BIG LIE 6 FRAUD
ESTB 2 26
PURPOSE REBOOT IS DISPUTE 2026 MIDTERM LOSS
SEE GOP STEAL ELECTION
SEE HUGO CHAVEZ GHOST VOTING MACHINE SMARTMATIC
NOTE BASIS TO SUPPRESS VOTE
SEE VOTER FRAUD ELECTION INTEGRITY BS FULTON FUCKERY SAVE ACT HARMEET THREAT POLL OFFIC
XO EMERG DECLARATION ~ 2026 MIDTERMS
see ARIZ 3
SEE CLAIM NO EVIDENCE
---
FIVE HEADERS
8 22 post jan 6 hearings, many primaries
merri ok
SEE LIE GASLT // LOUDERMILK ~ JAN 6 COMM bENHAZI BS 9 25
SEE FULTON FUCKERY DOJ3 GABBARD ~ 2026 MIDTERM DIGENOVA
see racism : big lie trump coup fake electors always POC cities/ ga election workers GRT replacement soros BS xeno border BS illegal voter
see violence 5 political
SEE HUGO CHAVEZ GHOST REBOOT 1 26 VENEZ FULTON CTY SIEZE BALLOTS TULSI GabbaRD
see true the vote rnc target poll workers = civil society
see voter fraud 2 ballot harvest
adding dems plots to cheAT 2024, demonization projection
see election official infiltration voter roll purge eagleAI ziklag xian natl
see poll watcher
see election integrity BS cleta CPI
SEE FULTON GABBARD HUGO CHAVEZ GHOST --> VOTER SUPPRESS 2026 MIDTERM
SEE GOP STEAL ELECTION PULTE FOREIGN BS
see fox SMARTMATIC
see disbar defam losses
see voter suppress az
see defam dominion/smartmatic lady ruby rudy still deny after 148M$ judgment 12/23}:
see voting machines, repeat fail on proof
see norms/ inst
bolsonaro brazil 1 23
see degrade attack faith trust /norm inst disinfo
bak 12 23 capt 6 26
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AHA DOH THIS = // EARTH 2
MSNBC 8 26 NOT TRYING TO PROVE BIG LIE IN CT, JUST GIN UP A GOOD ENOUGH STORY TO DECLARE EMERGENCY
MULLIN DHS 200k --> 185
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AN 11 26
President Donald Trump is attempting a "tough sell" on the American people by belatedly claiming the 2026 midterm elections were stolen from him. In those contests, Democrats shocked the political world by winning back the Senate and House of Representatives by landslide margins, with most polls indicating that the key issues were high prices and government corruption.
"Today, it appears Trump has entered the denial stage of grief," CNN's Jake Tapper said on Monday. "On Truth Social this morning, the president wrote, quote, 'Does anybody really believe that this election was honest? How could the polls be so wrong? Some early voting dumps were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote. It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter,' unquote."
Tapper added, "The president is, of course, offering zero evidence of fraud. Zero. Per usual. To the president’s question of whether anybody believes the election was real and honest: well, yeah. Yeah, they do. Election officials, secretaries of state, governors, Democrats, Republicans — all have said the elections ran smoothly."
He continued, "And how exactly would this rigging scheme work in, let’s say, Texas? The diabolical conspiracy to hand the state over to Democrats, led by the scheming heads of that state, Republican Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, both of whom were running for office and both of whom lost? Were they in on it?"
Pointing out that CNN had reported on Trump's baseless fraud accusations for months, Tapper concluded that "before Trump reached the denial phase, he spent time in other stages of grief. In a 60 Minutes interview taped Friday that aired last night, the president was in what seemed like the bargaining stage, surprising his own base by saying that he would be open to bargaining with Democrats on the matter of immigration."
Speaking to AlterNet last week, polling and politics expert Kyle Kondik — the managing editor at Sabato's Crystal Ball — explained why Trump's Republicans lost so decisively in 2026.
"This was such a thumping that even he couldn't deny it with a straight face," Kondik told AlterNet when asked why Trump had, at that time at least, not contested the results.
"This is one of the biggest waves in American history," Kondik continued, adding that "the Watergate wave of 1974 might be the only comparable election in modern history. This was kind of like 2006, but clearly bigger."
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AN 11 26 POST BLU TSU
It has been almost a week since the blue tsunami flooded the United States and MAGA has finally decided that the 2026 midterms were rigged.
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump's allies began sprinkling denialist conspiracy theories across social media. On Monday morning, Trump picked up on it and joined in, claiming that there was no possible way that the elections were accurate since the polls showed him to be beloved.
"Does anybody really believe that this 'Election' was honest. How could the Polls be so wrong??? Some early voting 'dumps' were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter! President DJT"
This would mean that two elections Trump oversaw were allegedly "rigged."
The Bulwark's Sam Stein and Will Sommer chatted for "MAGA Monday" about the conspiracy theories that "have been a little slow to get off the ground."
Trump is ranting about the polls, but Stein said that the only thing wrong with the polls is that they severely undercounted the Democratic vote. Even if they weren't undercounting, however, there still would have been a huge blue wave.
Trump citing "the machines," Sommer said, appears to go back to the idea that electronic voting machines are far "more important than voters."
"That's music to Mike Lindell's ears," Sommer said. He noted that Lindell is giving a "national address" at 7 p.m. EST, claiming the election was stolen.
"Jesus Christ, man, I can't believe we're doing this s—— again," Stein grumbled.
They pointed out that some Republicans were trying to take a victory lap over the fact that Republicans didn't throw a fit and claim the election was "rigged." Former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer wrote on X, "Tuesday was not a good night for Republicans. It’s been 4 days and no protests, riots and vandalism."
Stephen Richer, the former Republican Maricopa County Recorder, replied, "Congrats on not doing J6 this time! Really impressive!"
It was two days after that post that Trump claimed the election was rigged.
"It's like the lowest bar. You cleared it, Sean. Congrats," Stein said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Except now, apparently, Trump's not accepting."
Sommer quickly pointed out that it isn't January yet. The Jan. 6 attack happened after over a month of Trump's claims that the election was stolen from him.
"So, like, the arc has not finished," he added. "You know, you can't say we didn't do January 6th until they're sworn in."
The swearing-in date is Jan. 3.
So, there is an uptick in claims of voter fraud and Sommer said that it's just now "getting going."
Stein thinks the delay in claiming fraud came from MAGA fans being "lost" since Trump didn't make such claims for a week.
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RWW 11 26
- Jennifer Bowers Bahney @ Mediaite: Trump Allies Kari Lake and Liz Harrington Suggest the Election Was Rigged: ‘Makes No Sense. Zero’
Trump acolytes Kari Lake and Liz Harrington are continuing to beat the drum over the midterm elections being “rigged,” despite President Donald Trump himself telling The New York Times that he accepted the results that had Republicans getting trounced across the country.
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an 11 26
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear President Donald Trump's case, which demanded that California withhold 20,000 ballots from being counted because voters were likely ineligible.
Trump has spent the past several days claiming a Department of Homeland Security list revealed voters who should not and could not be counted. What unfolded was someone spot-checking and finding that the list included many American citizens. That's when California said it wouldn't cooperate in removing people. The Justice Department took California to court, and it lost over and over.
The case finally reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where Justice Elena Kagan wrote the decision and the full court said "no."
According to Fox News, though, only Kagan's opinion reached the full court. "Justice Kagan denies emergency request on the eve of midterm elections," the subheadline reads.
"Justice Elena Kagan denied the appeal on the eve of the midterm elections without comment, and did not refer it to the other justices," the article falsely claims.
The posting remains live on Fox's website, and no correction has been issued.
The California Globe's editor and chief similarly parroted the Fox report, saying Kagan, not the full court, was behind the ruling. "Justice Elena Kagan denied the appeal on the eve of the midterm elections without comment, and did not refer it to the other justices," said Katy Grimes.
She quoted from the Justice Department filing: "Once illegally cast ballots are counted and commingled with lawful votes, the resulting harm is impossible to remedy."
The order makes it clear that the case was "presented to Justice Kagan and, by her, referred to the Court, is denied."
She drew swift backlash, along with Fox, for missing that key piece of the ruling.
"This is false, although from the replies, the claim is apparently based on false reporting by Fox News. Kagan referred the application to the full Court, and it was the Court that denied it, not Kagan alone," said Damin Toell on X in response to Grimes.
"Why would you say something so bold yet so easily debunked?" asked one lawyer.
Congressman Kevin Mullin (D-Calf.) even commented to correct the record, "The Supreme Court rightfully and swiftly rejected Trump’s desperate, sloppy, last-minute attempt to interfere in California’s elections and throw out ballots. Numerous lower court judges have also ruled against him – with a federal judge even saying Trump has likely violated the U.S. Constitution in his attacks against California elections workers. Trump’s ongoing voter suppression efforts are un-American, and his weaponization of the DOJ should concern everyone regardless of political party. Voting in the Golden State – and around the country – has been proven to be safe and secure, but Trump continues to spread lies because he’s desperate to hold onto power."
MAGA is still claiming it was Kagan and Kagan alone and called for her to be removed.
In another court hearing Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Kao admitted the list they generated wasn't entirely accurate. The judge questioned whether it was "fair" to say that the federal government's list had a "high" error rate. He agreed, said "Law Dork" Chris Geidner.
AlterNet has reached out to Fox News Digital for comment.
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AN 11 26
On Tuesday, Katie Miller — a die-hard MAGA loyalist who happens to be married to President Donald Trump’s senior policy advisor Stephen Miller — attempted to whip up online fury over an Election Day conspiracy theory, only to have it debunked in real time. While Miller was adamant that a social media post by a voter in New York suggested there was foul play afoot, a journalist immediately blew up her claims.
Miller reshared a post by a voter in New York, which said, “I just went to vote in Westchester & machines are apparently broken county wide. They said choice is vote absentee or come back later. This is going to be crazy. Our country is in trouble.” Miller jumped in to fan the flames of election denial, claiming, “This is how the Left steals elections. Mike Lawler’s competitive district and they are turning away voters.” But Semafor Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith pointed out a clear problem with her theory: “This is the Democratic part of the district."
“It’s across the entire county for ballots ordered months ago,” Miller pushed, to which Smith replied, “Right — Westchester is the diverse/inner suburb/blue part of this Hudson Valley district that extends north and west. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) being normal/non-conspiratorial and encouraging everyone to stay and vote in the more Democratic part of the district is I think confusing people on this platform.”
As Smith suggested, Lawler had taken note of the issue earlier, offering reasonable advice: “There is a problem with every ballot scanner in Westchester County. We do not yet know the exact cause of the issue, whether it is the ballot or the machine. The Board of Elections is working with their vendors to resolve it. However, every ballot will be counted. Stay on line and vote. Do not leave the polling place without voting.” Lawler – who is typically viewed as a MAGA loyalist and is running a tight race against Democrat Cait Conley – later added, “Every ballot will be counted and we are already in court to make sure they are counted in one central location so that our campaign, election monitors, and our attorneys can watch and oversee the process. I have confidence that every vote will be counted — just VOTE and have your voice heard.”
The original poster took note of this fact as well. “Does this ever happen in blue counties?” asked an account called Moms x5 on the Right. “This is a blue county,” noted the poster, who in other comments appeared to push back on the controversy that flared up, likely because of Miller’s repost. “I will go back later [and] vote any way that I can.”
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New York Republicans have been in a bind throughout the 2026 midterm elections. During the campaign itself, their candidates were in the awkward predicament of needing to distance themselves from their own party's leader, President Donald Trump, because he is wildly unpopular in their state. Now reports indicate that voting machines are not working on Election Day — and a top Republican election official in the county in question is a no show.
"Westchester source tells me that a complicating factor in trying to solve the voting machine issue is the fact the local GOP elections commissioner, Douglas Colety, was a no-show for Election Day (no time off requested)," reported City and State NY's Rebecca C. Lewis on X on Tuesday. "His deputies have been running things."
In Westchester County, NY, voting machines inexplicably stopped working on Election Day. Despite these problems, voters were told that the polls would not be held open past the 9 PM deadline in the heavily Democratic county.
"Voting machines at polling sites in Westchester County, New York, are not accepting election ballots Tuesday due to a printing issue, according to the county executive," reported CBS News' Alexa Herrera and Nick Caloway on Tuesday. "The machines started experiencing problems when the polls opened at 6 a.m. "
Herrera and Caloway added, "County Executive Ken Jenkins said there was a printer problem with the ballots that made them unreadable to the machines. There is one scanner at every polling place used for voters who are impaired, which is now being reprogrammed to read and count the ballots, Jenkins said."
In lieu of voting with the machines, "in the morning, voters were instructed to stay in line and fill out a paper ballot that is placed in orange emergency ballot bags to be counted later."
The voting machines going out, and Colety being a no-show, are especially concerning because Trump has established his plans on rigging the midterm elections if he does not think he can win them. In June, a voting rights expert told AlterNet that Trump's request for information about voters from all the states falls into this category, as the Constitution explicitly dictates that the states control the elections.
“The administration has been trying to compel states to turn their voter rolls over to the federal government and to consolidate all of that in a mega database,” Susannah Goodman, Common Cause’s Policy Director in the Voting and Fair Representation Program, told AlterNet. “A number of states have refused to turn over their unredacted voter rolls with personal identifying information — Social Security numbers, driver's licenses, et cetera. Common Cause and our partners have intervened in, I think, 17 of those cases on behalf of voters.”
She added, “I don't believe there has been a single case... where, when the state has resisted and claimed they are not going to turn these voter rolls over, the court has dismissed the case or compelled the states to turn them over. The government has not had a compelling reason, and the states have won. So when states fight back, they win. We have been involved in that litigation. That is another huge power grab by the administration. It is also an illegal power grab, and when we have pushed back, we have won.”
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MMA
These 8 podcasts are hotspots for right-wing election denial
Prominent election denial activists appeared at least 148 times on these 8 podcasts and streams ahead of the midterms
Written by Alex Kaplan
Published 10/30/26
Media Matters examined the online appearances of a core group of election denial activists and found 8 podcasts/streams that they frequently use to push their messages. They host or regularly appear on these shows to push claims of election fraud, promote policies to take control of elections, and boast of ties to the administration.
We had previously identified a group of activists who regularly appear in right-wing media to advocate election denial and tout their connections to the president and his administration, including former Mesa County, Colorado, clerk Tina Peters; former Trump attorney Peter Ticktin; right-wing author Jerome Corsi; former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne; and QAnon figure Wayne Willott (known online as “Juan O. Savin”).
A Media Matters review of these activists’ media appearances between July 1, 2026, and October 15, 2026, found at least 148 on just 8 podcasts and streams: War Room, Nino’s Corner (and other streams by David “Nino” Rodriguez), The Absolute Truth with Emerald Robinson, On Tap News, Stern American, Untamed with Joe Oltmann, War Zone, and Going Rogue with Lara Logan.
Three of these shows — War Room, On Tap News, and War Zone — are regularly hosted by some of these key figures.
What are the prominent election denial shows?
War Room
Key election denial figures appeared most frequently on War Room, which accounted for at least 32 appearances. War Room is hosted by former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, a major figure in the election denial movement, and the show has become been a hub for election denial. Right-wing pundits, administration officials, and Bannon himself have repeatedly promoted election-related policies for the midterm elections on his show, including calling for the declaration of a national emergency and pushing for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to be deployed to polling places. Cleta Mitchell, Garland Favorito, Matt Meck, Seth Keshel, Tina Peters, and Wayne Allyn Root have all appeared on the show, for a total of at least 32 combined appearances.
Mitchell, the founder of Election Integrity Network, had the most appearances on War Room, with 8. While on the show, Mitchell has urged Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to interfere with elections, calling for him “to order that the software in the Dominion systems in Georgia be replaced and upgraded.”
Video
Citation
From the October 6, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
Nino’s Corner (and other streams by David “Nino” Rodriguez)
Nino’s Corner is a podcast/stream hosted by former boxer David “Nino” Rodriguez, whom The Daily Beast has described as “a vocal QAnon supporter.” He has prominently platformed Juan O. Savin, doing so 23 times between July 1 and October 15. Jerome Corsi, Patrick Byrne, and Peter Ticktin have also appeared on the show, with Corsi on once, Bryne on twice, and Ticktin on twice.
Savin allegedly helped craft the proposed national emergency executive order, which would “empower the president to ban mail ballots and voting machines as the vectors of foreign interference.” During his appearances with Rodriguez, he bragged that President Donald Trump supposedly “implemented with executive orders significant portions of” that proposal and that the proposal was “just updated recently” and “sent over to the White House.” Savin also told Rodriguez that during White House meetings, Trump discussed the possibility of trying to block certification of midterm election results.
Video
Citation
From a July 29, 2026, stream on David Nino Rodriguez's site, uploaded to Rumble on July 30, 2026
The Absolute Truth with Emerald Robinson
Former Newsmax correspondent Emerald Robinson hosts The Absolute Truth with Emerald Robinson on MyPillow founder Mike Lindell’s LindellTV online network. Patrick Byrne has become a recurring guest, appearing on the show over a dozen times during the timeframe Media Matters reviewed. Garland Favorito, Jerome Corsi, Mark Cook, Martin Rodil, Peter Ticktin, and Tina Peters have also appeared at least 12 times on the show combined.
