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“God Made Me Do This”
Obtained by ProPublica
In January 2024, Mitchell met with a small group of Republican lawyers and election-integrity leaders to discuss how best to prevent fraud in the November presidential election.
Those gathered in the Arizona hotel room were especially worried about noncitizen voting, though numerous audits, studies and analyses — even those by Republican groups and states — show it is vanishingly rare.
Arizona had passed a law compelling residents to provide proof of citizenship when they registered, rather than just swearing they were citizens under penalty of perjury, as is typical in most states.
Mitchell suddenly had an inspiration, she later recounted in a private speech to Virginia’s EIN chapter: She’d lead a push for a similar federal law. “I didn’t think of this,” she told those at the event. “God made me do this.”
When Mitchell returned from Arizona, she was, indeed, a woman on a mission. She convened her closest congressional allies, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas. Their staffers met with her to help draft the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act.
The bill set a high bar for proving citizenship, demanding that would-be voters produce documents like certified birth certificates and passports that many Americans don’t have. It also required states to use the DHS’ databases to purge noncitizens from their voter rolls.
The ideas in the measure would presage some of the second Trump administration’s most norm-breaking actions. “When we look back to the original SAVE Act in 2024 to the administration’s actions today, the through line is clear,” said Michael McNulty, a director for the watchdog nonprofit Issue One.
Mitchell knew the initial version of the act wouldn’t pass. When it was introduced in May 2024, Democrats controlled the Senate and the White House.
Rather, people in the election-integrity world said, she saw the measure as a strategic opportunity — both to cement her position atop the movement and to reignite the fervor for voting restrictions among the Trump faithful. For years, she’d fought behind the scenes for Trump’s ear on election issues, vying with more moderate Republican election experts as well as fringe activists.
To make sure her rivals had no choice but to support the SAVE Act, she brought on a backer too powerful to ignore: Stephen Miller, senior adviser to Trump in his first term and architect of his immigration policy. (Miller didn’t respond to questions about his relationship to Mitchell or the SAVE Act.)
Mitchell denied Miller had a hand in the measure. “Stephen is someone I greatly admire but we never worked together on the SAVE Act,” she wrote to ProPublica.
Stephen Miller, center, senior adviser to Trump in his first term and architect of his immigration policy, attends the May 2024 news conference for the SAVE Act.
But Roy, the bill’s House sponsor, said in a podcast interview that Miller helped draft it. Mitchell sought to dovetail her election agenda with Miller’s immigration agenda, those who’ve worked with them said. They stood side by side at an event at the Capitol to launch the bill, warning that Democrats were letting people into the country illegally in part to swing elections.
In a coup for Mitchell — anointed the Mother of the SAVE Act — pretty much every significant player in the election-integrity space joined the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, a group she launched to back the bill.
Mitchell directed more than $6 million to groups that bought ads, put out research and took other actions supporting SAVE, tax filings show. Some $800,000 went to the nonprofit arm of the conservative media organization The Federalist, which provided glowing coverage of the legislation.
Sean Davis, The Federalist’s CEO, didn’t answer questions about whether the donation affected coverage. “Cleta Mitchell is a saint,” he said in an email.
The measure sailed through the House in July 2024, then predictably died in the Senate. The bill had drawn fire from voting advocacy groups, which said the measure could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters, particularly women, the poor and minorities, all critical Democratic voting blocs.
Mitchell hardly missed a beat. That same month, she led a panel at an American Legislative Exchange Council conference that approved model legislation similar to the SAVE Act for conservative lawmakers to introduce in states across the country. Twelve states have since passed laws that strongly resembled SAVE and 23 have changed their voting procedures to reflect aspects of it.
That November, Trump won back the presidency and Republicans secured majorities in both chambers of Congress.
Mitchell saw the chance not only to pass an even tougher federal version of SAVE — a “SAVE Act on steroids” as she called it in a November organizing call — but to make even more far-reaching changes to American elections.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” she told attendees on the call. “I don’t want us to miss this.”
President Donald Trump in March 2025. When Trump won back the presidency and Republicans secured majorities in both chambers of Congress, Mitchell saw the chance to make even more far-reaching changes to American elections. Win McNamee/Getty Images
“If Plan A Doesn’t Work, I Have a Plan B”
Obtained by ProPublica
Two months after Trump took the oath of office, America got its first glimpse of how he planned to overhaul the nation’s election system.
