Kris William Kobach is an American lawyer and politician who is the Attorney General of Kansas.
117 Facts About Kris Kobach
2.
Kris Kobach previously served as the 31st Secretary of State of Kansas.
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Kris Kobach is known for his calls for stronger voter ID laws in the United States, reinstating the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, and his advocacy for anti-abortion legislation.
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Kris Kobach has made claims about the extent of voter fraud in the United States that studies and fact-checkers have concluded are false or unsubstantiated.
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Kris Kobach began his political career as a member of the City Council of Overland Park, Kansas.
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Kris Kobach was later the Republican nominee in Kansas's 3rd congressional district in the 2004 election, losing to Democratic incumbent Dennis Moore.
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Kris Kobach announced in June 2017 that he would run in the 2018 primary for Governor of Kansas against then-Lieutenant Governor Jeff Colyer, who became governor in January 2018 following the resignation of Sam Brownback.
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In July 2019, Kris Kobach launched his campaign for the US Senate in the 2020 campaign after Senator Pat Roberts announced his retirement.
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Kris Kobach was born in Madison, Wisconsin on March 26,1966.
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Kris Kobach's family moved to Topeka, Kansas when he was just seven years old, where his father owned a Buick dealership, that Kobach worked at while in high school.
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In 1984, Kris Kobach graduated from Washburn Rural High School in Topeka, Kansas, where he was co-valedictorian, and the student body class president.
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From Harvard, Kris Kobach went on to earn a Doctor of Philosophy in politics from Brasenose College of Oxford University, having been selected for a Marshall Scholarship.
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From 1995 to 1996, Kobach clerked for Judge Deanell R Tacha of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Lawrence, Kansas.
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In 2005, Kris Kobach filed a lawsuit on behalf of FAIR's Immigration Reform Law Institute, challenging a similar law in California.
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In 2010, Kris Kobach filed a third similar tuition lawsuit, this time in Nebraska.
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Kris Kobach has litigated numerous lawsuits defending cities and states that adopt laws to discourage illegal immigration.
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Kris Kobach served as lead lawyer defending the city of Valley Park, Missouri in a federal case concerning an ordinance that requires businesses to use a federal worker verification program known as E-Verify in order to maintain a business license.
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Kris Kobach was the lead attorney defending the city of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, whose ordinances prohibiting employing and renting to illegal immigrants had been struck down by a federal judge in Pennsylvania and again before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
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Kris Kobach became counsel in another lawsuit, in part involving a Farmers Branch, Texas ordinance that attempted to prevent landlords from renting to illegal immigrants.
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The city had engaged Kris Kobach to help write the ordinance in October 2006.
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Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who had hired Kris Kobach, lost re-election in 2016.
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Kris Kobach was cited as a primary author of Alabama HB 56, passed in 2010, which was described as tougher than Arizona's law.
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Kris Kobach visited Coolidge, Arizona to observe North Dakota's Fisher Industries demonstration of how it would build a border fence.
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In late 2018, Kris Kobach joined with other right-wing political operatives, including billionaire Erik Prince, Trump's chief political strategist and former Breitbart editor Steve Bannon, Breitbart manager Brandon Darby, former Milwaukee County, Wisconsin Sheriff David Clarke, former Congressman Tom Tancredo and social media "fake news" scion, Brian Kolfage, to form an organization to raise funds ostensibly to facilitate construction of a barrier.
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Kris Kobach won a seat on the Overland Park City Council, in April 1999.
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Kris Kobach ran for Kansas State Senate in 2000, finishing third out of four Republican primary candidates.
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Kris Kobach advocated for the imposition of a national consumption tax.
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Kris Kobach was given a speaking role on the opening day of the 2004 Republican National Convention and used his slot to call for the US military to be sent to the Mexican border to block illegal immigration.
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On January 28,2007, Kris Kobach was elected Chairman of the Kansas Republican Party, serving until January 2009.
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Kris Kobach's chairmanship was noted for the broad changes he introduced to election efforts.
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Kris Kobach pushed the State Committee to create a "loyalty committee", which was charged with sanctioning Republicans who assisted Democratic candidates in contested races.
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The FEC audit found that when Kris Kobach served as chairman, the state party failed to pay state and federal taxes.
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On May 26,2009, Kris Kobach announced his candidacy for Kansas Secretary of State.