During his appearances, Byrne has criticized Trump for his “tepid” election denial and told Robinson he had made “a deal with the Albanian mafia” to pay the group to “firebomb” a Serbian facility that he claims hacked voting machines in the 2024 election.
Video
Citation
From the July 9, 2026, edition of LindellTV's The Absolute Truth with Emerald Robinson, streamed on Rumble
Stern American
Steve Stern, a Florida Republican activist, hosts Stern American, where he regularly holds so-called “election security” meetings. Key election denial figures have appeared at least 19 combined times during the meetings since July, including Jerome Corsi at least 4 times and Peter Ticktin at least twice. Conrad Reynolds, Garland Favorito, Mark Cook, Ralph Pezzullo, Seth Keshel, Steve Bannon, Wayne Allyn Root, John Goodman, and Tina Peters have also appeared on the show 13 times in total (with some appearing on the same episodes): Reynolds once, Favorito once, Cook once, Pezzullo once, Keshel once, Bannon once, Root once, Goodman 3 times, and Peters 3 times.
During their appearances, Corsi and Ticktin have claimed U.S. Postal Service workers would be involved in some kind of scheme to cause or enable election fraud, with Ticktin threatening those workers by saying that they “better knock it off” or “we’re going to be coming after you.”
Video
Citation
From the September 30, 2026, edition of Stern American, streamed on Rumble
On Tap News
On Tap News is a podcast hosted by Warren Armour and sometimes hosted by Matt Meck. It was originally streamed on Patriot Party News’ Rumble channel as On Tap with PPN News, but has since been streamed as On Tap News on a Rumble channel created in July. Meck is Juan O. Savin’s “chief of staff” and himself one of the key election denial activists Media Matters has identified.
Of the at least 18 appearances from the key figures, over half came from Mark Cook, who has been described as one “of the most influential election deniers in Colorado.” Garland Favorito, Gary Berntsen, Martin Rodil, and Juan O. Savin have also appeared on the show: Favorito once, Berntsen once, Rodil twice, and Savin 3 times.
While on On Tap News, Cook — who has claimed to be a “co-author” of the proposed national emergency executive order — said that “we have to start shifting into a different strategy to deal with one of two scenarios, either a national election emergency or an election that’s going to be stolen.”
Video Citation
From the July 24, 2026, edition of Patriot Party News' On Tap with PPN, streamed on Rumble
Untamed with Joe Oltmann
Untamed is a podcast hosted by Joe Oltmann, a Colorado figure who has been extensively involved with the election denial movement, including by instigating a false claim that a Dominion Voting Systems employee was involved with supposed election fraud. Oltmann is also the founder of FEC United, which The New York Times has described as “a right-wing organization that protested Covid lockdowns in early 2020 and later became a prominent promoter of election conspiracies.”
Among more than a dozen appearances from key election denial figures since July were at least 2 appearances from David Clements, a former professor who has “criss-crossed the country to evangelize about purported election fraud.” Wayne Allyn Root, Tina Peters, Juan O. Savin, Peter Ticktin, Patrick Byrne, and Mark Cook have also appeared on the show 12 times combined: Root once, Peters once, Savin once, Ticktin twice, Byrne 3 times, and Cook 4 times.
While on the podcast, Clements said Trump could “declare a national emergency” and potentially arrest state officials “tasked with carrying out elections operations.”
Video
Citation
From the August 28, 2026, edition of Untamed, streamed on Rumble
War Zone with Wayne Allyn Root
War Zone with Wayne Allyn Root is a podcast aired by the far-right blog The Gateway Pundit and hosted by right-wing commentator Wayne Allyn Root, himself one of the key election denial activists. Root has claimed that he is “kind of in the middle of everything going on with the White House's attempts to keep Democrats from stealing the election,” including taking credit for Trump announcing $1 million for anyone who reports voter fraud that leads to a conviction. He has also talked about texting the president “once a month” and urged in an interview with Trump to “declare a national security emergency for elections,” to which Trump responded, “Let me just say that stranger things have happened, OK? I'll leave it at that.”
On the show, Root has hosted key figures at least 9 times during the timeframe Media Matters assessed, including John Goodman, a member of the “Florida Election Integrity Committee,” who has pushed claims about fraudulent mail-in ballots. Root credited Goodman for helping craft a national emergency proposal for Trump. Jerome Corsi, Mark Cook, and Peter Tickin each appeared two times on the show, and Goodman, Patrick Byrne, and Garland Favorito each appeared once.
During his appearance, Goodman urged Trump to declare a national emergency, said he was “a bit stunned” that Trump had not carried out Root’s proposed version of such a declaration, and said he hoped Trump would declare one after watching Root’s podcast.
Video
Citation
From the October 15, 2026, edition of The Gateway Pundit's War Zone with Wayne Allyn Root, streamed on Rumble
Going Rogue with Lara Logan
Going Rogue with Lara Logan is a podcast hosted by Lara Logan, who has peddled conspiracy theories like Pizzagate. Logan has platformed Tina Peters as well as former CIA officer Gary Berntsen and author Ralph Pezzullo, who were both reportedly involved in a scheme to address supposed election fraud in Puerto Rico. They were reportedly planning to give “information, documents and witnesses about” the issues to W. Stephen Muldrow, the then-U.S. attorney out of Puerto Rico, following which the Trump administration confiscated Dominion voting machines from the territory.
During a July appearance by Berntsen and Pezzullo, they pushed the Venezuela election fraud conspiracy theory, with Berntsen also claiming that Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) “stole votes” during the 2021 U.S. Senate runoff in Georgia.
//
Key election denial activists in the right-wing media ecosystem
10/01/26 10:00 AM EDT
06/30/26 10:00 AM EDT
07/30/26
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// nevada fail
an 10 26
President Donald Trump’s grandiose claims of voter fraud are falling apart under the weight of his own Justice Department’s figures.
The president’s administration is being asked to account for its broad allegations of fraud in California after the DOJ put forward charges on only 34 ballots said to be illegal from the nearly 94 million that have been cast in the state since 2020.
On Monday, federal prosecutors made public a statewide probe into noncitizen voting and out charges against 28 lawful permanent residents. The San Francisco Chronicle reports 23 of them are alleged to have put in 34 ballots between them in elections going back to 2020.
Put another way, that is 0.00004 percent of what was put to the vote in California’s eight statewide contests over the period, hardly the sort of numbers to back up the administration’s claims of rampant illegal voting.
The department has been at odds with the state over this. In July, the Department of Homeland Security released a preliminary review saying it had found over 190,000 possible noncitizens registered to vote in California.
By October, the figure was down to about 20,000, and the Justice Department filed suit when state officials would not comply with federal requests to root out suspected noncitizens and keep their votes off the tally.
And yet the criminal cases unsealed on Monday were limited to fewer than three dozen questionable ballots in the whole state.
The 28 defendants are U.S. residents but not citizens, so they are barred from federal elections; they face charges of false statements on naturalization papers and fraudulent registration.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter says the prosecutions make good on the administration’s demands, pointing to the 28 on the government’s list of suspects. “California refused to look at that list,” he said in a statement from the Justice Department.
Election experts are having none of it. Rick Hasen of UCLA’s election law program sees the case as a “drop in the bucket” compared to the 23 million voters on the California roll.
Hasen also pointed out that some of those charged never actually cast a ballot despite the illegal registration. The figures do nothing to prove every name on the administration’s list is a legitimate voter, but they do illustrate how few cases federal prosecutors have mustered in light of earlier estimates.
McCotter concedes some on the suspect list may in the end be shown to be American citizens, and Gov. Gavin Newsom was quick to deride that as the administration goes after access to registration records.
Federal judges have already turned down the administration’s bid for the full voter rolls on privacy and legal grounds.
For their part, California officials say the records are kept in order and will have none of Trump’s contention that the state’s elections are rife with fraud.
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David Gilbert @ Wired: Maricopa County, Arizona, Is Again Ground Zero of Election Conspiracy Theories
In 2020, Maricopa County became the epicenter for Trump’s claims the election was stolen. Six years, later the president and his allies are dusting off their “rigged” playbook ahead of the midterms.
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RWW --> 9 26
David Gilbert @ Wired: Hundreds of Election Deniers Will Be on the Ballot This November
197 election deniers are running for Congress or statewide office in 43 states. Many of them are seeking roles that would put them in charge of voting for the 2028 presidential election.
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John Knefel is a senior writer at Media Matters for America, a progressive research center that monitors the U.S. media.
Right-wing media’s coverage of this June’s Los Angeles mayoral primary election unsurprisingly went heavy on voter fraud conspiracy theories and presented essentially zero real evidence. Their reactions offer a warning of how MAGA is likely to respond if Republicans suffer significant losses in November’s midterms, considering that the Trump administration and its outside allies spent the summer laying groundwork to undermine voting rights using flimsy claims of foreign election interference.
After lining up behind Spencer Pratt for L.A. mayor, conservative pundits began crying foul in June as the votes were still being counted. Challenger and L.A. councilmember Nithya Raman overtook Pratt after an early “red mirage,” triggering outbursts from the right.
On his radio show, Fox’s Sean Hannity said: “President Trump rightly is calling out Democrats, saying they’re probably cheating, trying to steal” the race. MAGA media influencer Benny Johnson said, “You can already see that they’re stealing and they’re cheating.” YouTube streamer Tim Pool alleged that “it appears, with new information coming in, we can now say the Democrats are cheating in the California race.”
As is so often the case, these figures were operating symbiotically with President Donald Trump, who wrote that it was “not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had,” decrying “Rigged Elections!”
There was no evidence of voter fraud in the L.A. mayoral primary, and it isn’t surprising in the least that Pratt would lose in a city where former Vice President Kamala Harris won 70% of the vote in 2024. But it is now a matter of faith on the right that, in the words of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, “if Democrats can’t steal elections, they can’t win.”
My Media Matters colleague Matt Gertz has characterized MAGA’s reaction as a signal that right-wing media are entering a period of “post-proof election denial.” Whereas in the aftermath of 2020, an entire cottage industry arose on the right to produce a simulacra of evidence to allege that allies of former President Joe Biden had rigged the outcome, no similar effort emerged on Pratt’s behalf.
Instead, these figures relied on nothing but vibes, especially olfactory metaphors. “It smells to high heaven,” said radio show host Megyn Kelly. “I don’t like the way any of this smells,” said Fox News co-host Lisa Kennedy Montgomery. “I can tell you it stinks to high heaven when you have a drop of 24,000 votes and Spencer Pratt gets zero,” said Hannity.
These pundits opened up a permission structure for others to make similarly outlandish accusations. Case in point: Two recent guests on Bannon’s “War Room” podcast claimed that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s victory last November was rife with fraud. (It was not.)
A segment of Real America’s Voice’s War Room on Aug. 6, 2026. Screenshot via MediaMatters for America
Ubiquitous, reflexive election denial in conservative media presages the MAGA strategy for 2026 and beyond. In early July, I laid out the broad strokes of an emerging plot to subvert the midterms that was hidden in plain view if you knew where to look.
The basics: First, a White House task force that included right-wing media figure John Solomon — who spread misinformation related to Trump’s first impeachment — would declassify documents that purportedly showed China interfered in the 2020 election. Trump undertook this step in a primetime address on July 16, although the released files provided more evidence that Russia — not China — attempted to influence the election to weaken Biden’s campaign, not Trump’s.
The second step would be for the Trump administration to issue a “national emergency” declaration based on the supposed threat posed by China, thereby unlocking “king-like powers” over election systems.
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AN 10 26
A Republican election official who previously called on President Donald Trump to use the Insurrection Act regarding the 2020 election has admitted that he has no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the North Carolina county that he currently manages.
James Davis, chairman of the Clay County Board of Elections, made the admission to NC Local reporter Ryan Oehrli, who revisited the exchange in an interview published Thursday by Vox.
Davis was one of the people who supported Trump and advanced the allegations of widespread election fraud after Trump had been defeated by Joe Biden in 2020. In a Facebook post he made in December 2020, Davis stated that "President Trump understates the massive voter fraud."
He went on to urge Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and to say that military courts should look into any alleged election misconduct and bring charges against those whom he claimed had conspired against the United States.
Yet when Davis became chairman of the election board in his county in 2025, he could not prove the far-reaching accusations in his own area.
"I don't know that now. I have no proof," Davis told NC Local when asked about widespread fraud in Clay County.
He stated that he had seen evidence of election fraud in general and dismissed the idea that he was an election denier. Moreover, according to Oehrli's reporting, he asserted that FBI agents had been responsible for inciting the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The fact that he has admitted it comes as some Republican officials who had earlier promoted theories about election fraud are now in positions that involve supervising voting procedures in North Carolina.
In 2025, Dave Boliek, who was the Republican State Auditor, appointed Davis to be chairman after changes to state law had shifted the power over county election board leadership from the governor to the auditor.
As a result, the Republicans gained control of the election boards in all 100 of North Carolina's counties.
As stated by NC Local, Davis is one of the 18 county election officials named by the Voting Rights Lab as election deniers.
Jay DeLancy, who is a member of the Lee County election board, has also come across difficulties in his efforts to remove voters that he believes are incorrectly registered.
DeLancy, who for a long time had described himself as a voter integrity activist, tried to have four names removed since he regarded them as duplicates, but the state officials prevented him from going ahead until there had been further review.
"Just too many lawyers," DeLancy complained.
Oehrli stated upon speaking to Vox that DeLancy had also taken part in a failed attempt to get Sunday voting abolished in Lee County.
DeLancy maintained that forcing election workers to work on Sunday would be a violation of the biblical commandment to keep the Sabbath; however, the state elections board rejected that proposal.
Oehrli stated that the officials he has investigated have so far had only a limited individual impact, even though they held positions responsible for overseeing election administration ahead of the November midterms.
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Cleta Mitchell: “We had three networks that didn't cover the president's speech. I want to know what their relationship is with China.”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 08/28/26
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From the August 27, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's Just the News No Noise
JOHN SOLOMON (HOST): I want to turn to something that is now sort of a repeat theme and just what the White House Transparency Task Force is getting out there. We knew in 2020 that Venezuela hacked the machine. We knew that there were five foreign powers who could hack our machines, that had the capability in 2020. We knew that China took 220 million of our voter files, and we knew that illegal aliens were getting on the voter rolls. And we knew now, in 2020 we knew that these foreign-made parts were there. That's the first time that the intelligence community learned that there were foreign parts, the Chinese parts, in our machines. Six years passed with almost no action until President Trump jumps into the breach this last month. How did we go six years with an intelligence community knowing all these threats and almost no action?
CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): You know, John, that is such a good question, because let me add to that. And you referenced it today in the Just the News article. In 2019, Sen. Wyden and Sen. Klobuchar introduced a bill. They had 40 co-sponsors and many of the — most Democrats — and that would have strengthened the oversight of the voting machines, the voting technology. And Sen. Wyden gave a floor speech on the Senate floor in July 2019, where he was castigating his Republican colleagues for not paying attention to the intelligence reports and the threats that had been conveyed to the intelligence committee, to the Senate Intelligence Committee, about the vulnerability of the voting systems.
Now, as soon as Biden gets elected, and when President Trump, who is looking at the 2020 election and saying, gee, there seems to be a lot wrong here, the Democrats completely went silent. Not only that, they wanted to silence anyone who was criticizing the voting technology. Don't forget all the things that they have done, that they did, and continue to try to silence those of us who ask questions.
So my question is, how is it that the Democrats were so concerned about it? Look at the videos of Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. The movie that they made, Kill Chain, about the vulnerabilities of the voting machines. And suddenly after 2020, they forgot all of that. And now they say that we're crazy people because now we see that the intelligence community knew things and they didn't tell anybody. And they particularly kept it from President Trump and then subsequently President Biden. I mean, John, we wouldn't know any of this if you hadn't gone into the administration temporarily as a special government employee to get all of this out in the public. But my question is, it's still going on, this gaslighting, this disregarding.
We had three networks that didn't cover the president's speech. I want to know what their relationship is with China, why they wouldn't want to have covered the president's speech in which he told the truth about China's interference. And I want to know where those Democrats are today who were so concerned in 2019. Now we have the proof of it, and there's nowhere to be heard. And in fact, all they want to do is tell us to be quiet.
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Janna Brancolini @ The Daily Beast: Trump’s Election Nut Loser Humiliated After Missing Deadline
Mike Lindell is demanding a recount despite not providing any evidence of election fraud.
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When MAGA Republicans are asked if Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election, many of them give evasive responses — saying that there were "questions" about election security without outright saying that the election was stolen from President Donald Trump. But according to journalist Brian Beutler, such evasiveness isn't serving them well. And in some cases, Beutler stresses, Republicans have "quietly admitted that Joe Biden won."
Beutler, in a Wednesday, August 19 post on X and an article for Off Message, notes that CNN contacted five Republican gubernatorial nominees to ask who won in 2020: Arizona's Andy Biggs, Pennsylvania's Stacy Garrity, Wisconsin's Tom Tiffany, Michigan's John James and Georgia's Rick Jackson.
According to Beutler, "All five of them have lengthy track records of lying about the election, or, in some cases, even trying to overturn the election. But now that they have general elections to win, Tiffany, Garrity and Jackson have reversed themselves without explanation. Tiffany says, 'Biden won.' A Jackson spokesperson says Jackson acknowledges 'Biden's win.' Closer to the borderline, Garrity says 'Biden was elected.' But none hide behind the standard MAGA weasel words — that Biden 'was certified' the winner."
