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Last Thursday, February 1st, an individual named Craig Callaway, who is a Democrat operative and former president of the Atlantic City council, was arrested.
He is accused of being the mastermind behind a mail-in ballot fraud operation that took place in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
At the time of his arrest, Callaway was working for the Jeff Van Drew re-election campaign.
It’s worth noting that Van Drew had switched parties from Democrat to Republican in 2020 and denies any knowledge or involvement in this operation.
for the Jeff Van Drew re-election campaign. The former Democrat-turned-Republican in 2020 denied any knowledge of the operation.
From the New Jersey Monitor:
U.S. Attorneys accused Callaway and other unnamed subordinates of paying Atlantic City residents between $30 and $50 to act as authorized messengers and request mail-in ballots for voters whom they had never met. Prosecutors allege that those ballots were later cast without the actual voters’ knowledge.
The charges appear to stem from work Callaway did for Rep. Jeff Van Drew’s 2022 reelection campaign. There’s no indication Van Drew (R-02) knew about the alleged scheme.
According to the New Jersey Monitor and as reported by the New York Times, Representative Van Drew paid Callaway’s consulting firm a total of $65,500 for “strategic consulting”.
A significant portion of this amount, specifically $25,000, was paid in October just before the 2022 election.
It is worth noting that Van Drew had also previously paid Callaway’s firm $110,000 during his 2020 re-election campaign.
As for Callaway himself, he is currently facing charges related to fraudulent ballots, which could result in a prison sentence of up to five years and a fine of $250,000 if convicted.
This isn’t the first time he has faced legal trouble though. The former Atlantic City council president has been convicted twice in the past on corruption-related charges.
The charges are not the first Callaway has faced. In 2006, he admitted accepting $36,000 in bribes from a contractor he helped to obtain city contracts. In 2008, he admitted guilt in a separate blackmail scheme targeting an Atlantic City councilman while serving the sentence of his bribery conviction.
In 2017, Assemblyman Don Guardian, then the city’s mayor, accused Callaway of a similar ballot harvesting…
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