Attorney general speaks to North Central Pachyderms

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen spoke at a meeting of North Central Pachyderms Thursday where he talked about his efforts to push back on the Biden administration's efforts to introduce vaccine requirements, gave credence to voter fraud conspiracy theories, and affirmed his support for a federal lawsuit challenging federal protections for transgender people against discrimination.

After being introduced to the crowd of more than 70 people by Havre City Councilperson and Hill County Republican Central Committee Chair Andrew Brekke, who said Knudsen is doing a great job protecting the freedom of Montanans and states' rights, Knudsen then began a brief speech that focused on the state's drug problem and the challenge marijuana legalization poses for law enforcement and his ongoing efforts to prevent any form of federally required COVID-19 vaccination.

He said during his time as Roosevelt County attorney, he gained an appreciation for how serious the drug, and subsequent crime, problem is in Montana.

"I dealt with a lot of drug problems, I dealt with a lot of crime problems on the reservation, and off the reservation," he said.

He said methamphetamine, heroin and, increasingly, fentanyl have become prominent in Montana and local law enforcement is facing new challenges due to the upcoming legalization of marijuana in January.

He said the state's drug-detecting dogs are obsolete because they are not trained to differentiate between drugs.

Knudsen said the animals are expensive to train and expensive to purchase, so his office made sure to have funding appropriated in the marijuana regulation bill that would go toward getting new dogs.

He said both the Hill County Sheriffs and Havre Police Department put in for grants to pay for new dogs and they were both successful.

Knudsen talked about a trio of lawsuits he's signed on to pushing back against Biden's various efforts to require vaccination for American workers.

"As a red-blooded Montanan I don't like being told what I'm going to do," he said.

He said the first of the lawsuits is an attempt to combat an executive order by President Joe Biden to mandate vaccination for federal contractors.

The second, Knudsen said, is to prevent the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration from requiring that employers with 100 or more employees ensure each of their workers is fully vaccinated or tests for COVID-19 on at least a weekly basis.

He said the second was successful in getting an injunction, temporarily blocking the implementation of the rule, and he's cautiously optimistic about the end results.

The third lawsuit, he said, is to prevent the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from refusing to fund health care organizations that do not require staff to be vaccinated.

Knudsen said this requirement would cause health care workers to quit and further strain the health care system.

Recent strain on the health care system has largely been the result of massive numbers of COVID-19 cases, the vast majority of which are among the unvaccinated. Nearly 90 percent of COVID-caused hospitalizations are also in the unvaccinated.

The lawsuits are being brought before specific courts in order to maximize their chance at succeeding, he said, and they are specifically avoiding Montana federal courts.

"Candidly, we're in front of a Trump judge, and there's a reason we filed it in front of that judge," he said. "There's a very specific reason we didn't file these lawsuits in Montana Federal Court because our federal judges are terrible."

When asked by an audience member about his opinion on the vaccine itself he said he takes no position on whether or not the vaccine is a good thing.

He was also asked if social media sites can be criminally charged for blocking stories about people who claim they were injured by the vaccine.

Knudsen said it's unlikely they could be charged criminally but he's about ready to sign on to another lawsuit against social media companies like Facebook and Tiktok for blocking certain types of content.

He also answered a question from an audience member who said students at a local school are being told that they must be vaccinated if they want to go on a field trip.

Knudsen said he can't really do much about that, as school boards are elected and have almost complete authority of their institutions.

Another topic of discussion was voter fraud.

Knudsen was asked about a lawsuit being put together by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell in an attempt to overturn the election of President Joe Biden.

He said he met with Lindell a couple days ago but hasn't signed onto the lawsuit because he hasn't read the hundreds of pages yet, but he described the data presented by Lindell as "pretty compelling."

Lindell is currently being sued by election machine manufacturer Dominion for $1.3 billion for defamation for his claims about voter fraud that have been debunked by election officials and courts around the country, including the U.S. Supreme Court, and Trump's U.S. attorney general.

Knudsen said, technically, what Lindell is proposing isn't strictly a lawsuit but an original action, one he's doubtful they will even be taken by the U.S. Supreme Court given its make up.

The U.S. Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority and three of its members were appointed by then-President Donald Trump.

When asked more broadly about alleged voting discrepancies in Montana counties, Knudsen said the matter falls under the jurisdiction of the Montana secretary of state, but implied that votes may have been tampered with.

"Some of the patterns are goofy and it looks like maybe they were messed with in some of the counties," he said.

There has been no evidence of wide-spread voter fraud in the U.S. that would have affected the outcome of the 2020 election, which then-President Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security, in a statement after the election, said was the most secure election in U.S. history.

As for Montana specifically, county election officials across the state have repeatedly and consistently stated that there has been no substantial voter fraud.

Knudsen was also asked about the possibility of county commissions voting to have all-mail ballot elections and said that was impossible now that Gianforte has lifted the state's COVID-19 emergency declaration.

Knudsen was also asked about "illegals" being brought to Montana from the U.S. southern border.

He said he's happy to report that no illegal immigrants have been brought to Montana, though he lamented that some Afghan refugees have been.

He said a non-profit in Missoula, believing they had the resources, asked to help resettle the refugees and despite his and Gov. Greg Gianforte's best efforts they couldn't find a legal way to block this effort.

However, Knudsen said, if anyone tries to bring illegal immigrants from the southern border to Montana, "I think (Gianforte) will be at the airport waiting for them."

He was then asked about the "transgender issue" in public high schools, presumably the desire of transgender students to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity.

Knudsen said he's signed onto a federal lawsuit challenging federal protections for transgender people from discrimination based on their gender identity, and implicitly characterized transgender identity as invalid.

"We want boys in the boy's locker rooms and girls in the girls locker rooms," he said.

The U.S. Department of Education this year expanded its interpretation of federal sex protections to include transgender and gay students, and Knudsen and many other conservative attorneys general have argued this would end sex-separated showers and locker rooms.

The Biden administration, as well as LGBTQ advocacy organizations across the U.S., have said this is a mischaracterization of both the DOE's directive and transgender identity.

At the end of the meeting Knudsen thanked attendees and urged them to keep organizing and coming to events like this one if they want to see change.

"We're trying to be aggressive, we're trying to be conservative, I'm just trying to do the right thing," he said.