His March 25, 2025, executive order — titled Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections — looked a lot like the SAVE Act. It required voters to prove their citizenship when they registered, mirroring the types of identification listed in the bill.
It also expanded on the notion of using DHS data to verify voters’ eligibility, saying that all of the federal government’s relevant troves of sensitive information should be made available for this use. Further, it directed the Justice Department to prioritize the prosecution of election crimes and noncitizen voting.
Mitchell was close to a pair of White House lawyers involved in drafting the order and was among a small group of outside attorneys who provided suggestions for it, according to several people who helped write it.
The order was the first in a string of behind-the-scenes victories that have not only allowed Mitchell to shape the Trump administration’s election blueprint, but have given her substantial influence over who’s been chosen to carry it out.
At least 25 administration appointees have close ties to Mitchell, ProPublica’s reporting shows, with several holding key posts directly related to elections.
“She’s had a lot to do with even White House hires in this regard,” Bannon said. (The White House denied Mitchell had swayed its hiring decisions.)
Heather Honey, a senior counselor to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, has a portfolio that touches on almost everything the administration does on elections. She’s figured centrally in the government’s efforts to find and prosecute noncitizen voters.
Before joining DHS, Honey was a Mitchell protege and led EIN’s Pennsylvania chapter. A high-ranking federal official knowledgeable about the hiring process told ProPublica that the agency hired Honey over more experienced candidates. Her “sole qualification was who she worked with,” the former official said. “She worked with Cleta.”
A DHS spokesperson called this “false,” saying Honey had been recommended by senior government leaders for her election expertise.
Mitchell also has had a hand in shaping the administration’s reinvestigation of fraud allegations involving the 2020 election, beginning with the FBI’s seizure of election records from Fulton County, Georgia.
As ProPublica has reported, the affidavit justifying the raid included material compiled by an EIN-affiliated researcher and cited network participants as witnesses.
When the case bogged down as the prosecutor overseeing it began to doubt its strength, Mitchell was among those who recommended a replacement: Dan Bishop, a former North Carolina congressman whom she’s praised on social media and supported with campaign donations.
At a May meeting, a Georgia EIN leader said Bishop was tapped “thanks in large part to Cleta Mitchell,” an account echoed by an administration official familiar with the matter.
A Justice Department spokesperson said the agency “has no knowledge of any role Cleta Mitchell played” in Bishop’s appointment.
Mitchell told ProPublica she didn’t believe she’d affected this decision. “I was very worried about the direction of the case earlier this year and made known my displeasure quite strongly,” she said. “The decision to appoint Dan was made by the President and I applaud it, but I cannot claim credit for that brilliant idea.”
Soon after stepping in, Bishop tried to subpoena personal information for thousands of Fulton County poll workers, a move the county and election experts denounced as politically motivated intimidation. A court quashed the subpoena. Bishop has appealed.
As she’d envisioned in her call with EIN members just after the 2024 election, Mitchell has gotten the president to sink enormous political capital into passing even tougher versions of the bill, now known as the SAVE America Act.
The 2026 measure would require voters nationwide to present photo ID to vote and compel states to turn over their voter rolls to DHS, which would scour them for noncitizens. Trump has repeatedly called the measure his top legislative priority, threatening not to sign other bills until it passes.
Lee, the Utah senator who sponsored the bill, said Mitchell was central to the updated version, especially the strict voter ID provisions. Trump, he added, gave it the new name.
Former officials and people in the election-integrity movement told ProPublica that Mitchell has had to overcome naysayers within the administration, including White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
On an EIN call in early 2025, Mitchell complained that Wiles had responded frostily to plans she offered for the incoming administration, “saying, ‘Thank you, I’ll take a look as soon as I come up for air.’”
At the time, Mitchell said she’d wanted to reply that wouldn’t happen for four years. When ProPublica followed up about the incident, she wrote: “Susie is remarkable and a great chief of staff. She doesn’t have time to read all the things that people like me send her.”
Mitchell has surmounted these obstacles, in part, by continuing to build out her array of alliances.
By the middle of this year, when the White House brought on Solomon — a longtime Mitchell supporter who vetted material for Trump’s prime-time elections address — it was clear she had found another way in. (A White House spokesperson said that Solomon, who also runs a conservative news site, interacted with Mitchell as a journalist would speak to a subject-matter expert.)