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Kris Kobach complained that he was being discriminated against because former Republican Governor Bill Graves received a much smaller fine for similar violations.
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When he obtained convictions of Kansans for interstate voting irregularities in 2016, Kris Kobach said, "The fines are "exactly what I wanted to see in cases like this when I made the case before Kansas Legislature that this authority was needed.
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Kris Kobach said that he stood by his allegations declaring, "My point was to bring attention to the Obama Justice Department's position that some civil rights statutes can't be enforced against people of color", Kris Kobach said.
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Kris Kobach warned that exaggerating its importance could hurt conservatives, noting that in 45 years there had only been three successful prosecutions.
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Kris Kobach said only two "Panthers," one of whom displayed a billy club, had been at a single, majority-black precinct in Philadelphia.
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Kris Kobach remarked that Clinton was getting her "pant suit in a twist", over his stance in favor of implementing some of the most strictly enforced voter ID laws in the United States.
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Clinton had claimed Kris Kobach's interventions were an attempt to make voting more difficult for key Democratic constituencies, such as young people and racial minorities.
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In October 2015, Kris Kobach spoke at a conference organized by Social Contract Press, an organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as a hate group.
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In February 2016, Kris Kobach endorsed Donald Trump's campaign for the US Presidency, citing his stance on immigration.
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Kris Kobach ruled that he had improperly filed his withdrawal, and his name had to remain on the ballot.
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On September 18,2014, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that Taylor's withdrawal was proper and that Kris Kobach had to remove Taylor's name from the ballot.
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On October 1,2014, a panel of three Shawnee County judges ruled that the Kansas Democratic Party was not required by state law to fill the vacancy on the ballot; Kris Kobach ordered the ballots to be printed the next day.
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The Governor of Kansas is required to reimburse the state for personal or political travel, but the AP discovered that Kris Kobach had not reimbursed the state for flights totaling more than 4,350 miles in the state Highway Patrol nine-passenger, Raytheon King Air 350.
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Kris Kobach is alleged to have scheduled negligible state business to coincide with Republican Party functions, taking his family along with him.
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Kris Kobach was unable to reserve the Beechcraft to fly to Washington, DC, for a hearing and deposition on a lawsuit which he had joined in support of Brian Newby, whom he had helped get appointed as the federal Election Assistance Commission director.
49.
Kris Kobach complained to the Kansas Supreme Court that Derek Schmidt, the Kansas Attorney General, who had withdrawn from the case, failed to properly represent him in the Appeals court.
50.
Kris Kobach has said that there are 18,000 non-citizens registered to vote in Kansas, a claim that NBC News described as "misleading" and "debunked".
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Kris Kobach supported Trump's claims that millions of non-citizens voted in the 2016 presidential election.
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Kris Kobach estimated that 3.2 million non-citizens voted, citing a widely debunked study.
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Kris Kobach complained that, during one of his appearances, CNN ran text on the screen saying Kris Kobach's claims that millions illegally voted in the 2016 election were "false".
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In September 2017, Kris Kobach claimed to have proof that voter fraud swung the 2016 Senate race in New Hampshire and may have swung New Hampshire's 2016 presidential vote; fact-checkers and election experts found that Kris Kobach's assertion was false.
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Kris Kobach claimed that more than 5,000 individuals voted by using out-of-state driving licenses as identification, even though New Hampshire residents are required to update their licenses in order to drive.
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In 2015, Kris Kobach received from the legislature and the governor the right to prosecute cases of voter fraud, after claiming for four years that Kansas had a massive problem of voter fraud that the local and state prosecutors were not adequately addressing.
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John Carmichael, Kris Kobach was unable to cite a single other state that gives its Secretary of State such authority.
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Kris Kobach did not want pot growing next to his home, so he marked that issue only, and mailed it in as instructed.
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However, when Kris Kobach got prosecutorial authority in such cases, a year later, he reopened the case.
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Critics of Kris Kobach, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, claim he overreaches on cases that district attorneys deemed not worth prosecuting, and allege that he is motivated by racism.
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Kris Kobach examined 84 million votes that were cast in 22 states, but referred only 14 cases to be prosecuted.
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From 2011 until the program's temporary suspension in early 2018, Kris Kobach oversaw its rapid expansion to 30 states.
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Fourteen national security experts wrote an amicus brief asserting that "large-scale databases containing personal information are particularly attractive targets for malicious cyber actors" to argue against Kris Kobach building a second, similar database.