Beutler, in his tweet, writes, "Serious question: is Trump aware that these election denying GOP gubernatorial nominees have now quietly admitted that Joe Biden won? Not 'was certified,' but won."
This development, according to Beutler, underscores the desperation Republicans are feeling as the November 3 midterms draw closer — desperation that Off Message describes as a "downward spiral."
Beutler explains, "Consider the following three still-unfolding developments: Republican voters are ignoring Trump's endorsements in high profile GOP primaries. Trump-backed nominees are 'tacking to the center' by abandoning years of election denialism and admitting that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. MAGA operatives find themselves unable to achieve narrative dominance, in large part because they've shredded their own credibility."
The journalist argues that "illusions of mastery and forward motion are essential to the Trump project" — and those illusions are falling apart.
If the movement weakens, and begins to flag, its internal contradictions become much easier to detect, and everyone who’s signed up to operate its machinery is exposed. They weren’t swept along by some irresistible juggernaut; they were fully in control of their own faculties. They knew the difference between right and wrong, and chose wrong…. It's hard to say when the artifice began to crumble. But the failed censorship of Jimmy Kimmel and the success, in defiance of right-wing histrionics, of Bad Bunny's Super Bowl half-time show were two key tells: Fascists do not, in fact, dominate American culture."
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First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli promised President Donald Trump that California was “a fraudster’s paradise,” and pledged would announce charges within weeks of his appointment. That was two months ago.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Friday that Essayli talked a big game but has failed to deliver.
After the California primary election, Trump and Republicans sounded the alarm that there had to be fraud going on because it was taking too long to count the ballots in Los Angeles County.
"They are trying to steal the governor of California primary, and the mayor of Los Angeles, primary, away from two great Republican candidates. Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of mail in ballots," Trump ranted in all-caps on Truth Social.
Essayli posted his own promise to Trump on X, saying, "Without commenting on any specific investigation, my office has multiple election fraud investigations underway in coordination with @FBILosAngeles . We will follow the evidence wherever it leads and prosecute any violations of federal election law to the fullest extent."
Only a few days later, he was speaking to Glenn Beck, promising to charge individual actors “in the next … one to two months.”
“I hate to put timelines on things,” Essayli said. “We need some of these results to be certified so we can prove some of the allegations. But we will be charging some people.”
He also called on the public to send tips proving voter fraud was "widespread" in California.
“We are looking for any widespread conspiracy, if you will. Right now, I would say our investigations lean more into individual actors,” he explained. “Theoretically, I’d have to charge thousands of people to prove that it changed the outcome of the election. … But we are looking. We are looking.”
When he spoke to Chris Cuomo on News Nation, Essayli said, “there is evidence of voter fraud … and when we’re ready to bring those cases, you’ll see the evidence. You’ll see the case.”
But, that was at the beginning of the summer. On June 14, Essayli promised KCRA news, “So some of them are more developed and they’re ready to charge.”
After nothing for months, it appears the prosecutor is beginning to change the narrative, the report explained. The Chronicle cited Essayli, saying that to get access to the voter rolls, the Justice Department must sue the state of California and it might take a while.
A constitutional law professor explained how situations like this go beyond a debate about whether widespread voter fraud exists.
“At this point, unfortunately, I don’t know why anybody would believe the Department of Justice,” said Justin Levitt, who teaches at the Loyola Law School. “And that is not a thing that I relish saying as somebody who used to work there … It’s also not something that I would have said in the administration of any individual other than President Trump.”
When The Chronicle called the office to ask what the hold-up was, they were told they'd have an update in two weeks.
“It turns out that voter fraud does occasionally happen, but it is incredibly rare, like single-digits-of-balance rare,” Levitt said. “The elections in California, the elections in Southern California, the elections in other parts of California are very clean. And election officials work incredibly hard to make sure that they’re very clean. It does great disservice to the election officials when people run their mouths.”
He explained that Essayli is "a piece" of the larger whole of the Justice Department and currently the DOJ doesn't enjoy much credibility in court.
“I’m not sure this U.S. attorney has established himself as a trusted local partner with the sort of vague allegations of widespread wrongdoing that he hasn’t been able to back up. To be clear, he hasn’t been able to back it up because I don’t personally believe that these things he was saying are true," Levitt said.
Trump and Republican allies spent over a week spreading claims that fraud was afoot in California and calling for action. Levitt explained that these kinds of conspiracy theories from officials spread further mistrust and sow doubt.
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Last year, the Trump administration hired a cybersecurity firm to investigate White House claims that voting equipment in Puerto Rico had been “compromised” in the 2020 election, but after the company found no evidence to support voter fraud, it has gone on to become the target of a smear campaign by the president’s loyalists.
According to new reporting by CNN, “After hearing that the firm had found no evidence of vote tampering, allies of President Donald Trump derailed the cybersecurity firm’s work with the government in part by spreading false claims that the firm was funded by liberal billionaire George Soros, according to the firm’s executives and documents they provided to CNN.” Jason Wareham, CEO of the firm, called Mojave Research, has revealed that a group of “White House-adjacent” Trump allies was “dissatisfied” that he “was not willing to name and shame at that moment and to say, ‘Turns out 2020 was a landslide for Trump. Nobody knew.’”
CNN notes that “Mojave Research had no prior experience in testing election systems when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence contacted them in the spring of 2025 as part of the agency’s broader probe into voting equipment. ODNI hired the firm to analyze a specific voting machine made by Liberty Vote (formerly Dominion Voting Systems) that the agency acquired from Puerto Rico. Mojave did the work in six weeks in Wareham’s basement in Reston, Virginia, according to Wareham.”
While Mojave submitted its report in July 2025, Wareham says that it has still not been made public. The company’s Chief Technology Officer Manbir Gulati, however, spoke about it at the DEF CON cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas last week, saying, “We found extensive and largely unacceptable weaknesses, but we did not find evidence that those weaknesses were actively exploited or that votes were altered.”
“After the company made clear what it had found, multiple figures aligned with Trump began to cast doubt on the integrity of Mojave.” According to CNN, “What Wareham’s team found — and didn’t find — in his basement would become a Rorschach test for Trump administration officials focused on election issues. It’s a cautionary tale of how a company that says it wanted to provide the administration with unbiased election security analysis was rejected by a group of officials who still dispute the results of the 2020 election and have Trump’s ear. The Trump administration’s revisiting of the 2020 election has extended to Arizona, where the FBI has obtained records of an audit that confirmed Joe Biden won the state.”
“I lost count of the number of times I heard ‘Maricopa County is a crime scene,’” Wareham said. As CNN explains, “Maricopa County is Arizona’s largest county and has been at the center of Trump allies’ false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.”
According to Gulati, “What we encountered [were] a lot of competing factions within the government — people who want the boogeyman to be out there and are willing to do anything to find it and then people who actually do genuinely care about the issue [of election security]. There was a huge faction that was like, ‘Mojave doesn’t know what they’re doing.' They’re dummies and that’s why they can’t find evidence of compromise.”
CNN reports that “Wareham, a Republican, submitted a declaration in September under the penalty of perjury to the Trump administration to refute the notion that his company was ‘some form of deep plant meant to ensure the suppression of truth around compromised elections or election systems,’ the declaration says. Wareham submitted his declaration and financial statements to ODNI to prove he was not affiliated with Soros, who has long been the subject of antisemitic conspiracy theories about secret levers of power. The next month, Wareham said he received an email, reviewed by CNN, which said that ODNI had issued a ‘stop-work order’ on the contract.”
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John Solomon is spreading another flimsy election fraud claim
Solomon, a right-wing media personality and the leader of a Trump White House task force, is reviving a closed case from Arizona in 2020
Written by Sophie Lawton
Published 08/07/26
After another failed scramble to prove President Donald Trump’s claims that China interfered in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, White House task force leader and right-wing media personality John Solomon is now attempting to retry a Maricopa County, Arizona, election website hacking case that was investigated, reported on, and closed years ago. NBC News reported that the case was highlighted by the White House yet “did not offer any evidence that any election was stolen or affected by widespread fraud.”
Solomon has been leading the effort declassifying intelligence documents the Trump administration is using to claim the U.S. election system is not secure. On July 16, Trump delivered a much-hyped primetime speech fearmongering about what those documents had uncovered. Afterward, Lawfare wrote that the speech “was most notable for what it did not contain: evidence that any malign activity affected the result. Much of what he described was already known. None of it showed that votes were changed, fraudulent ballots were counted, or the election was stolen. None of it showed that intelligence officials had concealed such evidence."
On August 6, Solomon published a story to his website, Just The News, on a “hack” of the Maricopa County voter records just before the 2020 election, writing that the Department of Justice under then-President Joe Biden had failed to prosecute the alleged hacker “even after the FBI got the suspect to confess, according to declassified documents made public Thursday by the White House.”
MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson summarized the story during an interview with Solomon, saying, “More than 600,000 voter files ripped off Arizona site in 2020 by hacker — the DOJ caught him, the hacker confessed, and then nothing happened.”
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From the August 6, 2026, edition of The Benny Johnson Show streamed on YouTube.
While speaking with Johnson, Solomon spun up hypothetical scenarios of election interference that did not occur in 2020, suggesting “a foreign power or a bad actor” could alter voter registration data or cast fraudulent absentee ballots. Solomon also claimed that “until Donald Trump finally made it public, we were kept in the dark” about voter files being hacked.
In an interview with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, Solomon spun the story further claiming it was proof “that great, giant sugar pill we were force-fed at the end of the November 2020 election that we had just endured the most secure election in U.S. history … was absolutely not true.” Solomon told Bannon “Today, we learned that in Maricopa County — where we were told don’t look here, nothing to see in Maricopa County — on the eve of the election, the United States intelligence community … detected a major breach in Maricopa County, the largest county in Arizona. It indicated that 600,000-plus voter files were stolen by a hacker.”
“There were some concerns that those hacks may have gone through foreign locations,” Solomon continued. “The FBI jumped on the case — the FBI proved exactly what the intelligence community believed happened.”
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From the August 6, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
In reality, the case was reported by the media in 2021, after Trump began spreading false claims about the Arizona election results — including suggesting “the election server was hacked” and “the voting system was breached.”
FactCheck.org explained that “the county said there was no hack, and it isn’t possible for hackers to change votes because the ballot tabulation equipment is a ‘closed air gapped system,’ meaning it isn’t connected to the internet.” The July 2021 report also shared a Maricopa County social media post that claimed, “The event in question involved an individual inappropriately accessing and downloading publicly available info. The website is in no way connected to the Election Management System.”
That same month, the Arizona Daily Star reported that a subcontractor working on the state Senate's audit of Arizona's election administration spoke about “problems” that were “related to a breach of the voter registration system the county itself reported,” claiming “that shows that at least one element of the county’s election system had been ‘hacked.’” The article went on to explain that “county election officials said all that was accessed was a site where people could register to vote, not the actual server where voter registration records are stored. All that anyone obtained was someone’s voter registration number, with no access to personal information, they said.” (The audit ultimately confirmed Biden’s victory in Maricopa County and “found no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election.”)
The FBI's official record when the case was closed in 2023, which was uploaded by Solomon’s Just the News, stated:
On November 2, 2020, Maricopa County Recorder's Office (MCRO) notified FBI Phoenix that an intruder that had scraped approximately 633,000 voter records, including 930 sensitive voter records, from the MCRO's website. … [The individual] admitted to developing a PowerShell script to scrape voter data after discovering the vulnerability in the MCRO website. After MCRO fixed the vulnerability, [the individual] got scared and deleted the data he'd scraped.
The FBI concluded that “investigators did not find indications of a domestic or foreign influence on [the individual]'s actions,” and the investigation was closed after “federal, state, and local prosecuting offices” all declined the case.
Even Solomon's own story noted that “voter registration files do not include ballots, and there's no evidence votes were changed in the incident,” before creating hypothetical scenarios that “if bad actors gained access to such files they could hamper the ability of voters to cast ballots in the future.”
Despite Solomon's claims that “today, we learned” about this supposed election interference, his latest story looks like just another desperate rehashing of old information to fearmonger about the upcoming midterms.
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07/31/26 3:35 PM EDT
What you need to know about John Solomon, the man driving Trump's latest election fraud nonsense
07/16/26 6:00 PM EDT
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'My cyber guys looked at it': Mike Lindell won't quit conspiracy theory after Trump boost
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Khaya Himmelman @ Talking Points Memo: All The Places Election Deniers Could Be in Charge of Elections After the Midterms
In an increasingly ominous trend, there are currently hundreds of election deniers on the ballot for the 2026 midterm elections. And although history has shown election denialism is not a winning campaign strategy, it continues to be a powerful force in the right-wing movement, from President Donald Trump on down.
According to the nonpartisan non-profit States United Action, there are at least 140 election deniers currently running for statewide and congressional office. In statewide races, there are at least 42 election deniers running in 23 states. And in congressional races, there are at least 98 election deniers running in 25 states.
“We’ve been tracking this movement since right after the 2020 election. And one thing we can say about the election denial movement now is that it seems to be more powerful than ever,” Kelly Rader, research director at States United Action, told TPM.
“In some ways it reflects how election denial has matured into an organized movement,” Brendan Fischer, director of strategic investigations for Campaign Legal Center, similarly told TPM.
“Election denial is no longer just a collection of fringe activists and isolated candidates making unsupported claims of election fraud,” Fischer added. “It’s really evolved into a well-funded, coordinated infrastructure of activists and advocacy organizations that has transformed the fringe conspiracy theories into a cornerstone of the conservative movement.”
Of particular concern are the election denial candidates running for secretary of state positions, potentially putting an elected official who has denied the integrity of a free and fair election at the helm of election administration in a particular state.
“Secretaries in most states are the people who are in charge of elections there and they are going to serve as really important backstops to the president’s overreach into elections, overreach on other issues, and his tendency to sow doubt on legitimate election outcomes,” Rader explained.
Rader said this phenomenon of election deniers running for secretary of state is really part of a “broader power grab.”
“We started originally tracking these statewide offices because they’re important for election administration,” she added, “but now that the president is an election denier, he’s appointing people throughout federal agencies who really have undermined public trust in our elections almost like it’s their job.”
States United Action has been keeping track of all the election deniers running for office, and according to their data, there are election deniers running for secretary of state positions in seven states: Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Vermont.
Nevada
In Nevada, Jim Marchant, a longtime election denier, won the Republican primary for Secretary of State in Nevada this month. Marchant, as TPM has previously reported, has been claiming the 2020 election was stolen after he lost his race for a U.S. House seat in 2020, and since Trump lost that year’s presidential election.
Marchant, who has ties to QAnon, was also the founding member of the America First Secretary of State Coalition, a post-2020 group of MAGA election deniers all running for secretary of state positions on a platform of election denialism.
Arizona
Arizona GOP state rep. Alexander Kolodin, who is a member of the right-wing Arizona Freedom Caucus, is an election denier and is now a Republican candidate for secretary of state in Arizona.
Kolodin was sanctioned in 2023 by the State Bar of Arizona for participating in lawsuits, including the so-called “Kraken” lawsuits, a sprawling conspiratorial web of documents challenging the outcome of the 2020 election, per Arizona Mirror.
Wyoming
GOP State Rep. Rachel Rodriquez-Williams is running for secretary of state of Wyoming, and is currently the chairwoman of the far-right Wyoming Freedom Caucus, which has tried to push through a series of “election integrity” bills.
These proposals, which were never approved, included proposals to ban ballot boxes and ballot collecting and require hand-count audits, among other things. All of these measures are rooted in conspiracy theories about the safety and integrity of the country’s election system.
Colorado
James Wiley, who ran unopposed, won the GOP nomination for Colorado secretary of state last month. Wiley is running on a campaign focused on restoring “free and fair elections” and, according to his website, has sued “Dominion Voting Machines, Facebook, Mark Zuckerburg, the Secretary of States and Governors of Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, Secretary Griswold” for what he describes as “election misconduct.”
Wiley also advocated for the release of Tina Peters, the former elections administrator of Mesa County, Colorado who breached her office’s own voting equipment and was convicted of several felonies related to her efforts to find non-existent 2020 voter fraud. Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis commuted Peters’ nine-year prison sentence in May of this year and she was released on parole shortly after.
Nebraska
Election denier Scott Petersen won the Republican primary for secretary of state in May. Petersen has been repeating lies about the 2020 election for years. In March of this year, per the Nebraska Examiner, he elevated disinfo related to the FBI’s recent Fulton County 2020 election raid.
“By the way, if another state steals elections … our vote doesn’t count as much, right?” he said, referring to the Fulton County FBI raid.
Wisconsin
Wisconsin’s primary will take place on August 11, and election denier Jay Schroeder is currently on the ballot for the GOP nomination for secretary of state.
Schroeder once said in an interview that “there is lots of reasonable doubt” about Joe Biden winning the 2020 election. In Wisconsin, the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission runs elections, and not the secretary of state. Schroeder, as he outlined on his campaign website, wants to strip the commission of that authority and make the secretary of state the state’s chief election official.
Vermont
H. Brooke Paige is on the ballot in Vermont’s primary for Secretary of State on August 11. In the past, Paige has avoided answering questions about whether or not Biden won the 2020 election. “I have a hard time not believing my lyin’ eyes,” he told VTDigger in 2022.