A former administration official who said he’d tried to stymie Mitchell acknowledged she’d won out. “The White House listens to her,” he said.
Mitchell had told her EIN disciples not to worry after Wiles’ brush off. She had more cards to play, she assured them.
“I always know if plan A doesn’t work, I have a plan B,” she said. “If plan B doesn’t work, I have a plan C. And so forth.”
Mitchell in January 2026. “Even if she fails, she always finds another point of attack,” said Max Flugrath, a director at the voting advocacy group Fair Fight. “She’s relentless.” Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
“Today”
Steve Bannon’s “War Room” Podcast
By the time the first mail-in ballots of the midterms were cast in September, Mitchell had shaped and staffed the Trump administration’s election efforts to an astonishing extent. And yet, the knockout blow had eluded her.
Courts had blocked large parts of Trump’s executive orders. The hunt for noncitizen voters and the reinvestigation of 2020 voting irregularities had produced little of consequence, despite the considerable resources poured into them.
Mitchell’s critics and even her allies, including some in the election-integrity movement, say frustration has prompted her to push for more drastic steps.
During the summer, she mounted an escalating pressure campaign to save the SAVE America Act, mobilizing EIN members to badger recalcitrant senators, according to recordings of EIN meetings. She also worked with the bill’s Senate sponsor and Trump to kill the filibuster, a pathway known as the nuclear option, to get the bill over the line, but was blocked by a handful of moderate Republicans.
Mitchell has taken a similarly all-or-nothing approach in pressing states to pass laws modeled on the SAVE America Act, sometimes with similarly self-defeating results.
Earlier this year, she waded into a battle over an Ohio bill despite being warned that the governor would veto the tougher version she preferred. The final bill contained the provision Mitchell sought. The governor promptly vetoed it.
Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, an election-integrity movement leader who’s worked with Mitchell for decades, said Mitchell sometimes runs the risk of making elections less secure by torpedoing practical solutions.
“It was her way or the highway,” he said. “We need to focus on getting concrete wins.”
(Mitchell didn’t respond to Blackwell’s broader criticism but called the more moderate election measure he’s backed in Ohio “not nearly as good as it should be.”)
As the midterms near, she has become increasingly vocal — in media appearances, online and with her network members — in calling for the president to exert unprecedented powers to sway the vote.
“Even if she fails, she always finds another point of attack,” said Max Flugrath, a director at the voting advocacy group Fair Fight. “She’s relentless.”
On the Oct. 6 episode of “War Room,” Mitchell angrily pounded home that several agencies, particularly the Commerce Department, could intervene “today” to shore up purported vulnerabilities in voting machines. She repeated the word “today” seven times during the appearance, like a drumbeat.
Some of those who’ve known Mitchell the longest say her urgency has crescendoed as, at 76, she’s confronted the possibility that this administration is her last chance to realize her goals.
“In her mind, in her timeline, it’s existential,” the former network leader said. “She’s got to do it all, and she’s got to do it now. … The election integrity movement, c’est moi.”
Corrections
Jen Fifield and Reese Dunklin contributed reporting. Misty Harris contributed research.
Contributors
- I’m a ProPublica reporter covering threats to democracy, elections and voting rights.
- Have a Tip for a Story?
- I welcome tips about how politicians, activists, and others are trying to transform American elections for partisan advantage. I am also interested in tips about North Carolina’s legislature, court system, and state government
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mma 7 26
06/30/26
Cleta Mitchell reacts to the Supreme Court late-arriving mail-in ballots ruling by saying it's time to challenge early voting
Mitchell to Steve Bannon: “There's a lot in that opinion that would suggest that we ought to be challenging early voting. We ought to be challenging unfettered absentee voting.”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 06/30/26
Video
Citation
From the June 29, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): You know, I think that - I don't know, but Amy Coney Barrett writes for the majority, and this is what is shocking, is that there are five justices of the Supreme Court who believe and who wrote in this opinion that there is a difference between casting the ballot, that is when the voters make their choice, and when the ballot is received. That makes no sense.
Frankly, according to their opinion, I actually think that this gives us good grounds to challenge early voting and to say that voting is — there's a lot in that opinion that would suggest that we ought to be challenging early voting. We ought to be challenging unfettered absentee voting because they also point out, which Marc Elias conveniently forgets to discuss, that — repeatedly they referred to the fact that the ballots had to be postmarked on or before election day.