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The technology website Gizmodo discovered that Kris Kobach's office had made the last four digits of the Social Security numbers of thousands of state employees and legislators available to anyone doing an Internet search.
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On June 18,2018, a federal judge ruled that proof of citizenship voting requirements were unconstitutional, and ordered Kris Kobach to take six hours of legal education before he could renew his law license.
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On June 23,2017, Kris Kobach was fined $1,000 for "deliberately attempting to mislead the court" on whether he was complying with the court orders in this case.
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Kris Kobach had at the time of the order assured the judge that he would notify these voters via postcard.
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Kris Kobach was not fined but was ordered to pay court costs, including more than $26,000 in attorney fees for the American Civil Liberties Union, which sought the contempt ruling and that "any further remedial measures" would be taken upon her ruling on the case.
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The response of the Secretary's office was that Kris Kobach is shielded from any such liability.
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Kris Kobach did pay a $1,000 fine, per Judge Robinson's order, but he did so with a credit card belonging to a staff member who was detailed to Ukraine with the US military.
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Kris Kobach accepted a diversion agreement the details of which remain confidential, in response to complaints made over his actions in the citizenship requirements case.
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On October 31,2018,6 days before the gubernatorial general election, Kris Kobach appeared on CNN with Anderson Cooper and Jeffrey Toobin.
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Kris Kobach's office did not compile a count of how many ballots were tossed, but an assessment by the Associated Press and the League of Women Voters of the state's 11 largest counties out of a total of 105 counties, show that at least 8,864 ballots cast were discarded without being counted, slightly more than 1 percent of total votes in those counties.
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In that capacity, Kris Kobach, who serves on the elections committee of the National Association of Secretaries of State, wrote to the top election official in every state requesting they turn over voter data ostensibly to aid a countrywide search for evidence of election irregularities.
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Besides information such as the names and party affiliations of all registered voters, Kris Kobach sought birth dates, felony conviction records, voting histories for the past decade and the last four digits of all voters' Social Security numbers.
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Ironically, Indiana's Secretary of State, Connie Lawson, and even Kris Kobach himself, indicated that their state laws forbade them from complying.
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Kris Kobach continued, "Kentucky will not aid a commission that is at best a waste of taxpayer money and at worst an effort to legitimize voter suppression efforts across the country".
78.
The ACLU, representing plaintiffs in a voting rights case, asked the presiding federal judge to prevent Kris Kobach from withholding the public documents he was photographed carrying as he met with Trump, by virtue of marking them "confidential".
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In June 2017, a federal magistrate judge, James O'Hara, found that Kris Kobach had made "patently misleading representations" to the court when he claimed he didn't possess the materials sought by the plaintiffs, in the course of the document dispute.
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Kris Kobach had been photographed with the president with the documents under his arm, and much of the cover page was readable in that photograph.
81.
On July 3,2017, a complaint was filed with the United States Department of Justice by Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a progressive activist group, to investigate whether Kris Kobach violated the Hatch Act, accusing him of using his position as a federal employee, vice chairman of the Commission, to promote his current campaign for governor of Kansas, and to solicit campaign contributions.
82.
Fellow Commission member Hans Von Spakovsky described the efforts of his Heritage Foundation colleague, Kris Kobach, to expose the alleged existence of extensive voter fraud as, "carefully described research".
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On June 8,2017, Kris Kobach formally announced his campaign for Governor of Kansas in the 2018 election.
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Kris Kobach has developed a record that shows a focus on ways and how to accomplish his end goals that I think are not the best for Kansas.
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Kris Kobach received political contributions from US Immigration Reform Pac, a political action committee which was headed by the widow of John Tanton, a white supremacist known for founding numerous exclusionary and "English-Only" groups that were the core of the modern American anti-immigrant movement.
86.
Democrats complained it was not Capps' true address, but the state Objections Board, composed of Republicans Lieutenant Governor Tracey Mann, Attorney General Derek Schmidt and Kris Kobach, refused to uphold the complaint and allowed Capps to stay on the ballot.
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In 2019, Kris Kobach announced he was running for the United States Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Pat Roberts.
88.
Kris Kobach was credited with introducing the controversial tactic of adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census questionnaires, but it was thought his advocacy may have led to the Supreme Court ruling against the initiative, as the Trump administration informed the court that US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross had initiated the divisive proposal.