Khaya Himmelman** is a reporter at TPM, based in New York. She previously covered politics and misinformation for The Messenger, Grid, and The Dispatch.
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Republican voters in Arizona sent a litany of election deniers to the November ballot, chief among them the nominees for the top three statewide offices. But they’re far from the only ones who advanced to the general election.
The Grand Canyon State has long been at the center of the election conspiracy theories that have become a tenet of the modern Republican Party under President Donald Trump, who has been doggedly focused on false claims of election fraud over the past decade.
As the belief that elections are rife with fraud — at least when Democrats win — has transformed from fringe online discourse into a GOP article of faith, adherents and promoters of election conspiracy theories have been gaining more elected power.
But those views are growing more unpopular among voters, as issues such as affordability and the war in Iran take center stage.
“It is not sustainable, and people do not have an appetite for it. People want to have our elections be a process that helps us pick our leaders and then they want our leaders to lead for us,” Alex Gulotta, All Voting is Local Action’s Arizona state director, told the Arizona Mirror. “It is not winning people’s hearts and minds.”
Despite that, a growing number of election deniers are running for office in Arizona and across the country, according to Kelly Rader, research director at States United Action, a nonpartisan nonprofit that supports state officials protecting elections and has been tracking election deniers since 2022.
Arizona is one of four states — along with Colorado, Wisconsin and Tennessee — that have three or more election deniers running for statewide office, according to their analysis.
Nationally, nearly 75% of the states have an election denier running for a statewide or congressional office, Rader’s research found. That is 139 candidates across the country, among them 21 candidates for governor, nine running for secretary of state and eight running for attorney general, according to the data.
“Election denial is a comprehensive strategy to undermine trust in our elections so that Trump and his allies can challenge election results they don’t like,” Rader said. “As we move through the primaries and sprint toward the fall, we expect that Trump will continue pushing the same old election conspiracy theories. And we are closely watching which election denier candidates echo those claims in the months to come.”
Gulotta echoed those sentiments, adding that Trump’s continued denialism of the results of the 2020 election has helped fuel the fire for candidates to use the same rhetoric.
“I think as long as the president of the United States and his cronies are acting in a way that seeks to prevent voting and is really focused on denying the results of elections, we will continue to see this,” he said. “I am hoping we will grow out of it soon, hopefully another cycle or two.”
Rader said the corrosive effect of lies about election results has far-reaching effects, but was optimistic about the work being done by the nation’s election administrators to educate people and counter the conspiracies.
“Efforts to undermine confidence in legitimate election outcomes don’t just threaten individual races; they erode voter confidence and threaten one of the most important limits on presidential power,” she said. “The good news is that election officials across the country are educating voters, rebuilding trust, and working to ensure another free and fair election this year.”
It isn’t just election denialism that is on the ballot, either.
This year’s batch of conspiracy-minded candidates ranges from QAnon adherents to former “audit” workers. Some of them may be well known to most Arizonans, while others are newcomers to electoral politics.
The old guard
The top of the ticket in Arizona will be a who’s who of people who have been involved in election related conspiracy activities since 2020.
U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs won the Republican party primary for Governor where he will square off against Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in November.
After Trump lost his 2020 re-election bid to Joe Biden, Biggs was front and center in Arizona and Congress trying to “Stop the Steal.” He joined fellow Arizona GOP Congressman Paul Gosar in spreading doubt about the results of the 2020 election and made claims of voter disenfranchisement that were not backed up by evidence.
Former Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers said Biggs called him the morning of January 6 asking him to sign onto a letter calling for the decertification of Arizona electors. Biggs, who voted to reject electoral votes for Biden from Arizona and other battleground states, would later allegedly seek a pardon from Trump for his involvement.
Two other prominent election deniers will also be at the top of the Arizona ticket.
State Rep. Alexander Kolodin, who won the GOP primary for secretary of state, has long pushed unfounded claims around the state’s elections.
Kolodin was one of the key attorneys for Trump’s campaign who challenged the 2020 election results in the state and has represented a number of prominent election deniers. Kolodin was sanctioned by the Arizona State Bar in 2023 for his part in lawsuits challenging the 2020 election that made implausible and evidence-free claims of massive election fraud. He represented Trump’s campaign in the so-called “kraken” lawsuit in Arizona that was based on claims made by people with no actual knowledge of the elections.
In his time in the legislature, Kolodin has pushed for sweeping changes to Arizona election laws largely based on election conspiracy theories.
Then there’s GOP attorney general nominee Warren Petersen, who currently serves as president of the Arizona Senate. He, along with former Senate President Karen Fann, oversaw the partisan “audit” that the Senate conducted in 2021 to scour for fraud in Maricopa County’s election the year before. It found no evidence of fraud, and actually concluded that Biden won the election in the state’s largest county.
Earlier this year, he handed over material from that election review to the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice.
Other prominent election deniers also won their primaries, including Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff. On top of believing the 2020 election was fraudulent, Rogers has also engaged with white nationalists and other extremists.
She’ll also likely be joined in the Senate again by Sen. David Farnsworth, R-Mesa, who has openly embraced QAnon and spread conspiracy theories about the Department of Child Safety.
In its simplest form, QAnon is a conspiracy theory that alleges that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles are running a global sex-trafficking ring, control world governments and are trying to bring down President Donald Trump — who is himself single-handedly dismantling the cabal.
Farnsworth and Rogers also will be joined by the QAnon-posting and January-6-insurrection-attending Sen. Janae Shamp, who ran uncontested in her primary.
Another prominent election denier who won their primary is former Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb.
Lamb worked with other far-right sheriffs and a group that was involved with the widely debunked film “2000 Mules” to police polling locations in 2022. Lamb won his primary despite lurid allegations about his sex life and the release of a racist chat he had with a border vigilante.
If he wins his election — which is likely, as his district is deep red — he’ll join fellow election denier U.S. Rep. Abe Hamadeh, who unsuccessfully tried to claim election fraud led to his 280-vote loss to Kris Mayes in the 2022 contest for attorney general.
The new class
Among the well-known pushers of conspiracy theories in the state are some new faces that are seeking political power.
For instance, Michelle Altherr is seeking to unseat Democratic Sen. Brian Fernandez in the Democrat-leaning Legislative District 23.
Altherr worked at the partisan election “audit,” citing it as one of the main reasons she has gotten into politics. She has long been a presence at Maricopa County Board of Supervisors meetings, where she has spread unfounded claims of election fraud.
Another new face is James Rogers, who won his primary for the state House of Representatives in Legislative District 10. Rogers has represented Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, a known election denier, as part of the America First Legal law firm, which was started by top Trump advisor Stephen Miller.
The law firm was also behind a failed lawsuit that attempted to change how Arizona counties use drop boxes and maintain voter rolls.
Then there’s Mylie Biggs, Andy Biggs’ daughter, who won an uncontested race to represent Legislative District 14 in the state Senate.
Last year, during an appearance on The Matt MacCurdy program, she said that she doesn’t believe women should hold public office. On that same podcast, the younger Biggs said she has a fondness for conspiracy theories, telling the host to not get her “started on 9/11.”
Early voting for the general election starts on Sept. 19 for military and overseas voters and early voting for everyone else begins on Oct. 7. The last day voters can register to vote and apply for an early ballot is Oct. 5. Voters can find more information and register to vote at this link.
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Former LA congressman Garrett Graves got himself bushwhacked by a panel that included a Republican strategist after he refused to admit that Democratic Georgia Senators were legitimately elected to their seats.
“I mean, congressman, do you think that Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff were duly elected?” demanded CNN anchor Kasie Hunt after confronting the possibility that Trump may publicly call both senators illegitimate due to bogus claims of election tampering.
But, like the vast majority of the modern Republican Party, Graves was leery of stating what countless judges have already declared, that the elections were legit.
“Um, I haven't gone in and studied the elections, but I haven't. Let me be clear on this: I have not seen—”
At that point the panel attacked.
“That should be an easy answer,” muttered panelist Charles M. Blow.
“There were three — there were paper ballots that were counted three separate times. How can you not say that they didn’t win there?” demanded Democratic strategist Meghan Hays.
“Because I haven't studied the Georgia elections,” Graves blurted.
“You don’t have to study the elections to know,” said Blow, publisher of the Blowstack Newsletter.
“But hang on. Let me let me answer the question that I was asked,” Graves insisted. “I was asked the question if I believed that they were elected. I haven't seen anything to the contrary. So, I've never, ever said that there was anything in question about those folks being elected.”
“When did we get to this point? And do you think it's good for America — so, have your opponents conceded to you? They called you and said, ‘hey, you know, like, thanks for a good race. Congratulations. You won.’ Like, when did it get to be so hard, right? Like sporting events are won and lost. So are elections.”
“Hey, I'm going to I'm going to agree with you,” said Graves. “I think that politics … is a blood sport. I think it's gotten out of hand. I'll be the first one to say that. I think closed primaries have absolutely made it worse, including in our home state. But, but I don't think that, um, the president coming in and presenting … new evidence is something that we should all be afraid of. Let us look at the evidence, let us judge it, and then decide if it's something that's actually, uh, that we need to take seriously and find safeguards to protect or prevent from happening.”
“Where is this evidence in the 43 lawsuits that he litigated and lost?” said Hays. “So why are we doing it now? I just don't understand.”
Graves then made an appeal to new evidence that may have “popped up.”
“If we found a way that a foreign government was influencing our elections and caused outcomes to be distorted, that's something every American, regardless of if you’re liberal or conservative, should be concerned about. Integrity in elections is critical,” he said”
“Just saying that somebody caused an outcome to be distorted is something an influencer can do. That's very different. Changing any part of the electoral system, changing votes, changing tallying. That is the question, and that is what Donald Trump has been suggesting. And that has never, ever been found,” said Blow. “And I find it personally upsetting about Georgia because I voted in that election where Warnock and Ossoff won. There was no influence that was making me say, oh, I'm going to just these just these two lines are cheating. But the rest of the votes are legitimate. That's insane.”
Former Trump White House Communications Director Republican strategist Alyssa Farah Griffin, who was advising the Georgia Republican Party in 2020, said she was hoping the incumbents’ GOP opponents would win, but they did not.
“They lost fair and square to Warnock and Ossoff,” said Griffin. “But I'd also note this: Donald Trump was legitimately elected in 2016. The Obama administration was overseeing the federal government in 2020. The Trump administration was overseeing the federal government in 2024 when it was the Biden administration [that won]. So he's basically saying that the failure to administer, at least at the federal level, the elections, the failure to stop these interferences only happened under his watch.”
“I don't think it's the flex for the Trump administration that he thinks it is, that the one election that was stolen in 2020 was when he was in power as president,” said Griffin.
AN 7 26
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On Tuesday, NBC News confirmed that the Justice Department has sent threatening letters to election officials spanning every state and Washington, D.C., asserting that they could “face criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting.” According to NBC, the letters are the latest move in President Donald Trump’s effort to promote his false claims of widespread noncitizen voting and “assert more federal control over state elections.”
As NBC explains, “The letters, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads up the department’s Civil Rights Division, give states five days to explain how they will comply with federal voter eligibility laws and how they will maintain ‘clean voter lists.’” And as NBC notes, noncitizen voting is so rare it’s almost nonexistent, “but Trump and his administration have falsely portrayed it as a widespread issue.”
The DOJ letters assert that state election officials “could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” any noncitizen voting. They also emphasize that any election officer who knowingly retains noncitizens on a voting registration list or who helps noncitizens receive and cast ballots in any way could be subject to criminal liability, and that “an intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation.”
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
According to Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican election official who received one of the letters, the threats amounted to “truly bizarre behavior.”
Posting on social media, she revealed, “Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution. I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts. This is truly bizarre behavior by the federal agency that is supposed to be protecting civil rights.”
Per NBC, “While some states have complied with the administration’s demands that they hand over voter roll data, the Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for resisting. So far, 11 different federal courts have dismissed the Justice Department’s efforts to seize voter rolls.”
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OMFG
The plot to subvert the midterms is getting stranger and more dangerous
Right-wing media figures including Steve Bannon, John Solomon, and Cleta Mitchell appear to be weaving together a narrative about interference by China in US elections to justify a national emergency to curtail voting rights
Written by John Knefel
Published 07/02/26
Over the last several weeks, the outlines of a plot have begun to emerge that could signal how President Donald Trump, along with MAGA media figures and activists, could attempt to severely curtail voting rights under the pretext of declaring a national emergency posed by China.
The details of the scheme remain publicly vague, and may not yet come to pass, but the short version looks something like this: First, the White House would declassify and release documents purporting to show foreign interference in U.S. elections, especially by the Chinese Communist Party.
Next, Trump would use that supposed “proof” of a stolen election to declare a national emergency, thereby — according to those pushing this idea — giving him extraordinary powers over the upcoming midterms. That move would serve as a way to advance the anti-voting rights measures in the SAVE America Act, like forcing voters to prove their citizenship, without having to actually pass the law — which Congress, so far at least, appears reluctant to do.
The main players here come not only from the fever swamp backwaters of MAGA media, but also from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the White House. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is a central node, attempting to advance the operation on his War Room podcast, aired on right-wing network Real America’s Voice, long a major source of misinformation about the 2020 election.
The main players here come not only from the fever swamp backwaters of MAGA media, but also from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the White House
Bannon’s RAV colleague John Solomon, whose role in the plot appears to be running the declassification effort, was recently appointed to a White House “task force” into supposed election integrity. Solomon was Media Matters’ Misinformer of the Year in 2019 for his role in laundering misinformation about the Bidens and Ukraine through his opinion columns.
Also in the mix is Peter Schweizer, who founded the Government Accountability Institute with Bannon and has moved from spreading misinformation about the Clintons to claiming that China is taking over the United States by exploiting birthright citizenship.
Then there’s Cleta Mitchell, a right-wing lawyer who was on the January 2021 call when Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough ballots to tip the state his way. She referenced Schweizer in a June 20 appearance on War Room, positively paraphrasing an argument he made on his podcast acknowledging that much of the voting activity he wants to suppress is actually legal.
“Peter Schweizer put it pretty well last week in a podcast that he does with Eric Eggers, and the question they posed is: If fraud is made — if election fraud is made legal, is it still fraud?” Mitchell asked. “Because what's happened in California over the last decade is that the far-left Democrat, socialist, Marxists, communists have completely upended every vestige of election integrity.” (Bannon had teed her up by referencing the Los Angeles mayoral primary, claiming without evidence: “They stole it right in front of our face and laughed at us the entire time.")
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From the June 20, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
Mitchell is supported by a loose array of election deniers who have called on Trump to issue an executive order to seize “king-like powers” over voting systems, supported by the national emergency decree.
Bill Pulte, the newly installed acting DNI, and his recently appointed chief of staff, former Republican National Committee official Christina Norton, also appear to figure heavily into the plan. On June 20, Bannon said Pulte’s role at DNI is “to get to the bottom of the 2020 stolen election.” Ten days later, Bannon described Norton as “one of the top election fraud people in all of the RNC” and said Pulte is “signaling where he's going on this” with her hiring, adding that “my understanding is that there is going to be real revelations about the stealing of the 2020 election."
The same day, NBC News reported that Solomon’s task force “is gathering thousands of pages of documents from U.S. intelligence agencies, with plans to declassify some of them, so President Donald Trump can amplify new accusations about past elections.” In describing his unpaid role at the White House, Solomon said he will be releasing “some documents, some secrets you should know about when it comes to weaponization, election integrity, other things."
Solomon’s recent media footprint offers clues about what he is likely looking to find, declassify, and present — possibly out of context. The subhead of a May 6 article of Solomon’s states: “The evidence continues to stack up that the U.S. intel community sought to downplay China's actions in 2020 as Trump sought reelection.” Then, during a May 19 interview, he said: “We do know the FBI had grave suspicions that China was trying to rig the election, probably with help from people on the ground, to help Joe Biden specifically."
The Supreme Court’s narrow June 30 decision to protect birthright citizenship could turbocharge the Bannon-Solomon-Pulte scheme, in part by providing fodder for anti-Chinese sentiment on the right. On Solomon’s website, Just The News, an article about the birthright citizenship case referenced Schweizer’s book and hyped the supposed China menace.
Birthright citizenship abuse via birth tourism, when foreign nationals travel to the United States on temporary visas specifically to give birth, is an issue that Trump addressed early in his second term.
Investigative journalist Peter Schweizer detailed this practice extensively in his 2026 book, “The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon,” in which he described how China has industrialized the practice on a large scale through an organized industry.
Michelle Mittelstadt of the Migration Policy Institute told FactCheck.org that “birth tourism is a very small occurrence – of the 3.6 million U.S. births annually, a tiny fraction is due to foreign women who are not regularly domiciled in the U.S. coming here for the purpose of giving birth to secure U.S. citizenship for their child.”
And as the American Immigration Council’s Dara Lind noted: “Consulates have a ton of discretion under existing law to deny someone a visa. And suspicion of birth tourism _has_ served as a reason to deny visas in the past. If the problem is insufficient enforcement, good news, you can solve that problem without changing the law or Constitution!”
Bannon stated plainly on June 29 that Solomon’s “task force” and “also Pulte” would be central to creating a “predicate” for the declaration of a national emergency and subsequent executive order achieving the anti-voting rights goals of the SAVE America Act.