Well, California doesn't require a postmark. I think we ought to challenge that. I think that what we have to do on our side is that we have to do what the left has done. And I know that that when Stephen Miller started America First Legal Foundation after — in 2021, the idea was to build a judicial attack mob that's similar to what the left has. And we haven't really done that.
I mean, they — there are — we've done a lot better. But these guys, the left challenges everything. And we are getting these terrible decisions from these awful left-wing trial court judges all over the country. And then this decision — to me, the worst part of this decision is it emboldens these left-wing crazy judges that are inhabiting our courts all over the country. That's the constitutional crisis we face, is all of these judges.
But I will tell you that I think that there is a roadmap in this. Unfortunately, it requires congressional action and we see how terrible Congress, the US Senate is. So I mean it's, we have a crisis because the judges are not letting the president do his job and they're trying to do Congress's job.
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bannon mma 7 26
June 30, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
STEVE BANNON (HOST): SAVE America Act — a lot of people are saying, hey, do we have time to implement it? Are we going to have lawsuits? But President Trump is driving forward. We're a huge proponent of that.
We also know that Bill Pulte is at DNI, and that John Solomon of Real America's Voice is leading a task force on declassification. And yesterday, Pulte hired, from the RNC, as his chief of staff, one of the top election fraud people in all of the RNC to be his chief of staff. So he's telling you where he's — signaling where he's going on this.
My understanding — I don't have any access to this classified information — but my understanding is that there is going to be real revelations about the stealing of the 2020 election.-
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mma
Election deniers reach a fever pitch calling for a “national emergency” declaration so Trump can give himself “king-like powers” over the midterms
Tina Peters: “I believe Trump could sign an executive order to get rid of the machines and say ... that a vendor cannot have that much influence over our elections”
Written by Alex Kaplan
Published 06/30/26
After President Donald Trump issued an executive order at the end of March aimed at stopping supposed fraud with mail-in ballots, election deniers have urged Trump to declare a national emergency to allow a federal takeover of election processes. On June 24, Trump echoed those calls and suggested that passing a bill to supposedly combat election fraud is a “national emergency.”
Media figures who have pushed claims of widespread election fraud — some of whom say they have been involved with drafting such an order that is “sitting on his [Trump’s] desk” — have urged Trump to give himself “king-like powers” by implementing the proposal, as it would supposedly empower Trump to “be able to make the rules” and use the National Guard to oversee midterm elections. Others claim that they have asked Trump directly to invoke the proposed order, saying it would be “very easy” for the president to “issue an executive order through a national emergency and have the National Guard count those ballots by hand.”
Election deniers drafted executive order declaring a national emergency to implement election policies and Trump issued an executive order on mail-in ballots
- Since at least April 2025, a group of right-wing figures and Trump allies have called for Trump to issue a national emergency declaration “to make sure that the elections in 2026 are secure,” even proposing and circulating among Trump administration officials a draft executive order that would “declare a national emergency” and “empower the president to ban mail ballots and voting machines as the vectors of foreign interference.” Those involved include attorney Peter Ticktin, former Infowars staffer Jerome Corsi, and QAnon influencer Wayne Willot, known online as Juan O. Savin.
During his second term, Trump has issued two executive orders related to elections. As explained by The New York Times, a March 2025 order instructs the Election Assistance Commission “to require people to show government-issued proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, and directs state or local officials to record and verify the information,” and it “seeks to require states to count ballots by Election Day.” Multiple federal judges have since blocked that executive order.
On March 31, Trump issued an executive order that directs the Department of Homeland Security to “compile and transmit to the chief election official of each State a list of individuals confirmed to be United States citizens who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming Federal election and who maintain a residence in the subject State,” and instructs the U.S. Postal Service to “transmit ballots only to individuals enrolled on a State-specific Mail-in and Absentee Participation List.” NPR reported that “election experts said the order was unconstitutional.” After Trump signed the executive order, election deniers hailed it as a “win” that will leave Democrats “toast.” On June 25, a federal judge blocked parts of the order.
While Trump reportedly “shrugged off reports that he could consider declaring a national emergency around the midterm elections,” he has repeatedly advocated for the SAVE America Act, which would put restrictions on voting but has struggled to pass in Congress. On June 24, Trump canceled plans to sign bipartisan housing legislation “until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.”