89.
Besides the concerns raised about Kolfage himself, a week prior to the mailer, right-wing anti-immigrant, WBtW board member and former congressman Tom Tancredo sat on the stage alongside Kris Kobach and endorsed him in a New Mexico rally pushing the Wall.
90.
Kris Kobach criticized Kobach's employment in his controversial privately financed and constructed scheme to build the southern border wall.
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Kris Kobach took on his opponents who all agreed that he could not not win the general election against presumptive Democratic nominee, Barbara Bollier.
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Kris Kobach was a member of the Platform Committee of the 2016 Republican National Convention.
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Kris Kobach was photographed carrying a document into a meeting with Trump the title of which could be read as being, "Department of Homeland Security, Kobach Strategic Plan for First 365 Days".
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Kris Kobach was named vice chairman of the new Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity by Trump in 2017.
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Kris Kobach later told reporters in Kansas that, "I think the president-elect is absolutely correct when he says the number of illegal votes cast exceeds the popular-vote margin between him and Hillary Clinton," pointing to a 2014 study led by Jesse Richman, that claimed that "6.4 percent of noncitizens voted in 2008".
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In late March 2019, the Associated Press reported that President Donald Trump was considering creating a post of "immigration czar" to coordinate efforts among federal agencies involved in the issues, with Kris Kobach being one of two top candidates for the job.
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In 2022, Kris Kobach filed to run for the post of Kansas Attorney General, as a Republican.
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Kris Kobach vowed to establish a team in the Kansas Attorney General's office dedicated to suing President Biden and his administration.
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Kris Kobach initially came to prominence in US politics over his hardline views on immigration, and his involvement in the implementation of high-profile anti-immigration ordinances in various American towns.
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In October 2017, Kris Kobach wrote a column in Breitbart News which said that immigrants commit a disproportionate share of crimes, and that the United States should limit the amount of immigrants admitted on a yearly basis.
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Kris Kobach identifies himself as a supporter the rights of gun owners including extending concealed carry rights down from age 21 to age 18, and believes school teachers, coaches, and staff should be allowed to carry guns.
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Kris Kobach advocated for the Convention of States, and has frequently voiced his support for states' rights.
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In June 2017, Kris Kobach advocated for the ending of state tuition funding for illegal immigrants, and called for mass deportations of illegal immigrants.
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Kris Kobach has been criticized for saying that he would do nothing, if elected, to ensure protections for LGBTQ workers in Kansas.
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In 2010, during his candidacy for the Kansas secretary of state, Kris Kobach said Obama could end the controversy over his citizenship by producing a "long-form" birth certificate.
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In September 2012, while leading the three-person State Objections Board, and joined by Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt and Kansas Lieutenant Governor Jeff Colyer, Kris Kobach requested additional evidence, including the product of investigations from Mississippi and Arizona, that Obama was born in the United States.
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Kris Kobach said he did not have enough evidence to determine if Obama could appear on the Kansas ballot for the 2012 presidential election.
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Kris Kobach was born in Madison, Wisconsin, to Janice Mardell and William Louis Kris Kobach.
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Kris Kobach's great-grandparents were Bohemian and German on his father's side and Norwegian on his mother's side; they came to Wisconsin in the 1890s, where they were mostly farmers.
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At the age of seven, in 1974, Kris Kobach moved to Kansas with his parents and two sisters, and grew up mostly in Topeka where his father owned the Bill Kris Kobach Buick-GMC car dealership.
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Kris Kobach was married on June 23,2001 to Heather Mannschreck, a former environmental systems engineer who now has a part-time photography business in addition to homeschooling their five daughters.
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Kris Kobach stated he intends to build a residential home on the property.
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When building it, Kris Kobach "closed in" the plumbing and electric work so it was not possible for the building inspector to examine it without tearing up the floor and removing walls that covered wiring.
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Kris Kobach served as a missionary to Uganda in 2005 and 2006.
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Kris Kobach, who has no military background, said he joined the group's advisory board because he cares "deeply about veterans and veterans' issues" and would review the organization's financial records to determine whether to sever ties with the group.
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Seventeen months later, on July 12,2019, it was reported that despite the VIDOL organization's difficulties, Kris Kobach still remained on its board of directors.
117.
Kris Kobach said if consumers desire to write a check to the organization they should be told that their contributions are not being solicited for a charitable cause.