On June 30, Bannon interviewed another of his RAV colleagues, Wayne Allyn Root, who further elaborated what a national emergency declaration could look like.
“Stop talking about the SAVE Act and do a national security emergency for elections, which is the SAVE Act, which contains everything that's in the SAVE Act, Steve, and more and more,” Root said.
Just days earlier, on June 24, Trump canceled a signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing bill to pressure Congress to pass the stalled out SAVE America Act, which he referred to as a “National Emergency."
The “predicate” Bannon is hoping to manufacture could also be for other election initiatives the administration is working on — such as trying to force courts to give the administration access to various state voter rolls — an issue the administration is facing significant resistance to.
Whether this harebrained plot congeals into an active conspiracy to subvert the midterms remains to be seen, but given that Trump has already tried to overturn one election it would be a mistake not to take these rumblings seriously. There may indeed be an emergency — it’s just not the one that Bannon and company are talking about.
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6 26 mma
At election denial summit, media figures endorse ICE at the polls and suggest executing a “prominent traitor” from the deep state “to improve our elections”
Podcaster David Clements: “The one thing that we need to see is a prominent traitor brought before you ... and after that due process, they get to suffer the legally prescribed penalty, which may or may not include a firing squad”
Written by Alex Kaplan
Published 06/25/26
Last week, multiple promoters of election denial conspiracy theories spoke at a summit co-led by a QAnon influencer, calling on attendees to monitor voting precincts and to use “a tribunal” and a “legally prescribed penalty” like “a firing squad” as a possible solution to “improve our elections.” Some speakers touted connections to the Trump administration.
The Fraud-Fighter Summit, which took place between June 15-17 in Las Vegas, aimed to “confront fraud in elections” and featured “powerful presentations and discussions on topics such as tabulator vulnerabilities and advanced methods for detecting manipulation in election processes.” The event seems to have been coordinated by two figures in the election denial movement, Wayne Willott and Matt Meck. Willott, known online as Juan O. Savin, helped organize a coalition of election denial candidates for the 2022 midterm elections and claimed to have been involved with a proposed “national emergency” executive order for President Donald Trump to control elections. Meck is a board member of Fight Voter Fraud — 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,” — and also apparently Savin’s “chief of staff.”
Speakers and presenters included Tina Peters, Steve Bannon, Jim Marchant, David Clements, Peter Ticktin, Martin Rodil, and Douglas Frank.
Notable moments from the summit include:
War Roomhost and former Trump official Steve Bannon appeared multiple times during the summit. During his appearances, Bannon told attendees that “we need to be at every precinct,” and said whether “you’re armed or not, that depends upon what your state laws are.” He also said “ICE has to be there and has to be there to back you up.”
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From the Fraud-Fighter Summit on June 16, 2026, streamed on Rumble
David Clements, a podcaster who Lawfarereportedhas “criss-crossed the country to evangelize about purported election fraud,” suggested at the summit “a tribunal” for “a prominent traitor” in the deep state could “improve our elections” as clerks will “start paying attention to executive orders.” While discussing Trump’s actions ahead of the midterm elections, Clements said, “When people ask me, ‘David, one thing, one thing to improve our elections,’ they’re thinking get rid of this machines, get rid of the e-poll book. And those are fair questions. The one thing that we need to see is a prominent traitor brought before you with due process, of course. And after that due process, they get to suffer the legally prescribed penalty, which may or may not include a firing squad. Then all of a sudden, all of a sudden your clerks are gonna start paying attention to executive orders.” He also suggested that Trump invoking the Defense Production Act for military stockpiles meant that somehow the president had “declared a national emergency” and was urging Washington to “restore elections.”
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From the Fraud-Fighter Summit on June 17, 2026, streamed on Rumble
Martin Rodil, a Venezuelan expatriate who haspromoted the conspiracy theorythat Venezuela was involved with election fraud in America, claimed that he “recently met with a U.S. government official who has been on top of investigating” the conspiracy theory and told Rodil that he only “found 5% of the problem.” While introducing Rodil, Meck said that Rodil had “been briefing” former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the White House, Trump administration official Kurt Olsen, and the Department of Justice.
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From the Fraud-Fighter Summit on June 17, 2026, streamed by UnAuthorized
Juan O. Savin spoke on a panel that also included Tina Peters and Peter Ticktin. Ticktin is an attorney for Peters who has also represented Donald Trump, and he was reportedly involved with the draft national emergency executive order related to elections. Peters is a former county clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, who was “convicted in 2024 for her role in a brazen plot to examine voting machines under her control after the 2020 election” before Colorado Gov. Jared Polis commuted her sentence. During the talk, Savin said the executive order proposal was a “coalition effort” that Ticktin “helped push … with the president,” and Ticktin appeared to agree with Savin that there needed to be a “pause” on the midterm elections to stop supposed election fraud.
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From the Fraud-Fighter Summit on June 17, 2026, streamed on the “Bannons War Room” Rumble channel
Petersappeared on stage withSavin, who hasclaimed to have advised herover the years, and said election fraud can “happen in every country around the world. And, of course, they’re trying to do it to our country.”
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From a video of the Fraud-Fighter Summit uploaded to Telegram on June 16, 2026
Jim Marchant — the currentRepublican nomineefor Nevada secretary of state who alsopartnered with Savinin 2022 to put together a coalition of election denial candidates — suggested that if elected, “I will get rid of the machines. We’re going to get rid of mail-in ballots.”He continued, “We’re going to vote on a precinct level basis, and we’re going to count the vote on a precinct level basis, and we’re finally going to have a fair election here in Nevada.” Savin, who was on stage with Marchant, urged attendees to support Marchant’s campaign.
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From the Fraud-Fighter Summit on June 16, 2026, streamed on Rumble
In addition to U.S. elections, the summit also featured substantial discussion of Brazil and South Korea, both of whichhave been a focusfor far-right American pundits in recent years. The first night of the summit was in part dedicated to a movie about former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. One speaker at the conference was Douglas Frank, who visited South Korea as part of a “Korea-US Election Fraud Joint Investigation Team.” Frank claimed the people of South Korea had “lost their country” after “corrupt elections.” During his appearance, Frank also spoke with former South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who claimed via translator that “the days of election fraud will be numbered.”
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### QAnon influencer says he impacted decisions of secretary of state candidates in Colorado
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June 26, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
STEVE BANNON (HOST): Now, Johnson goes up there, and we're advocates of this housing bill. It's an important bill, but it's not a must pass by any measure. They're going to use it as a messaging bill.
...
Help me out here. They're shipping the president the bill today?
CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): Well, I don't know what day, but what I read last night is that the speaker told the press that they would be sending the housing bill to the president. Once they do that, it is — he has ten days to sign it. And if he doesn't — or veto it. And if he doesn't veto it and does nothing, it becomes a law without his signature.
What my message is, is that he has to veto that bill. He caught everybody by surprise and made the MAGA base — I basically burst into tears when I saw that he had cancelled the bill signing for that housing bill, that was supposed to take place at noon on Wednesday. And he just cancelled it. I had sent some things around and —
BANNON: That was amazing. That was amazing.
MITCHELL: And it was wonderful, wonderful.
BANNON: Wonderful.
MITCHELL: And he needs to stick to it. I'm asking everybody within the sound of my voice to call the White House today — 202-456-1111 — talk to a live operator and say: Mr. President, please veto that bill until the SAVE America Act is put on your desk.
...
BANNON: We're big proponents of some of the elements of this housing bill. It's not perfect, but we're a big believer in that it can have great things, but it's not a game changer.
MITCHELL: No.
BANNON: Whoever's telling the president that's going to motivate the base to go out there is just — they're dead wrong. They don't know the base, and they're not spending time with them.
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06/25/26 8:03 PM EDT
### Media Matters weekly newsletter, June 26
06/26/26 11:01 AM EDT
06/25/26
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Trump suggested that Bill Pulte at DNI may investigate “rigged elections.” Steve Bannon's War Room podcast is thrilled.
Bannon's War Room has been a longtime hub for election denial and was instrumental in stirring up the January 6 riots
Written by Sophie Lawton
Research contributions from John Knefel
Published 06/23/26
On his podcast War Room, Steve Bannon and his guests are celebrating Bill Pulte's position as acting director of National Intelligence, claiming he will “get to the bottom of the 2020 stolen election." Earlier this month, discussing the appointment, President Trump himself said that Pulte “may find out some things about the rigged elections.”
Pulte started in the role last week after President Donald Trump intervened to stop the Senate confirmation hearing of his DNI nominee, Jay Clayton, despite congressional backlash to Pulte's original appointment as acting DNI. Bannon has been pushing for Pulte as DNI since Trump originally appointed him in early June, calling him “a patriot” and claiming, “It's time now for smash mouth” with members of Congress who opposed his appointment. Even Republican senators have noted objections to Pulte.
Bannon has made it clear that his focus on Pulte's role is absolutely about elections, saying, “Bill Pulte is the perfect choice, the perfect choice to run DNI right now. It also shouldn't be lost on anybody that these elections, the stolen elections, which they're now in your face of how they're going to do it with the mail-in ballots.”
Bannon's War Room has been a longtime hub for election denial and was instrumental in stirring up the January 6 riots. Bannon has already begun laying groundwork for interfering in the midterm elections or denying their legitimacy on the show. Now, he and his guests are suggesting Pulte's time in office will lead to proof that the 2020 election was stolen.
Before Pulte started as acting DNI, Bannon suggested Pulte use the position to “maybe look around the files, maybe actually check into the, you know, some of the election files of 2020.”
In a June 20 interview with former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Bannon explicitly said, “The reason Jay Clayton ain't at DNI right now and Bill Pulte is … is to get to the bottom of the 2020 stolen election.” Bannon then noted that both John Solomon, an election conspiracy theorist, and Pulte are now working together and “they need to stay at DNI.” Giuliani argued Pulte's appointment was important because the California primary elections “look like it was so crooked that nobody will believe it, so either they're cheating or they're making everybody believe they cheat.”
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From the June 20, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
Giuliani also praised Pulte and specifically his work on elections, saying that “he knows what happened for real,” an apparent reference to the 2020 election that Giuliani has claimed was stolen. He then asked, “How do we have a republic if we don't have free elections?”
On the June 19 edition of War Room, Bannon suggested those opposing Pulte’s appointment are “afraid Pulte's going to get his hands on” proof the 2020 election was stolen and that they're “damn right” that MAGA will “use it in the midterm.” Bannon added, “Bill Pulte's in, and he and Solomon are going to get their hands on it, and you're going to have to live with it. The American people are going to see the receipts.”
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From the June 19, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
Article III Project founder and regular War Room guest Mike Davis told Bannon about Pulte: “He'll go in there and he'll rip apart that place for as long as President Trump needs Bill Pulte to rip apart that place.” He said, “President Trump can keep Bill Pulte as the acting DNI for as long as he wants and I love it,” adding “There is so much that needs to be exposed at the DNI, and Bill Pulte is the perfect man to do it.”
Another frequent War Room guest and election conspiracy theorist, Jack Posobiec appeared on Bannon's show and suggested members of Congress were scared to confirm Pulte because they did not want to expose election fraud, saying, “Could it be that there was some kind of foreign interference or some kind of penetration of those election systems down there in Fulton County that leads to a massive, massive problem with that 2020 count?"
Now, after weeks of focusing on Pulte uncovering election fraud, Bannon and guests are questioning whether Pulte's priority in office should be prosecuting former director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci.
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06/18/26 12:51 PM EDT
06/18/26 6:28 PM EDT
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NewsNation host corners MAGA senator over Trump’s election lies - Alternet.org
One of President Donald Trump's staunchest MAGA allies lashed out after being cornered on his election lies in a NewsNation interview, insisting that there is "tons of evidence" of election fraud despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary.
Trump has been rehashing his debunked claims about widespread election fraud this week, spurred on by conservative gloom over GOP candidate and ex-reality TV star Spencer Pratt losing out on a spot in the Los Angeles mayoral race's general election. Trump has also claimed that his controversial acting DNI nominee, Bill Pulte, will be doing his bidding and seeking arrests linked to his false claims about the 2020 election.
One of Trump's most outspoken allies over the years has been Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who has proven himself to be an avowed promoter of conspiracy theories. He has also been closely involved with Trump's efforts to undermine the 2020 election results, with aides from his office allegedly being involved in a scheme to provide fake Wisconsin electors to Vice President Mike Pence as part of a plot to keep Trump in power.
On Monday, he appeared for an interview with NewsNation host Connell McShane and was pressed about the continual lack of evidence for Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud that was sufficient to tilt national election results. Johnson lashed out at the line of questioning, saying he was "getting very tired" of the argument," and insisting that there was abundant evidence.
"There's tons of evidence. There's tons of irregularities," Johnson said. "We need to take them seriously because what is absolutely true as Americans on both sides do not have confidence in our elections. That's unsustainable."
Johnson continued in a rambling fashion, claiming that allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in 2016 were "ginned up" by Hillary Clinton, calling her "the first election denier."
When McShane pressed the senator about why Trump and his allies have not presented concrete evidence of fraud during the many court hearings that have resulted from his claims, Johnson insisted that they have, but that they are ignored and not investigated further once elections are certified.
Trump himself also recently had a blow-up on national televisionwhen confronted about his election fraud claims, storming out of an interview with NBC News' Kristin Welker when she pressed him about the lack of evidence. Trump said that she was either "crooked" or "stupid" for asking him about it, and insisted that U.S. elections are still rigged.
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The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports the TrumpifiedmpifiedGeorgia ElectionBoard has quietly hired an election denier to be the board’s official state investigator, even as Trump’s grip on the state becomes less guaranteed.
Jason Frazier is a MAGA activist who has challenged the registrations of thousands of Fulton County voters and who cheered as Trump’s politicized FBI raided a county ballot warehouse in January, reports AJC writer Caleb Groves.
Critics were quick to ridicule the new hire.
“It’s shocking that an allegedly nonpartisan board would hire a political operative with a years-long record of baselessly accusing counties of wrongdoing to then turn around and ‘investigate’ these same counties,” said Sara Tindall Ghazal, the board’s only Democrat. “The majority members of the State Election Board appear determined to double-down on their MAGA credentials, foment public distrust in our elections and further marginalize themselves into irrelevance.”
Frazier is now in a position to officially investigate the same election processes he has spent years criticizing as a private citizen, said AJC, but the board “was quiet about his hiring.”
Board executive director James Mills announced that the agency has hired part-time investigators during a May 14 meeting but never mentioned the new hires by name. The AJC reports Frazier’s name later appeared on a list of taxpayer-funded agency staffers on the board website.
“The hiring was apparently so sensitive that Vice Chair Janice Johnston suggested the board could file a complaint against The Atlanta Journal-Constitution after being made aware the AJC was seeking records related to Frazier’s hiring,” reports Groves.
“Should we file an ethics complaint? But I don’t know who to file it against, other than the, I don’t know, the AJC or an unknown leaker,” Johnston said.
Mills did not respond to an emailed request to identify the agency’s new hires. Rather than answer, Johnston responded to the AJC’s questions by demanding who had given the info to the press.
Georgia First Amendment Foundation board member Richard T. Griffiths said the election board’s reluctance to make public the details of Frazier’s hiring is concerning.
“At a time when the public is concerned about transparency of the elections and the integrity of the elections process, the total activity of the elections board should be available to the public and that includes hirings,” said Griffiths. “If the elections board is not providing the basics that all state agencies are required to provide, what does that say to the public about whether they can trust the board to make sensitive decisions about the elections process?”
The hiring comes at a time when President Donald Trump’s grip on many states is in question. The last time Trump lost the state of Georgia in 2020 his approval average was 46.4 percent, with Biden’s approval a modest 47 percent.
Trump’s aggregate approval in Georgia recently clicked in at a low of 37 percent.
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AN 5 26
The FBI is revisiting President Donald Trump's 2020 election conspiracy theory as part of his ongoing effort to change the results of the election after he lost. The new focus is on Wisconsin.
So far, Trump's FBI has seized 2020 election ballots from Georgia and copies of voting data in Arizona from a review Republican lawmakers conducted. *The Washington Post*reported Friday that current and former election officials in Milwaukee have been interviewed by FBI agents in their own homes. The question will be whether the FBI demands the ballots as they did in Fulton County, Georgia.
The move would "set off alarms because Milwaukee maintains its absentee ballots in a way that could allow agents to determine who voters selected — undermining the secrecy of their ballots," the report said. One's vote is supposed to be a secret, but Trump would then have access to information on whether his allies supported him in 2020.
One question has been about an incident involving an official grabbing all of the flash drives and missing one of them. Another election worker then gave the flash drive to a police officer, who delivered it to the local official. It was never unattended, the report said. At the time, it became a huge conspiracy theory spread by MAGA supporters.
A man then filed a lawsuit claiming he saw a "secret room" in the election office and drew a floor plan showing where it was and indicated he heard someone snoring behind the door. The election denier has his own criminal history. The FBI demanded to know if there were ballots "printed" in the secret room.
Trump's agents went from the state’s deputy elections director to the former officials' homes, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. They next intend to interview police who were responsible for protecting election officials who delivered the results, reported WISN-TV.
The ballots haven't been seized yet, but there is a larger fear that things are headed in a worrisome direction.