- ## Since Trump issued the executive order in March, election deniers have repeatedly urged Trump to also declare a national emergency ahead of the midterms
- Savin, who wasinvolvedwith the proposed national emergency executive order,claimedthat Trump “is going to have to declare a national election emergency that gives him essentially king-like powers within the area of elections.”He added that the proposal is “sitting on his [Trump’s] desk, the 17-page order which my team put together within the coalition.” He’s also claimed that Trump “wants to sign it and [is] having the legal people review it to make sure that we got everything right,” may try to issue the order in “bite-sized pieces,” and that Trump has “tried to break up” the proposed order and it will “ultimately … get sealed in one summary executive order at some point in time, but they’ve taken a couple of pieces out and done them individually.”
- Ticktin, also supposedlyinvolvedwith the proposed order,saida national “election emergency” would allow Trump to “be able to make the rules.” He also said that it would give Trump “additional forces of some sort” like the National Guard to have “camera observation” of ballots and make “sure the counting is done and done correctly.”
- Corsi, another figure supposedlyinvolvedwith the proposed order, said that hebelievedTrump is “very strategically laying out his plans” with multiple executive orders related to elections and “saving his powder for that one last executive order, which will come much closer to the election.” He also claimed that the “nightmare” of Trump’s impeachment and removal by a Democratic-controlled Congress “can be avoided by that kind of an executive order” and Trump’s authority under the national emergency could “extend to utilizing the National Guard to intervene in states that didn’t cooperate.” During another appearance in which he discussed the order, Corsi claimed that “politically, Donald Trump cannot afford to let the 2026 midterm election occur under the current rules because he will most certainly lose. And that’s not going to happen.”
- Former Mesa County, Colorado, clerk Tina Peterssaidduring a stream following her release from prison that she had spoken with the president and she believes “Trump could sign an executive order to get rid of the machines and say that they are — that a vendor cannot have that much influence over our elections.”She also said on a separate podcast that “we need to get rid of the machines” and “mail-in ballots,” and Trump “needs to sign an executive order ... saying it’s unconstitutional that these things are allowed to be done.” Corsi has also claimed that Peters will “play a major role in one of the key factors in Trump ultimately declaring the need for the elections to be supervised by the federal government.”
- Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock CEO who has been aprominent fundraiserfor election denial efforts andplayed a rolein trying to overturn the 2020 election,saidTrump should announce a national emergency to “run our election this year ... and teach them how to run them in Iraq.”He later added that he hoped the president would declare an emergency “this summer.” Byrne is supposedly involved with the proposed order.
- Savin’s supposed “chief of staff,”Matt Meck,saidthe proposed national emergency order is “what we think needs to be done.”Meck — a board member of Fight Voter Fraud Inc., an organization which “has been criticized in the past for repeatedly advancing unfounded claims based on its misinterpretation of voter registration information and other data” — is supposedly involved with the proposed order.
- Mark Cook, described byColorado Newslineas one “of the most influential election deniers in Colorado,”said, “How much more of an emergency do we need to establish here? It's right in our faces, and we have to do something immediately.” Cook is also supposedly involved with the proposed order.
- Laura Scharr, thefounderof South Carolina Safe Elections,saidthat “it can’t just be an executive order — they’ve blown off the other two executive orders [related to elections] that Trump put out.”She added, “The only way is through a national emergency.” Scharr, who is supposedly involved with the proposed order, concluded that “it must be a national emergency. It has to happen as soon as possible.”
- Wayne Allyn Root — a radio host who hasclaimedthat mail-in ballots were used to “rig and steal the 2020 election” and who the Nevada Currentreportedis “known for subscribing to conspiracy theories”— has authoredmultiple columnsfor The Gateway Pundit advocating for the proposed national emergency. On his show, Root claimed to have texted the president about a national emergency and he said that he would urge Trump to “sign Jerome Corsi’s executive order on election integrity, Mr. President, and do it now.”
- John Goodman, who ispart ofthe “Florida Election Integrity Committee,”saidonStern American's “election integrity call” that “if you like the SAVE Act, you should love the national security emergency even more because it's like the SAVE Act on steroids,“ and that such a declaration “will be the trick, unobstructed.” He has also claimed that the call for “a national security emergency on elections” based on his ideas has been “very well received by Trump's legal team.” Root has said that “John Goodman, my election expert, has been telling me” that a national emergency is “the way to go,” and he claimed that Goodman “sent me all the reasons … as to what I could pass on to President Trump to push the urgency of a executive order to deal with election fraud and election integrity.” Corsi has also claimed to “have been working with” Goodman.
