the other investigation, they began to connect the dots.
Here's how the sheriff continued during the press conference.
And so ultimately as we're looking into it, we located Roughly 70 names that were registered to either Shakir Khan's house, his email or his phone number that he had that we knew were factually his.
And so that's 70 people that he was able to register using some sort of combination thereof.
So through our previous investigation, we had access to his emails and we did an analysis of his emails And this is where we found, on the one on the left, is all the email receipts from the Secretary of State.
When you go online to register to vote, you get an email response from the Secretary of State saying, we received your request to vote online or to register to vote.
And so, as you can see, these are all coming back to Shakir Khan's personal email that he used.
And so, seeing this obvious anomaly, the Sheriff's Office decided to execute on a search warrant of the local election registrar's office.
And once they did, once they came in and pulled the records as well as the voter rolls from the county, well, here's what they found.
So as we're going through the voter rolls, and we got our own copy directly from the registrar voter, we started going through it, and we pulled the ballot envelopes.
And as we're going through the ballot envelopes, we thought, hey, something jumps out at us.
I don't know if you guys can see it, but all the handwriting seems to be the same.
Right?
It even looks like maybe even the same pen.
We don't know.
It's highly unusual.
Again, is this illegal?
Not necessarily.
But it is odd.
It is odd.
It does give us some concern.
So we decided we were going to look further into it.
Now, as all this is happening, as the sheriffs are building their case and making all these different discoveries, they decide to go to Mr. Khan's home and do a compliance check on him regarding a totally separate matter, because apparently he left the state of California when he shouldn't have.
And when they went there and searched his home, well, lo and behold, they discovered more ballots.
Take a listen.
We decided we're going to do a compliance check on Mr. Khan here.
And so we went to his house to go check and see if he had any instruments of gambling or anything like that.
And lo and behold, we find more ballots.
This is in 2022, coming up to the 2022 election.
Now these are ballots.
These are not filled out.
These are not open.
These are unopened ballots.
But they're not for him.
And they're not for his residents.
Or some of them were not for his residents.
That in itself, according to the election code, could be a crime.
So okay, now we got some bigger issues here.
During the presentation, the sheriff goes on to give more and more evidence of things like fake signatures.
They went out to actually canvas the local community and ask the local residents whether they were really the ones filling out the forms.
And after conducting the full investigation, they determined that there was enough evidence to indict Mr. Shakir Khan on election fraud related charges and bring him into jail, which they subsequently did.
Now, shortly after his arrest, Mr. Shakir Khan was released from jail under the condition that he has to wear an ankle monitor and not leave the state of California.
And after he was let go and he came back home, a reporter from a local ABC affiliate was right there waiting, and they asked Mr. Khan some questions.
And there was one particular exchange that was really worth highlighting.
Take a look.
First of all, I want to thank all my supporters, my family and everybody for their support and prayers.
And I want to make one thing clear.
There are a lot of speculations around that I resigned from City Council.
I want to make sure that people understand I did not resign from the City Council seat.
I did not authorize anybody to release any statement on my behalf.
And I think what happened was it was totally wrong that the mayor went into the lobby, a booking room, and just, you know, under the pressure asked me to resign.
It was wrong.
And I wasn't offering any attorney, you know, client privilege.
And I did not resign.
I'm going to continue to serve the people of my district.
I worked hard for my campaign and all the community that supported me.
Now notice that during that interview, Mr. Khan said that he did not resign.
However, up until that very moment, there were many different news reports saying that he did resign.
And so, what was the truth?
Well, lo and behold, the sheriff's office released body cam footage inside of the jailhouse showing that indeed, Mr. Khan agreed to resign from the city council just hours after he was arrested on these election fraud related charges.
Take a look.
I think you should resign.
Resign, right?
It's better?
It looks bad.
Think about your family.
You got your kid.
You know, is it even worth it at this point?
You should just step aside because the longer you're on the city council, the longer these stories go.
It's one thing to be here.
The worst thing is you have your kids watching.
Yeah.
Like, why even deal with that?
Yeah.
You know, how about you fight it and if you're cleared of all charges, you'll win in the next election.
Okay.
It's worth a check.
I want to personally thank you for coming here and that's why I want to make sure I get your advice.
I'll do that.
I think just save yourself the headache.
I'm happy to put out a statement saying I talked to Council Member Khan, he agreed to resign and I think that's the right course.
I'm not going to say anything.
Yeah, I will talk to my lawyer tomorrow and then just have him make a statement.
Is that better?
Yeah, well, so if it's okay with you, I'd like to just...
Can I get a pen and a piece of paper?
Let me just write out something for you.
Okay.
And if you agree to it, then we can just sign right here.
Okay.
Then I could go to the media and at least it gets rid of the national.
You know what I'm saying?
Okay.
Okay, I appreciate it, Shaq.
Good luck, man, you know.
Now, it is worth mentioning that despite the fact that Mr. Khan clearly signed those papers, he is right now attempting to take back that decision, saying that it was made while he was under duress.
In fact, he is literally right now in the process of suing the city to try and reverse the decision.
Quote, "Khan is suing Lodi's mayor and council for alleged unlawful conduct in removing him from his position on the city council.
He argues that he was pressured to resign during a police interrogation." Regardless of that, though, whether or not he's a sitting member of the city council really does not change the underlying issue: the fact that he's been charged with an array of voter fraud-related charges, and he's facing a possible 40-year prison sentence.
But don't worry, he got nowhere near 40 years in prison.
That's because after fighting the charges for about a year, Mr. Shakir Khan wound up taking a deal, and he pled no contest to the charges.
As a part of the deal, he'll receive a two-year sentence at the San Joaquin County Jail.
With standard procedures and credit for time served, Khan could be released after closer to one year.
And just for your general reference, a plea of no contest means that he won't contest the charges against him, but at the same time, he doesn't accept the prosecutor's version of the facts.
And perhaps because of that, in a statement that was released to the public shortly after taking the plea deal, Mr. Khan had nothing resembling an apology.
And instead, in his statement, he painted himself and his wife as the victims of prosecution.
Here's specifically what Mr. Khan's lawyer released as a part of their statement, quote, However, Mr. Khan has chosen to take this path as a means to an end, ensuring that he can return to his family in the shortest time possible.
He has a wife and young children whose well-being has been at the forefront of his considerations throughout this process.
And so, there you have it, about a year in prison for, again, allegedly running a city-wide election fraud operation.
If you'd like to go deeper into this particular story, I'll throw my research notes down into the description box below this video for you to check out.
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