"Ordinarily, election officials by now would have destroyed ballots from an election that was held nearly six years ago. But Milwaukee County officials have hung on to the 2020 ballots because of litigation," the Post explained.
One concern in Fulton County is that no copies were made of the ballots taken by the FBI. So, there would be no record to compare it to if the DOJ asserted that the count was "wrong." What's different in Milwaukee, however, is that numbers are assigned to a voter's absentee ballot, which can be traced back to the person. In other states, the ballots are simply thrown together.
Officials said that they are desperately trying to guard the ballots and said those numbers are redacted when copies are released to the public. In theory, the FBI wouldn't be able to match the numbers to the logbooks without them.
“Our secret ballot is secret for a reason,” declared elections chair Ann Jacobs. “It’s sacrosanct. It is at the heart of our American democracy. And those people who demand to know how everyone voted are violating those core tenets of what it means to vote as an American.”
“You’re going to see things like, ‘Here are the Biden voters in your neighborhood,’” said former Wisconsin chief election official Kevin Kennedy. “The bottom line is the potential for mischief is there, and we have seen in this age of social media that it will happen.”
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an 5 26
Over the past year, election-denying allies of President Donald Trump from both inside the government and out have sought voting data from across the country in an effort to “investigate” their assertions of electoral fraud. Now, according to new reporting from Talking Points Memo, “election conspiracy theorists” are attempting to lay the groundwork for a Department of Justice probe into Michigan.
In April, Michigan officials were left in “bewilderment” when DOJ Civil Division chief Harmeet Dhillon demanded public records pertaining to the 2024 election from the Wayne County clerk, asserting that it was part of an investigation into voter fraud. Officials weren’t bewildered because they were surprised at the request — quite the opposite, as the FBI has been scooping up voting data from districts across the country that voted against Trump, from Arizona to Georgia — but because Dhillon had sent it to the wrong office entirely, addressing it to the county clerk, when in Michigan, townships run elections.
According to local officials, her request not only suggests that Trump’s DOJ doesn’t understand the basic facts of electoral processes, but it raises pressing questions about what the president’s allies intend to do with the voting data. Election denying activists in Michigan are not shy about answering that question, asserting that they’re conducting what they call an “audit” of electoral results in an effort to fight a “cabal” of their enemies.
As Talking Points Memo explains, these investigations are “being carried out with the help of various election conspiracy theorists who are now in positions of power in the government. Kurt Olsen, a 2020 election denier, has been working as White House election security czar. Heather Honey, another activist, has an election security role at DOJ. Clay Parikh, another special government employee involved in the Fulton County raid.” While these figures provide federal support, election denying activists on the ground are doing much of the legwork.
According to Talking Points, “voter fraud alarmists” are “using documents obtained last year from a massive FOIA lawsuit that sought copies of Detroit’s 2020 ballots and other records. Yehuda Miller, a New Jersey-based activist who has been involved in election denialism for the last several years, obtained hundreds of thousands of ballot images from the City of Detroit. The question now on the minds of some Michigan elections officials is whether Miller’s ‘audit’ — regardless of how baseless and misleading the results may be — will prompt federal action. And, whether the conclusions that Miller has drawn may have already made their way to the Trump DOJ.”
Chris Thomas, who ran elections for the state of Michigan for nearly 40 years and faced a “mob” trying to stop the count in 2020, says that “those seeking the records have been in communication with a voter fraud alarmism nonprofit called Michigan Fair Elections and with the far-right, conspiracy theorist website Gateway Pundit, and say that they’ve enlisted dozens of volunteers to comb through the ballots.” He says it’s possible that the DOJ already has the FOIA data, and that the “‘audit’ could yield results that, while bogus to anyone familiar with election law, prompt some form of action” from the agency. He has his doubts, however, that the amateur investigation would prove useful in any potential criminal proceedings, saying, “I don’t think that stuff would stand up at all.”
While Talking Points notes that it’s unclear whether Miller is working directly with the DOJ, his activist allies have said they would share their findings with the agency.
“I sure as heck am going to be sharing it with everybody that I know, and I’ve got a lot of contacts up in the DOJ,” said Patrick Colbeck, an election conspiracy theorist and former GOP Michigan state senator. “Everything they share, I will make sure it gets to them,” he asserted, referring to the DOJ.
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AN 5 26
President Donald Trump continues to falsely claim that he won the 2020 presidential election — and now that fabrication is fueling the agendas for a new generation of potential Republican governors.
Michigan Republican strategist Jason Cabel Roe argued that the emphasis on supporting Trump’s election denial is “silly because they know better,” wrote The Washington Post's Dan Merica, Patrick Marley and Clara Ence Morse. The former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party then added “but, you know, it’s still what the base wants to hear.” Despite this obsession, however, Roe added that voters are far more concerned about the economy and the price of gas.
“There’s enough muddying of what everybody’s feelings are about election integrity at this point — and maybe even a little exhaustion with relitigating an election that was six years ago — that I just don’t know that it really matters to voters,” Roe explained. His position was supported by a March NBC News poll which determined voters are mostly concerned with inflation and the cost of living, followed by threats to democracy.
The Republicans running for governor in their respective states on election denier platforms include Minnesota's Mike Lindell, who founded MyPillow; Arizona's Rep. Andy Biggs; Georgia's Lt. Gov. Burt Jones; Pennsylvania’s Republican treasurer's Stacy Garrity; Wisconsin's Rep. Tom Tiffany; Michigan's state Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt and Rep. John James; and California's Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.
In addition to demonstrating their fealty to Trump, election denying also means these candidates could try throwing out valid vote counting efforts in the 2028 presidential election if urged by the White House.
“This is an important issue,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, chair of the Democratic Governors Association, a group preparing to make Republicans’ history of election denialism a key issue in 2026, said at a speech. “But it’s not the only issue, and it shouldn’t necessarily be the lead thing. Almost everyone in this economy is struggling because of [Trump] and these folks that are running, these election deniers, were willing to do anything for this president. So, their past attempts to steal an election were to steal it for a guy that’s made life tougher. They’re certainly not going to stand up to him to try to make life easier.”
As conservative columnist George F. Will wrote in February, Trump has thoroughly litigated his claims of election fraud, and they have all been found wanting.
“Someone should read to him ‘Lost, Not Stolen,’ a 2022 report by eight conservatives (two former Republican senators, three former federal appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general, and two Republican election law specialists),” Will explained in The Washington Post. “They examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters. Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result.”
Will added, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.” Therefore he wrote of Trump, “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”
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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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INSIDE THE WIRE
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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MMA
Election deniers push conspiracy theories about primaries in GOP-run Texas
QAnon figure Juan O. Savin: “People were just floored by what was going on” in Texas with the “massive cheating”
Written by Alex Kaplan
:{:{Published 04/20/26}:
Election deniers have been targeting this year’s primary and special elections in Texas, claiming there has been “massive” fraud and cheating.
Attorney Peter Ticktin, activist Linda Szynkowicz, QAnon influencer Wayne Willott, and others who promoted false claims of widespread election fraud in the 2020 presidential contest are now claiming on social media and on podcasts that in Texas, votes “got switched,” people used “ghost voting IDs,” and they found “cloned voters.”
For years, right-wing media and politicians have been pushing conspiracy theories about supposed election fraud across the country, and recent claims seem to be part of an apparent effort to undermine the 2026 midterm elections.
Election deniers are now targeting elections in GOP-run Texas}:
On March 3, the Republican and Democratic parties in Texas held primary elections for various elected offices throughout the state. Among the notable primary wins were Republican Gov. Greg Abbott defeating challenger Pete “Doc” Chambers for the GOP gubernatorial nomination and Democratic state Rep. James Talarico besting U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination. Texas also held a special election in January for what The Texas Tribune reported was a “solidly red Texas Senate seat,” with Democrat Taylor Rehmet winning the seat in a “stunning special election upset.”
Republicans have full control of the Texas government, and a Republican-appointed secretary of state serves as the state's chief election officer.
## Election deniers claimed “massive fraud” happened during the recent Texas primary and special elections
Multiple prominent election deniers have claimed that there was “massive fraud” and “massive cheating” that tainted the Texas primary and special elections and that they “should not be certified.” They pushed a variety of conspiracy theories, claiming votes “got switched,” that there were “ghost voting IDs,” and that they found “cloned voters”:
During several podcast appearances, Peter Ticktin, an attorney and commentator with a history of promoting election fraud claims, said that “we better start investigating what happened in the Texas primaries.” He invoked a longstanding conspiracy theory that Venezuela is connected to supposed election fraud, saying voting machines somehow controlled by Venezuela switch votes and “this is how they have control of the outcome of the elections.” He also alleged that 21st Congressional District candidate Weston Martinez found “modified duplicates” in the voter rolls after the first day of voting during this year’s GOP primary and later found that the duplicates in the rolls had been “changed to other names” or “they got rid of them because he was on to it.” Ticktin continued, “One way or the other, these machines are now in play picking the candidates … which we are going to be voting for come November.”
A show host asked if the Texas gubernatorial primary was “an Antrim County situation,” referring to a Michigan county where some falsely claimed that machines changed votes in 2020, and asked if votes for Chambers and Abbott “got switched.”
“Our election system is entirely compromised,” Ticktin replied. “The same voter base, the same voter rolls, the same machines can operate on any election in the United States.”
Fight Voter Fraud Inc. founder Linda Szynkowicz said on her streaming show that in Texas, “they were manipulating the votes as they were coming in the system.”
Kris Jurski, whom NBC describes as “a Florida activist who has promoted election conspiracy theories,” suggested on social media that his tool to supposedly detect election fraud also found “cloned voters … in Texas’s latest election.”
Wayne Willott, a QAnon influencer who goes by “Juan O. Savin,” said during a streaming conversation that “people were just floored by what was going on” in Texas with the “massive cheating.” Willott, who has tried to recruit election denial candidates for positions administering elections, suggested “a restart” for Texas’ primaries, pointing in a separate conversation to “massive fraud.”
:{:{Video}:
Citation
From the March 18, 2026, edition of Nino's Corner, streamed on YouTube
Harry Haury, whom the LA Times described as a “self-proclaimed cybersecurity expert” with “deep ties to the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement,” said during right-wing podcast Stern American’s“election integrity call” that Texas’ primaries were “a large mess,” with “hundreds of thousands of votes that are attributed to an individual, and then that individual is deleted from the record.”
He said the elections “appear[ed] to be tampered with,” and the state had “not produced an honest or transparent result,” and therefore it “should not be certified.”
:{:{Video}:
Citation
From the March 18, 2026, edition of Stern American, streamed on Rumble
On his podcast, election denier Joe Oltmann read a social media post from Chambers alleging fraud in his race and other races in the state, both Democratic and Republican, and Oltmann said that it was evidence of “election fraud” and that “everywhere you turn elections are being stolen.”
John Case — an attorney for former Mesa County, Colorado, Clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted for allowing unauthorized access to county voting equipment over election fraud claims — claimed during another Stern American “election integrity call” that “Bexar County in the Texas primary” featured “some kind of illegal interference in the list of people who voted.” Case, whom Colorado's The Daily Sentinel described as an “election conspiracy theorist,” has previously claimed that there was a supposed witness who claimed “the software used on Dominion Voting Systems in Colorado has the same basic structure as the Smartmatic software that was used to rig elections in Venezuela.” According to Case, this witness “was a government official in Venezuela whose job was to create the war rooms and situation rooms that were used to monitor the election results and then, when the time was ripe, to inject fake votes into the system so that the government candidate would always win.”
Additionally, John Eastman, a Claremont Institute senior fellow who crafted a plan for Trump to try to overturn the 2020 election results, claimed on Stern American that a January special election for a Texas state Senate seat featured “ghost voting IDs based on actual voter IDs.”
## Yes, this probably sounds very familiar
Right-wing figures and social media users have cried fraud about other recent elections as well. That includes the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election, where Republican Kari Lake lost to now-Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs; the 2021 New Jersey gubernatorial election, where then-Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy defeated Republican Jack Ciattarelli; and the 2025 New Jersey gubernatorial election, where now-Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill defeated Ciattarelli.
## Why do they keep claiming fraud?
Some right-wing media figures are calling for new policies and efforts to prevent supposed election fraud ahead of this year’s midterm elections. The Trump administration has pushed the SAVE America Act, which would curtail voting access, and right-wing media claim Democrats oppose it because they are “cheating.”
Trump’s FBI also raided the Fulton County, Georgia, election center as part of a Justice Department probe of the 2020 election, and Trump released an executive order seeking to limit who is eligible for mail-in voting, drawing praise from election deniers. Some of these activists have also drafted and advocated for a “national emergency” executive order to allow a federal takeover of election processes.
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AN 4 267
Donald Trump can never admit that he lost an election, anywhere, at any time, under any circumstance. And I’m not just talking about swing states like Georgia.
Take California, for instance. In the 2024 presidential election, Trump lost California by 20 points. No shame in that, right? California is one of the most liberal states in the country, and is also the home state of his opponent, Kamala Harris. Of course Trump lost it.
But according to Trump, he won California. Or rather, he lost California only because the election had been “rigged” against him. He not only won the state, he says he won it “by a lot.”
In one sense such talk is so ridiculous as to be almost funny. In another sense, it has real consequences, because Republicans being Republicans, they are forced to pretend to believe whatever Trump tells them to believe. And here in Georgia, based on no more evidence than he had to claim that he won California, Trump continues to tell them that he won the state in 2020.
So Georgia Republicans have to pretend that’s true, and try to do something about it.
Two years ago, Georgia’s GOP legislators pretended it was true by passing a new law requiring a whole new way of casting and counting ballots, touting the new system as necessary to prevent the fraud that didn’t happen in 2020. They set a deadline of this summer to have the new system in place and running in time for the upcoming midterm elections.
Then, to prove just how serious they were about election integrity, they neglected to authorize the funds needed to buy the new machines and train elections staff on the new system that they had mandated. Here we are, less than three months from the deadline that they themselves wrote into state law, and not a damn thing has been done.
Wait.
It gets worse.
State legislators gathered in Atlanta in January for the latest session of the General Assembly. They were here in January, February, March and into April, knowing full well that the deadline was looming and could never be met. All they needed to do was pass a bill delaying the deadline that they themselves had set, while authorizing money to pay for that new equipment and training.
They did neither.
To review:
They invented an election-fraud problem that didn’t exist, then they claimed to have fixed the election fraud problem that didn’t exist, then they failed to fund their solution to the problem that didn’t exist, thus creating an actual major, real-life problem, and then they refused to fix that problem of their own making.
And these people make fun of how Fulton County runs elections?
Legislators have now gone home, back to their districts. Leaders of the House and Senate, along with Gov. Brian Kemp, say they may try to call them back into special session before the July deadline to fix things.
Or, they say, maybe not.
“Maybe not” means they’ll dump the problem they created onto the laps of state and federal judges. “Maybe not” means they’ll be able to whine later about the unfairness of whatever solution those judges impose. “Maybe not” means even more election chaos, and even more public doubt about the credibility of the electoral process. They have to know how irresponsible they would be to do that.
Or maybe not.
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mma
Election deniers hail Trump’s mail-in voting executive order as a “win” that will leave Democrats “toast”
True the Vote: “The era of trust-but-don’t-verify is over”
Written by Alex Kaplan
:{:{Published 04/06/26}:
Figures involved in promoting false claims of widespread election fraud in the 2020 presidential election have praised President Donald Trump’s March 31 executive order regarding mail-in voting, calling it a “major win,” saying he’s “stepping to the plate” and issuing it “while the iron is hot,” and claiming it means “the democrats are toast.” Experts have said that the order, which follows years of right-wing media attacking mail-in voting, stands on dubious legal ground.