- Linda Szynkowicz, thefounderof Fight Voter Fraud Inc.,claimedon her podcast that the Constitution “gives the president the power in a state of emergency from foreign intervention in the elections,” for which “we have more than enough proof.” She made this claim in response to Goodman’s call for a “national security emergency.”
- David Clements, a podcaster“criss-crossed the country to who hasevangelize about purported election fraud,”saidat a local Republican event in Oregon that it would be “very easy” for Trump to “issue an executive order through a national emergency and have the National Guard count those ballots by hand.”During a podcast appearance with Corsi, Clements also claimed that he did not see “any scenario where we can run a clean election without the aid of the National Guard.”
- Douglas Franksaidin an appearance alongside Ticktin on theTake Your Power Back Showthat “we have people all over the country ready to support the president in case he needs to make some kind of emergency order.” The Los Angeles Times reported that Frank has given speeches across the country as “part of a multi-pronged effort by the election denial movement to make a significant impact on future elections.”
- Tamara Favorito — who reportedlyhelps runthe “election integrity” organization VoterGA with her husband, Garland Favorito —saidon a stream that Trump “needs to hurry” to declare a national emergency “because November is not very far away.” After being asked if there was “enough time before the midterms for” Trump to declare “the national security emergency and executive orders that mandate the things that make elections safe,” Favorito responded that “if the election officials in the counties put their mind to it, I believe it can be done, but he [Trump] needs to hurry because November is not very far away.”
- Gregory Stenstrom, a Pennsylvaniapoll watcherwhoclaimedwithout evidence that he saw votes for Biden being uploaded to voting machines in 2020,saidonStern American’s “election integrity call” that “Trump is required to take executive action.” Stenstrom said, “In the executive order that is being drafted by Peter Ticktin and Mr. Corsi, they can refer to multiple cases within the courts right now that show that President Trump is required to take executive action because certain secretaries of state and certain county officials in key counties are cheating and not complying with the law.” Stenstrom was also part of a lawsuit that reportedly alleged that there was “negligent and fraudulent misrepresentation related to the 2020 general election,” but which a local district attorney said there was “no merit found to the claims.”
- ## Why this sounds familiar and continues to matter
- Trump and his right-wing media allies have been pushing claims of election fraud for years. During Trump's second term, election deniers known for promoting conspiracy theories about the 2020 election have been given access to the levers of power — feeding already debunked claims to the Department of Justice, taking roles in the administration, and contributing to federal investigations. Some, like Peters, Byrne, and Martin Rodil, claimed they have spoken directly with Trump and administration officials. (The Guardian reported Rodil became a source “for the Trump camp and ultimately for investigators and … promoted two major allegations about Venezuela.”)
As the 2026 midterms approach, right-wing media and the Trump administration appear to have ramped up their efforts to undermine the midterm elections — invoking repeatedly debunked conspiracy theoriesabout widespread election fraud in the U.S., relying on one-off incidents and hypotheticals that are often exaggerated or misleading, and pushing for Trump policy priorities like the SAVE America Act.
Election deniers have already claimed that primaries for the 2026 midterms have featured election fraud, and Savin himself has claimed that the primary elections have been “laying the groundwork” for Trump to declare a national emergency — language which the president has now repeated.
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AN 5 26
President Donald Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles, announced that she believes the outcome of the 2020 election could change after their investigations.
She recalled Trump calling her to come down to Mar-a-Lago and that they discussed why he won Florida but failed in so many other states.
Wiles said in passing, "I think we are going to find out he actually did win" those states.
Trump's FBI seized all of the ballots from Fulton County earlier this year, leaving no copies or additional records that could compare the originals. Officials in Fulton County have concerns that the ballots could be tampered with to support Trump's case.
In response to the comments, Wiles was blasted by those who called the perpetuation of the 2020 election conspiracy theories absurd.
"Psychosis," wrote ex-Republican Tim Miller after seeing the clip.
"Susie Wiles is a crazy person. Trump did not get cheated out of states in the 2020 election, and to claim otherwise indicates you have serious cognitive problems," commented influencer Aaron Rupar.
One person recalled, "Reminder: the Trump team filed 62 lawsuits related to the 2020 election. Half of them were tossed out. They were allowed to the opportunity to present evidence in the other half, all of which related to vote tallies were also thrown out. They won one lawsuit, which had nothing to do with the 2020 election itself. Media surrogates tried to every possible angle, even blaming a Venezuelan conspiracy to tamper with voting machines, which got them lawsuits they all spectacularly lost. At every opportunity to present evidence, they've failed over and over again."
"Insanely weird to keep this going so many years later. Susie Wiles has got to be smarter than to actually believe this," commented author and columnist Evan Barker.
Another person warned that this is all part of a larger plot, "all part of the 'stolen' election script. They're going to use it to give Trump a third term."
Former national security official Brian P. McKeon wrote, "If he did win, then he is ineligible to continue serving as President."
Campaign strategist Jacob Perry commented, "For years people have been telling me that Susie Wiles was the sane one who would keep things somewhat normal in the White House. That is clearly not the case."
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AN PP 5 26
When President Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 election, the institutional guardrails of American democracy held — but just barely.
If faced with the same tests today, those guardrails and the people who held the line would largely be missing, a ProPublica examination found.
At least 75 career officials who once held roles at federal agencies related to election integrity and safety are gone. Two dozen appointees — including many who either actively worked to reverse the 2020 vote or are associates of such people — have been hired to replace them. And once-fringe actors now have access to vast powers.
As the midterms approach, current and former government officials and election security experts expressed concerns that Trump appointees who’ve espoused debunked conspiracy theories about balloting are now in positions to control the narrative around the vote’s soundness.
It’s hard to debunk false claims “coming with the seal of the federal government,” said Derek Tisler, counsel and manager with the Brennan Center for Justice’s elections and government program. “I certainly worry what damage that could do to voters’ confidence.”
Here are some of the key things you should know about the Trump administration’s efforts to, as the president said, “take over” the midterms. Read the full investigation here.
1. In 2020, institutional guardrails helped to prevent Trump from overturning the election.
Following his defeat in the 2020 election, Trump pushed for federal officials to uncover proof that he had, in fact, beaten Joe Biden at the polls. Election cybersecurity experts with the Department of Homeland Security relayed to Attorney General William Barr that the election fraud claims that they looked into were false. Barr then told the president what he didn’t want to hear: The election had not been hacked.
Barr was one of many federal officials — most of them Trump appointees — who refused to bend to the president’s demands, which only intensified in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, 2021. Despite the violent uprising at the Capitol on that day, the election results held firm.
2. Less than 18 months into his second term, Trump has dismantled many of those same guardrails.
Since the start of his second term, Trump and his appointees have made significant changes at federal agencies tasked with helping to safeguard elections. In all, at least 75 career officials who’d played important roles in elections work at DHS, the Department of Justice and other agencies have left, been fired or been reassigned, ProPublica found.
In their place are roughly two dozen people Trump has installed in positions that could affect elections. Ten of them actively worked to reverse the 2020 vote, and the rest are associates of those people. In some cases, ProPublica found, officials have been hired from activist groups that are pillars of the election-denial movement.
3. Among the first agencies Trump gutted after returning to office was one that had repeatedly disproved his stolen-election claims.
Officials at DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had provided research to the first Trump White House that disproved many theories claiming that the 2020 election had been hacked. CISA also played a crucial part in publicly countering these claims by producing a “Rumor Control” website to rebut them.
Then, only weeks into Trump’s second term, DHS leadership put employees focused on countering disinformation and helping safeguard elections on leave. They also froze CISA’s other election security work, which included assessing local election offices for physical and cybersecurity risks. Eventually, all CISA employees specializing in elections were fired or transferred.
A DHS spokesperson told ProPublica that the changes at CISA were in response to “a ballooning budget concealing a dangerous departure from its statutory mission,” which included “electioneering instead of defending America’s critical infrastructure.”
4. Trump and his appointees have gutted election-related teams at federal law enforcement agencies.
FBI Director Kash Patel dismantled the agency’s public corruption team, which had previously been deployed to help monitor possible criminal activity on Election Day. The Foreign Influence Task Force, which aimed to combat foreign influence in U.S. politics, was also disbanded.