## Trump issued a legally dubious executive order on mail-in voting, which has been a frequent target of right-wing media
On March 31, Trump issued an executive order “that seeks to create lists of U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state” and instructs “the U.S. Postal Service to send mail ballots only to verified voters.” As NPR further reported, the executive order “instructs the Department of Homeland Security, working in conjunction with the Social Security Administration, 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 “then ‘requires the USPS to transmit ballots only to individuals enrolled on a State-specific Mail-in and Absentee Participation List, ensuring that only eligible absentee or mail-in voters receive absentee or mail-in ballots,’ according to a White House fact sheet.” NPR, [3/31/26]
Election law experts wrote that the executive order is “likely unconstitutional” and cannot be implemented by the 2026 midterm elections.NPR noted that “Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA, wrote on his blog that the order is likely unconstitutional” and that he noted that “the timing here makes this virtually impossible to implement in time for November’s elections.” In a piece at Slate, Hasen wrote that “the order is so underwhelming that it suggests Trump’s real purpose was not its implementation but to create more confusion and litigation around elections, further undermining voter confidence in the integrity of American elections” and putting “into question the rules of an election that is just months away, giving voters reason to fear that the Postal Service could sabotage their ballots.” Another expert told Democracy Docket that the order was “convoluted” and “you can’t make [the Postal Service] the gatekeepers for ballot delivery.” And the director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program told The New York Times that “the president doesn’t have any authority to write the rules that govern our elections. The Constitution gives that power to Congress and to the states, not to the president.” NPR, [3/31/26; Slate, 4/1/26; Democracy Docket, 4/1/26; The New York Times, 3/31/26]
A previous executive order on elections that Trump issued in 2025 has been blocked by the courts. Multiple federal judges have blocked aspects of the order, which “calls for the Election Assistance Commission to require people to show government-issued proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections,” “directs state or local officials to record and verify the information,” and “seeks to require states to count ballots by Election Day.” Media Matters [10/28/25; The New York Times, 3/25/25, 6/13/25; The Associated Press, 1/30/26]
Some Trump allies have proposed Trump issue an executive order declaring a “national emergency” to prevent supposed election fraud. An advocate for the proposal, which has reportedly circulated within the Trump administration, said that it “would empower the president to ban mail ballots and voting machines as the vectors of foreign interference.” Trump allies reportedly spearheading the proposed order include attorney Peter Ticktin, a QAnon figure known as Juan O. Savin, and right-wing author Jerome Corsi. Media Matters, [10/28/25, 2/26/26]
Trump and right-wing media have spread misinformation about mail-in ballots for years. Despite their claims, there has not been evidence of widespread voter fraud or evidence of mail-in ballots being inherently corrupt. Media Matters, [8/21/20; CNN, 3/24/26]
## Election deniers praised the new executive order, calling it a “major win” and claiming “the democrats are toast”
Podcaster Jovan Pulitzer, whom the Arizona Mirror described as “a favorite of election fraud conspiracy theorists,” called the executive order a “major win” and said that “we’ve got to take the wins as we can get the wins.” Pulitzer called aspects of the order to supposedly force states to make sure their lists of voters are accurate “genius,” and he called the order “the clearest path for getting a thing done.” He described the effort as a “monumental movement” that is “going to create all kinds of hell.” Arizona Mirror, [4/30/21; Rumble, 4/1/26, 4/1/26]
True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht: While the executive order is “a slippery slope,” “it’s still worth doing. Somebody’s got to do something. And God bless President Trump for at least, you know, doing what he can.” Engelbrecht — who founded True the Vote, which aims to “restore America’s confidence in our electoral process” and was behind the claims of the election misinformation film 2000 Mules — went on to praise Trump “for at least stepping to the plate, putting it in writing, and forcing them to respond.” Additionally, True the Vote posted on Truth Social that the executive order means that “the era of trust-but-don’t-verify is over.” Media Matters, [9/15/22, 12/4/24; Texas Monthly, 8/22/22; True the Vote, True the Vote Now, 4/1/26; Truth Social, 3/31/26]
A QAnon influencer who goes by Juan O. Savin, and who previously recruited election denial candidates for positions where they would be in charge of election administration, said Trump was “really just kind of forcing all the various agencies to do their job” with the executive order. Savin said that “anybody thinks that this is doing something truly unique and new is probably wrong,” and he claimed Trump “has total authority to direct the actions to the post office” because “there’s no intrusion upon states’ rights.” Savin had previously said his team “wrote up” a different executive order regarding voting that has reportedly circulated within the Trump administration and would declare a national election emergency to crack down on supposed fraud. In a separate interview, Savin acknowledged that Trump’s latest executive order on elections was “not the complete executive order that my team put together in the 17-page executive order” and said the administration “may very well break that up into several pieces.” The Daily Beast, [11/2/22; Media Matters, 10/28/25, 1/26/23; Lawfare, 3/20/26; Rumble, Nino’s Corner, 4/1/26; Rumble, The B2T Show, 3/31/26]
Seth Keshel claimed the executive order was Trump “striking while the iron is hot and counting on the morons wearing out their welcome with the cheating.” Keshel is a former U.S. Army intelligence captain and blogger who “has become a darling among election deniers by factoring widespread voter fraud — the existence of which has been widely debunked — into his election predictions,” according to The New York Times. He posted on Telegram that “some communist court will strike down his mail-in voting order, which will then be expedited to SCOTUS,” which “is sick of mail-in ballot games and all 6 Republican-appointed justices appear to be ready to squash the concept of late-arriving mail-in ballots.” The New York Times, [10/15/24; Substack, accessed 2/5/26; Telegram, 4/1/26]
David Clements said the executive order was potentially “great” and “wonderful” and means “the democrats are toast.” Lawfare reported in 2024 that Clements had “criss-crossed the country to evangelize about purported election fraud,” and The Washington Post reported in 2022 that he was “traveling the country trying to persuade local leaders to withhold certification of election results.” In April 1 social media posts, he suggested that the order was not “violating state’s rights” because it “does not create new substantive rules from scratch; it directs federal agencies to implement and enhance existing federal statutory requirements." He also said the order means that “democrats are toast” and the “toys” from “the swamp” — i.e., existing federal election rules, which he claimed “the swamp used … to inflate numbers and commit massive fraud” — now “are being used against them.” On a podcast, Clements said he “got a bunch of texts from other election integrity folks” about the order, and “most of them were bummed” because it did not focus on the “big stuff,” but he said he thinks the order is “brilliant” and could potentially be “a great executive order. It's wonderful.” Lawfare, [10/31/24; The Washington Post, 9/8/22; Telegram, 4/1/26, 4/1/26; Rumble, Absolute Storm, 4/2/26]
Kris Jurski, “a Florida activist who has promoted election conspiracy theories,” wrote on his Substack that the executive order “proves the message is finally getting through: the voter rolls are the strategic foundation of every election.” Added Jurski, “If the list is corrupt, the outcome can be corrupt — regardless of how the votes are counted.” NBC News, [3/18/26; Substack, 4/5/26]
On Newsmax, Kari Lake called the executive order possibly “the most important executive order [Trump’s] ever signed.” Lake, a Trump administration official with the U.S. Agency for Global Media and former Arizona GOP candidate who focused intensely on election fraud claims during her campaigns, said on Newsmax that “the people of this country need some relief from the corrupt people running our elections.” The Guardian, [7/31/24; Media Matters, 6/14/23; Newsmax, Rob Schmitt Tonight, 3/31/26]
//
10/28/25 9:54 AM EDT
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Right-wing media use the SAVE America Act to undermine the upcoming midterm elections
Right-wing pundits have falsely claimed Democrats oppose the SAVE America Act because they are “cheating” and “want the illegals to be able to vote”
Written by Gideon Taaffe & Sage Hodil
Published 03/20/26
Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, right-wing media are using the controversial SAVE America Act to undermine election integrity by claiming Democrats oppose the bill because they “want to steal elections” and “want the illegals to be able to vote.” This is the latest iteration of a longstanding pattern in which right-wing media cast doubt on elections as Americans prepare to cast their votes.
For example, in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, right-wing media were peddling election conspiracy theories and insisting the 2020 election was rigged. Ahead of the 2024 election cycle, right-wing media deployed that same playbook, spreading false information about undocumented immigrants voting, accusing Democrats of rigging the system, and attempting to undermine the validity of mail-in voting.
As the 2026 midterm elections approach, right-wing media figures are yet again claiming that Democrats are trying to cheat and want undocumented immigrants to vote, even though instances of noncitizen voting are vanishingly rare. Still, right-wing media figures have advocated for Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence at polling locations, President Donald Trump to declare a “national emergency” to enforce his preferred election policies, and Congress to pass the SAVE Act (since modified and rebranded as the SAVE America Act).
Though the SAVE America Act appears to be doomed in the Senate, the controversial bill, which aims to rewrite election laws nationwide, would, if passed, create new barriers for people attempting to register to vote by requiring them to provide documents such as a passport or birth certificate as proof of citizenship. But as the Brennan Center for Justice points out, millions of citizens lack access to these documents, and “roughly half of Americans don’t even have a passport.” As an example of the potential effects, the Bipartisan Policy Center examined a similar law requiring proof of citizenship passed in Kansas and found the law prevented roughly 12% of applicants from registering to vote. The SAVE America Act could also place additional burdens on married women who have changed their last name from the one that appears on their birth certificate.
Nonetheless, right-wing media have been using the bill to sell a false narrative that Democrats have “nefarious intentions” and are “petrified about having safe and secure elections” because “they want the illegals to be able to vote.”
War Roomhost Steve Bannon said “we have to codify” the SAVE America Act “to stop the Democrats with the illegal aliens stealing the 2026 midterm.”Bannon also threatened, “If Thune cannot deliver this week on these basics about not allowing them to steal elections, why is he not removed as a leader of the Senate?” Real America’s Voice,*War Room*, [2/3/26]
Fox News host Jesse Watters claimed that when Democrats “fight this hard” against the bill, “you know they’re cheating” in elections.Watters then argued that it’s “logical” to require voter ID after you “poured 20 million foreigners into the United States.” Fox News,*The Five*, [2/4/26]
On his radio show, Fox News host Sean Hannity claimed the “only reason I can think” Democrats “don't want voter IDs, signature verification” is because they have “nefarious intentions.”Hannity continued, suggesting Democrats must not “want honest elections with integrity so everyone can have confidence in the results.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [2/6/26]
QAnon conspiracy theorist Scott Presler: “The Democrats are petrified about having safe and secure elections because they know that our Congress and our Senate would look much different today if we had secure voting.”Presler: “Having a trust me, bro, election system in Minnesota is the reason why it's been blue even since Mondale.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [2/6/26; Media Matters,8/23/21]
Presler later commented on Fox News: “When Sen. Chuck Schumer says that tens of millions of Americans will be removed from the voter rolls, did he say the quiet part out loud? Did he allude to the fact that perhaps tens of millions of noncitizens are on the voter rolls?” He added, “Anyone that is only for Americans being registered to vote cannot be against the SAVE America Act.” Fox News, *The Story with Martha MacCallum*, [3/11/26]
Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer said “there’s no logic” for Democrats’ opposition to the bill “other than they’re working so hard to let anybody vote without knowing if they’re a citizen or not.” Fleischer then claimed noncitizen voting is “the perfect crime” because “no one will catch you.” Fox News, *Special Report with Bret Baier*, [2/11/26]
Fox & Friendsco-host Lawrence Jones claimed Democrats oppose the bill because “they want the illegals to be able to vote.”Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [2/20/26]
Fox News host Will Cain claimed Democrats “benefit from having insecure voting rolls, they benefit from the potentiality of illegals voting in American elections.”Fox News, *The Will Cain Show*, [3/11/26]
Newsmax host Rob Finnerty claimed, “Democrats don’t want the SAVE Act to pass because if it does, people who aren't legally allowed to vote in our elections will not be able to vote in our elections anymore.” Finnerty also characterized the Democratic party as “a party built around illegal aliens and dead people voting.” Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [3/12/26]
On Newsmax, actor Dean Cain said “there's no reason in the world” for Democrats to “oppose the SAVE Act, other than it will stop them from being able to cheat.”Newsmax, *Ed Henry The Big Take*, [3/6/26]
On Newsmax, The Federalist’s Ben Weingarten suggested that it’s incredibly easy to cheat in elections today and claimed Democrats have been “normalizing the idea that noncitizens should be able to vote.”Weingarten attacked Democrats for “gaslighting” and spreading “propaganda” about the SAVE America Act and stated, “Americans want clean voter rolls and clean elections where it's easy to vote and incredibly hard to cheat. And we have the opposite today.” Newsmax, *The National Report*, [3/11/26]
Fox contributor Newt Gingrich claimed Democrats oppose the bill “because they want to steal elections.” Gingrich continued, “They want to have the ability to vote people who aren't legal or people who are dead.” Fox Business, *Mornings with Maria*, [3/19/26]
Trump ally and right-wing podcaster Roger Stone: “SAVE America Act Hits the Achilles Heel of Democrats’ Fraud Scheme.” Wrote Stone, “There is only one reason for Democrats and far-left special interest groups to oppose the SAVE America Act: because they want to enable fraud. They know that loosening the system allows them to essentially stuff the ballot box. The illegals who are still floating around in this country by the millions can exploit these loopholes.” Substack, [3/4/26]
//
03/18/26 10:15 AM EDT
### Nick Shirley rebooted James O’Keefe’s debunked voter fraud myths for a new audience
02/18/26 4:25 PM EST
02/12/26
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Georgia court blocks GOP's bid to seat election deniers on Fulton County board - Alternet.org
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These Far-Right Conspiracists Are Pushing Trump to Take Control of Voting
Election deniers are lobbying the president to declare a national emergency.
National Voting Rights CorrespondentBio
On Monday afternoon, as war raged with Iran, President Trump was seemingly preoccupied with more trivial matters. “FREE TINA PETERS!” he wrote on Truth Social, referring to the former Colorado election clerk who’s serving a nine-year sentence for giving election conspiracists access to sensitive voting equipment.
While it might seem odd for Trump to be posting about Peters as bombs fell on Tehran, there’s a connection between her and Trump’s orbit—her lawyer, Peter Ticktin, is a former classmate of Trump’s at the New York Military Academy who has represented the president in litigation against his political opponents. And Ticktin is now pushing Trump to declare a national emergency, based on the false claim that China interfered in the 2020 election, so that the president can assume vast new powers over the voting process. After the US invaded Iran, Trump reposted an article from a far right news site claiming that Iran also attempted to interfere in the 2020 and 2024 elections, seemingly tying the military effort to his voting crusade.
The 17-page executive order Ticktin is lobbying Trump to sign would completely upend how Americans vote and have their ballots counted in an unprecedented attempt to usurp powers that the Constitution gives to states and Congress. The order claims that an emergency declaration would allow Trump to unilaterally outlaw mail-in voting for most Americans and seize voting machines in favor of a hand count of all ballots, which would take much longer and be far more error-prone than a regular machine count.
Attorney Peter Ticktin listens during oral arguments for People vs Tina Peters in the Court of Appeals at the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center in Denver on Jan. 14, 2026.AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post/Pool/AP
That’s not all. The order would require all Americans to re-register to vote in person before the 2026 midterms, effectively voiding all state voter rolls, and force voters to re-verify their status before every election, a wildly impractical measure. It would mandate that all absentee ballots be notarized and restrict mail-in voting to those who have a medical condition or are out-of-town during the election. It would require strict forms of voter ID and proof of citizenship to cast a ballot, which could disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans who lack such documents. “Taken together, the proposal amounts to a radical attempt to reshape the rules of elections ahead of the 2026 midterms,” notes the voting rights group Fair Fight.
“Under the Constitution, it’s the legislatures and states that really control how a state conducts its elections, and the president doesn’t have any power to do that,” Ticktin told the Washington Post. “But here we have a situation where the president is aware that there are foreign interests that are interfering in our election processes. That causes a national emergency where the president has to be able to deal with it.”
Of course, there is no evidence that China interfered in the 2020 election. And the two statutes that Ticktin claims allow Trump to declare a national emergency—the National Emergencies Act (NEA) and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)—in fact give the president no control over the voting process. (The Supreme Court just ruled that the president could not invoke the IEEPA to justify his tariffs.)
“None of the cited authorities delegates the president any power to change voting laws, let alone the wholesale takeover of federal and local elections that the draft EO attempts to enact, even in the face of national emergency—including attempted foreign interference,” says an analysis from the Center for American Progress.
For these reasons, any such executive order would likely be immediately blocked in the courts, much like the last executive order on elections Trump issued last March.
Trump said last week he’s “never heard about” Ticktin’s proposal, but he’s already vowed to issue a new executive order on elections. And given his obsession with the 2020 election and calls for Republicans to “take over the voting in at least 15 places,” the allure of attempting to gain dictatorial control over the electoral process, no matter how illegal it is, is sure to appeal to the president.
Some of the sketchiest figures in the far right’s election denial movement are behind this push.
Ticktin, whose friendship with Trump dates back to their time at the military academy in the 1960s, has had a rocky career as a lawyer. He’s been suspended twice from the Florida bar. After the 2020 election, he represented Trump in a sprawling racketeering lawsuit accusing Hillary Clinton and Democrats of manufacturing allegations of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit and ordered sanctions against Trump’s lawyers, including Ticktin.
“The rule of law is undermined by the toxic combination of political fundraising with legal fees paid by political action committees, reckless and factually untrue statements by lawyers at rallies and in the media, and efforts to advance a political narrative through lawsuits without factual basis or any cognizable legal theory,” wrote US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks.
“Taken together, the proposal amounts to a radical attempt to reshape the rules of elections ahead of the 2026 midterms.”
Ticktin subsequently went on to seek pardons for election deniers including Peters, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, members of the Proud Boys, and other January 6 insurrectionists. He told Steve Bannon the 101st Airborne should be sent in to free Peters, who was convicted of giving access of 2020 election records to an associate of My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell.
Ticktin has been promoting the proposed executive order since last April, including on QAnon-affiliated talk shows. “If President Trump can’t call a national election emergency, then we will lose our country,” he told QNewsPatriot in January. Ticktin said the right-wing conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi has also “been very involved” in the effort. Corsi has been circulating a new draft since the summer alleging that Trump could invoke emergency powers because of alleged foreign intervention in the 2020 election.
Corsi was the driving force behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smear campaign against John Kerry’s military record in 2004 and the birtherism conspiracy against Barack Obama, which Trump amplified. Corsi was investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller for allegedly acting as a conduit between Trump adviser Roger Stone and WikiLeaks as part of the effort to leak emails from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Corsi falsely claimed the emails were leaked by murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich.
The work of these fringe characters has been amplified by outside advisers closer to the president. Cleta Mitchell, the former Trump lawyer who helped the president attempt to overturn the 2020 election, said on a podcast in September that she believed “the president is thinking that he will exercise some emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward.” Bannon has repeatedly promoted the national emergency scenario on his radio show in recent days.