(An FBI spokesperson said the bureau “remains committed to detecting and countering foreign influence efforts by adversarial nations.”)
The voting section of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division had enforced federal laws that protect voting rights, particularly those that combat racial discrimination. But now, nearly all of the section’s roughly 30 career lawyers have resigned or been moved. Trump then filled the section with conservative lawyers, including at least four who participated in challenging the 2020 vote or have worked with people who helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election.
- Trump has replaced ousted career specialists with “Team America.”
In the summer of 2025, after the Trump administration had forced out most of the career specialists, a small group of political appointees — which once called itself “Team America,” according to sources familiar with the matter — began convening at DHS headquarters, looking for federal levers it could pull to realize a March 2025 executive order, in which Trump tried to exert greater federal control over aspects of voting.
Among the core members of the group was David Harvilicz, a DHS assistant secretary tasked with overseeing the security of election infrastructure, including voting machines, and three of his top staffers. As ProPublica has reported, Harvilicz co-founded an AI company with an architect of Trump’s claims about election hacking in Michigan.
Heather Honey, who serves under Harvilicz in a newly created position focused on elections, is a source of the false claim that more ballots were cast in Pennsylvania than there were voters in the 2020 presidential election — a claim Trump cited on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021.
At least 11 administration appointees, including Honey, have ties to the Election Integrity Network, a conservative grassroots organization led by Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. Since moving into government, Honey has maintained close ties to Mitchell’s organization, and she and at least two other federal officials have given its members private briefings.
6. Team America members are using a powerful Homeland Security Investigations tool to try to identify noncitizen voters.
The DOJ has been demanding that states turn over confidential voter roll information, and it has sued around 30 states for this data.
Meanwhile, DHS has urged states to upload their voter rolls to its tool, called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system.
The goal in both efforts has been to find noncitizens on the voter rolls. But the SAVE tool has come up short, often identifying citizens as noncitizens, as ProPublica has reported, and officials have faced other roadblocks with its use.
More recently, according to two people familiar with the matter, Team America has worked to harness a more powerful tool used by another branch of DHS, Homeland Security Investigations, to increase its ability to search for noncitizen voters and bring criminal charges against them.
In response to questions sent to DHS, Harvilicz and Honey, a DHS spokesperson disputed that they were seeking to use the department’s powers to advantage Trump. In response to questions about their ties to the election denial movement, the spokesperson wrote, “To meet the diverse and evolving challenges the Department faces, we hire experts with diverse backgrounds who go through a rigorous vetting process.”
7. Trump’s head of election security is behind the FBI’s seizure of 2020 election ballots in Georgia.
Attorney Kurt Olsen once worked to try to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss in court and was later sanctioned by judges for making baseless allegations about Arizona elections. He is now Trump’s director of election security and integrity and is the driving force behind the January raid of the election center in Fulton County, Georgia.
Toward the end of 2025, Olsen flew to Georgia to meet with Paul Brown, the head of the FBI’s Atlanta field office, according to people familiar with the matter. Olsen wanted the FBI to seize ballots from the Democratic stronghold, and he gave Brown a report he claimed would justify the extraordinary action. Brown’s team submitted an affidavit to superiors at the DOJ that did not make a strong enough case to move forward with what Olsen wanted. Afterward, Brown was given a choice: retire or be moved to a new office. Brown retired. The raid went forward under his replacement, based on an affidavit that cited information from the report Olsen provided to Brown.
Olsen did not respond to requests for comment.
An FBI spokesperson said that Brown “elected to retire” and that its “work in the election security space is entirely consistent with the law.”
8. The DOJ’s Public Integrity Section could have tried to block the administration’s Georgia voting investigation.
In the months following Trump’s return to office, the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, which had been responsible for making sure the department’s inquiries weren’t improperly influenced by politics, was eviscerated. Resignations, firings and transfers reduced the 36-person section to two.
Multiple former lawyers for the section said they likely would have tried to block the Fulton County investigation because it lacked strong evidence, had a clear political slant and went against department directives that actions should not be taken “for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”
John Keller was principal deputy chief of the section from 2020 to 2025 and was acting chief when he resigned in early 2025. He worries that allegations of irregularities in the upcoming election will be handled on a partisan basis.
“Without that review and without apolitical, objective, honest brokers involved in the process, there is a much greater risk for intentional manipulation or inadvertent interference,” Keller said.
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