In December 2020, the likes of Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn, and Patrick Byrne went to the White House to urge Trump to order the military to seize state voting machines. Trump was talked off the ledge by his advisers, but now says he regrets not doing so.
Whereas the craziest schemes hatched by election deniers were rejected by Trump’s aides in 2020, today those very election deniers hold prominent positions in the administration and are plotting from the inside. Recently, six administration aides took part in a gathering hosted by Flynn where attendees called on Trump to declare a national emergency. “At some point,” Byrne, the ex-CEO of Overstock.com, said, “he’s got to do something, the muscular thing: declare a national emergency.”
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As allies of President Donald Trump are rumored to be urging him to issue an executive order seizing control of elections ahead of the midterm elections, Arizona’s top attorney and election administrator both say doing so would be blatantly unconstitutional and unlikely to happen.
“No president has the constitutional authority to ‘take control’ of elections,” Attorney General Kris Mayes told the Arizona Mirror in a statement. “Elections in this country are administered by states. It is a deliberate feature of our constitutional system designed to prevent the federal government from seizing power over how Americans choose their leaders.”
On Friday, the Washington Post reported that a proposed executive order, written and supported by conspiracy theorists, has been passed around the White House with the goal of Trump formally issuing it. It would declare an emergency over alleged Chinese interference in the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden, and use that as the basis to wrest control of elections from states and make sweeping changes to how Americans register to vote and cast their ballots, and how those votes are then counted.
Mayes said the entire exercise is based on fanciful claims of election fraud that are not backed by any evidence, many of which were rejected by the courts in 2020.
“Arizona’s 2020 election results were investigated, audited, litigated, and certified, even by members of the president’s own party,” Mayes added. “There is nothing to relitigate, and debunked conspiracy theories are not a legal basis for seizing control of American elections.”
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said in a statement to the Mirror that his main concern is focusing on elections in Arizona, not Trump’s actions.
“I don’t have time to be distracted by noise from Washington DC. IF a new (executive order) is forthcoming, and it purports to violate the Constitution like the last one, we will challenge it in Court,” Fontes said. “For now, local and state elections officials in Arizona will stay focused on the task at hand: continuing to provide high quality elections for our voters, as we’ve done for decades.”
The draft executive order that is being shopped to the Trump administration was published by Democracy Docket, a digital news site about elections, and is said to be written by Peter Ticktin, a Trump ally and Florida-based lawyer who represents former Mesa County clerk and election denier Tina Peters.
When asked about the order by reporters on Friday morning, Trump said he had “never heard of it.”
The proposed executive order, an earlier version of which was published in April 2025 by a group led by Trump ally and election denier Cleta Mitchell, includes a number of proposals that have been on the wishlists of election conspiracy theorists for years.
It would require every voter to re-register in 2026; eliminate the use of ballot tabulation machines and force every ballot to be counted by hand; allow anyone to challenge the eligibility of voters; require all races be counted by midnight on Election Day; and create a national voter registration database.
The proposal also would have each ballot require a unique identifier, and each voter would need a unique PIN, which some have noted would erase the secret ballot requirement by Arizona law.
“First Trump said he’d impose new voting rules ‘whether approved by Congress or not’ and now extremists are pushing him to use emergency powers to control our elections,” U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly said on X. “That’s not how things work in our country, and a federal takeover of our elections violates our Constitution and the law. The American people will not stand by and let their voting rights be undermined.”
Trump and his allies have been pushing for the passage of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, more commonly known as the SAVE Act, with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem making a stop in Arizona to stump for it and fueling more baseless election conspiracy theories along the way.
She called Arizona’s elections an “absolute disaster” and made the false claim that there is widespread voter fraud by illegal immigrants. But when pressed by reporters to provide examples, Noem could not provide even a single one.
The proposed executive order is based around many of those baseless conspiracy theories, alluding to interference by foreign actors in machines and claims of widespread noncitizen voting, both of which have been found to be baseless.
The SAVE Act has passed out of the U.S. House of Representatives but faces a roadblock in the U.S. Senate because the GOP majority doesn’t have enough support to get around the filibuster. Trump has said that if it does not pass, he would look for alternative ways to enact it.
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February 25, 2026, edition of MS NOW's Deadline: White House
ALI VELSHI (HOST): So, Angelo, America is not a country that requires citizens to carry their proof of citizenship with them. It's just the way it is. I think some countries do. Some of them are authoritarian, but some are not. I usually like to point out Estonia, where they've got a national ID. It's digital. You don't lose it. And if you lose it, it's easy to get a new one and you don't pay for it. That's not the case with a birth certificate. If you can't find your birth certificate or your naturalization certificate or your passport, it's super hard and expensive to replace them, and voting may not be the reason why people do that. You can do a national ID if you want. I don't think Americans would go for that sort of thing. But if you were to do it, at least the onus should be on the government to provide that at low or zero cost.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): That's right. I mean, and that's been mentioned already. There are lots of things we can do to make voting simpler. And it's also worth noting that voting is supposed to be done locally, right? The mere fact that Trump has managed to even hijack the narrative around this is rather extraordinary because it's not his job. It's not his job. So that should be the first tell that something's amiss here.
And there are other clues going on. I mean, you know, there are lots of ways that we can make this easier and simpler. But I should also note that on the flip side, instead of investing and thinking about that, they've done something even more dangerous and insidious, and there are clues. If you look at the State of the Union, who was there? Nick Shirley. This is one of these crops of investigative influencers that, you know, he was largely responsible for creating a target on Minnesota's back by producing viralized content that the administration said, well, see that? Look at all that. We have to go in there and crack down on this.
They're doing this with votes too. They're going to take that exact scenario that you set up. All of the basic administrative discrepancies, the gaps that exist, the real things that we could fix, and actual -- not fraud or malfeasance, just general day-to-day. People are busy. The economy is bad. You don't have time to get your document. You know? And they're going to take that that vulnerability, and they're going to scandalize it and sensationalize it.
We're going to deal with a drumbeat of people just like that being validated by the federal government and then reverberated and amplified through this massive, right-wing echo chamber to create an hysteria around voting, and around this idea of voter fraud when in fact, it's exactly what you just said. Basic, I don't have my document. I don't have my birth certificate. It actually just -- I lost it. It evaporated. It got wet. I mean, there's a million reasons for it. And that system, the fact that he was there is a clue to what we can expect going forward.
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February 19, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
STEVE BANNON (HOST): But this is the thing, they've been doing this for years. This is why it's so important, we have to stick the landing now. We have two — we're going on two tracks here.
One, they're trying to, and the court's trying to, get the evidence back. The other is the Georgia Election Board, we have your back a thousand percent, you patriots on there, to basically take control of Fulton County. And they're gonna melt down on MSNBC.
And I'm saying you're gonna have ICE agents around the polls to make sure you can't have illegal aliens in there voting, and you're gonna have control of these — and by the way, take Maricopa County over next. They should take Philadelphia after that. You just have to run the tables on everything that was stolen in 2020.
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A conservative columnist is blasting President Donald Trump for continuing to spread the baseless conspiracy theory that he actually won the 2020 presidential election.
“Donald Trump’s belief in widespread fraud in the casting and counting of 2020 ballots is entailed by his belief that it is theoretically impossible for him to lose at anything,” wrote George F. Will, a former adviser to President Ronald Reagan and columnist to The Washington Post. “His certitude infects millions of Americans, some of whom think it inconceivable that he could ever be mistaken. Others doubt that anyone could win the presidency while obsessing about a complex conspiracy for which there is no evidence.”
Will correctly pointed out that Trump has a long history of claiming something was stolen from him when he loses — and it started well before politics. During a 2016 debate, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton accurately pointed out Trump accused the Emmy Awards of being rigged against him when he was snubbed for his work on the reality TV show “The Apprentice.” Earlier that year, after losing the Iowa caucuses to Ted Cruz in the 2016 GOP primaries, Trump baselessly alleged fraud and demanded a new election. Throughout the 2016 campaign Trump said he would only accept the result if he won, and after winning the Electoral College but losing the popular vote that year, he falsely blamed millions of illegal ballots and established a voter fraud commission that eventually disbanded without finding evidence of his allegations.
In 2020, Trump preemptively attacked mail-in voting, prematurely declared victory on Election Night and falsely claimed votes were being "dumped" against him. Biden ultimately won by a clear margin in the popular vote (81.3 million to 74.2 million) and the same Electoral College margin (306-232), but despite this Trump attempted a coup on January 6, 2021. To this day, Trump continues to falsely claim he won the 2020 election.
“Someone should read to him ‘Lost, Not Stolen,’ a 2022 report by eight conservatives (two former Republican senators, three former federal appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general, and two Republican election law specialists),” Will wrote. “They examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters. Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result.”
Will concluded, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.” Therefore he wrote of Trump, “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Will is not alone among conservatives warning about Trump’s authoritarian election-denying tendencies. Linking his 2020 denialism to his efforts to discredit Democrats if they win the 2026 midterms, a Republican who served as Maricopa County, Arizona county recorder explained Trump’s strategy.
"Almost every single Republican that I spoke with after the 2020 election ... knew that there was very little to Donald Trump's allegations of a stolen election,” Stephen Richer, who served when Trump attempted to steal the 2020 election, recently told The Atlantic. “At best, they stayed quiet. At worst, they went full-throated along with it because they knew it was a path to political riches."
He also said Republicans are planning to dispute however many number of Democratic victories they need to stay in power, then demand House Speaker Mike Johnson reject their seats.
“Speaker Mike Johnson, the outgoing speaker, will choose not to seat the new members, because they’re in allegedly disputed elections,” Richer said.
Conservative historian Robert Kagan expressed the same concern, arguing Trump has trained Republicans to oppose democratic outcomes unless they get what they want.
“I am worried, as I have said and others have been pointing out, about whether we will even have free and fair elections in 2026, let alone in 2028,” Kagan said. “I think Trump has a plan to disrupt those elections, and I don't think he's willing to allow Democrats to take control of one or both houses as could happen in a free election.”
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When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem spoke at a press conference in Scottsdale, Arizona on February 13, she echoed President Donald Trump's claim that the Grand Canyon State is a hotbed of voter fraud. But when a reporter asked her for specific examples, Noem couldn't provide any and remarked, "Oh, I'm sure there's many of them."
In an opinion column published on February 17, MS NOW's Steve Benen emphasizes that MAGA Republicans have a pattern of making voter fraud claims but never offer concrete proof to back them up.
"The point of her trip to Arizona was to advance Republican conspiracy theories related to voting and election administration," Benen explains. "In fact, the South Dakotan insisted, during her trip, that Arizona is 'an absolute disaster' when it comes to elections…. When a reporter asked whether she was aware of any examples of voter fraud actually happening in the state, the secretary pointed to nothing."
Benen continues, "This led to ample pushback from state officials, who explained in detail that the state's system of elections is already secure and that they're already doing what Noem says needs to be done…. When a powerful federal official travels across the country to accuse a state of having a system of elections that's become 'an absolute disaster,' she really only has one job: Prove it. The very least Noem could have done is to offer one example of fraud."
The MS NOW columnist and "Rachel Maddow Show" producer notes that similarly, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) claims that undocumented immigrants are voting in U.S. elections in big numbers but never offers substantial proof to support his claims.
"It's worth emphasizing that after the 2020 election," Benen recalls, "Republicans thought they'd finally come up with a real example of voter fraud: A Nevada man named Donald Kirk Hartle claimed that someone had cast a ballot in the 2020 election on behalf of his late wife, who'd died three years earlier…. Except they were wrong."
Benen adds, "Hartle had lied and ultimately pleaded guilty to having cast the ballot himself. The single best example Republicans could come up with wasn't real. Six years later, Noem is 'sure' there are 'many'” such examples — but she just can't tell you about a single one."
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SEE MIZZOU AG STAFFER NETWORK
AN 2 26
The Missouri prosecutor overseeing an investigation into the 2020 vote in Fulton County, Georgia, has taken part in meetings since last fall with lawyers tasked by President Donald Trump to reinvestigate his loss to Joe Biden.
Thomas Albus, whom Trump appointed last year as U.S. attorney for Missouri’s Eastern District, has had multiple meetings set up with top administration lawyers to discuss election integrity.
At those meetings was Ed Martin, a Justice Department lawyer who until recently led a group investigating what the president has described as the department’s “weaponization” against him and his allies, according to a source familiar with the meetings who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
White House lawyer Kurt Olsen, who has been tasked with reinvestigating the 2020 election, also was directed to join at least one of the meetings, according to the source. Both Martin and Olsen worked on behalf of Trump to try to overturn the 2020 election results, and a federal court sanctioned Olsen for making false claims about the reliability of voting machines in Arizona.
The meetings reveal new details about the length of the preparations for, and people involved in, the January FBI raid on Fulton County, which election and legal experts told ProPublica was a significant escalation in Trump’s breaking of democratic norms.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi picked Albus and has granted him special authority to handle election-related cases nationwide, even though his earlier work as a federal prosecutor didn’t involve election law or election-related cases. The meetings with Martin, Olsen and other lawyers for the Justice Department were described by the source as being about “election integrity,” a term the Trump administration has used to describe investigations into its false claims that elections are rigged.
Martin, Olsen, Albus and others declined to answer questions about the meetings and other detailed questions from ProPublica. The White House and the Justice Department also did not respond to questions.
The meetings came at a particularly crucial time.
Martin’s efforts to obtain election materials from Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold, had hit a wall. In August, he sent a letter demanding that a Fulton County judge allow him to access tens of thousands of absentee ballots for “an investigation into election integrity here at the Department of Justice,” but he had reportedly received no reply.
Martin explained to Steve Bannon on a podcast that aired around the time of the meetings that although the White House had given Olsen the official mandate to reinvestigate the 2020 election, “inside DOJ, myself and a couple of others have been working also on the same topic” — including getting the Fulton County ballots. But Martin described progress as a “challenge.”
Bannon, who served as Trump’s chief strategist in his first term, asked why Martin didn’t just “get some U.S. marshals to go down and seize” the ballots.
Martin suggested it was easier said than done, but agreed: “Look, we’ve got to get” the ballots.
Before long, Albus and Olsen were interviewing witnesses for their case. Kevin Moncla, a conservative researcher, told ProPublica that he spoke to Albus and Olsen a couple of times, both together and separately, around the turn of the year. He identified himself as Witness 7 in the affidavit that persuaded a judge to sign off on the raid, and the affidavit mentions a 263-page report he authored that activists believe may have justified the raid, ProPublica has reported. Moncla has a long history of working with Olsen, dating back to an attempt by Kari Lake, a Republican candidate for governor in Arizona, to overturn her 2022 loss.
Just a few weeks after those interviews, in late January, Albus was listed as the government attorney on the search warrant that authorized the seizure of roughly 700 boxes of election material in Georgia, far outside of Albus’ usual jurisdiction.
Former U.S. attorneys from both parties said it was rare for a federal prosecutor from one region to take on cases in other states or be granted the nationwide authority Albus has been given.
Under Trump, senior roles across the White House, DOJ and FBI have increasingly been filled by a small, interconnected group of Missouri lawyers with longstanding ties to one another.
Another top federal official in the meetings was Jesus Osete, the principal deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights. Before joining the Justice Department, Osete worked in the Missouri attorney general’s office, where he represented the state in at least five lawsuits against the Biden administration regarding vaccine mandates, immigration and other policies. Osete did not respond to requests for comment or to a detailed list of questions.
When the FBI raided Fulton County’s election center, Andrew Bailey, another lawyer from the same political circles, was in charge. Before joining the FBI as deputy director, he had used his position as Missouri’s attorney general to pursue high-profile cases against prominent Democrats and said he supported all efforts to investigate Biden, his family and his administration.
A spokesperson for the FBI declined to answer detailed questions about Bailey.
Last year, Roger Keller, a veteran federal prosecutor from Albus’ office, was brought in to help prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James for alleged mortgage fraud in Virginia after the original career prosecutors on the case were replaced by political appointees. After a judge dismissed the case, two federal grand juries declined to indict James again, and Keller returned to Missouri.
Trump’s solicitor general, D. John Sauer, previously served as Missouri’s solicitor general under state attorneys general Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt. He and Schmitt signed Missouri’s amicus brief supporting efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Sauer later represented Trump in his presidential-immunity case, successfully arguing before the Supreme Court that Trump was entitled to broad immunity from prosecution.
Albus’ connection to the other Missouri lawyers goes back decades. Unlike some of the others, though, he has never held elected office or had a high public profile, nor has he waged culture-war campaigns like Bailey or Martin. Instead, he spent most of his career as a federal prosecutor and as a judge in a Missouri state circuit court.
Emails show Albus exchanging brief messages with Martin in 2007, when Albus was an assistant U.S. attorney in St. Louis and Martin was chief of staff to then-Gov. Matt Blunt. The emails were part of records from the Blunt administration that became public after being released under Missouri’s Sunshine Law.
In the email exchange, Albus put in a good word for a St. Louis lawyer who was a finalist for an appellate court judgeship, and Blunt ultimately selected that candidate.
Albus served as first assistant to Schmitt from early 2019 until Albus was appointed by Gov. Mike Parson to fill a circuit court judge vacancy in early 2020. Schmitt, now a U.S. senator, praised Albus as “one of the finest prosecutors I have ever met” when endorsing his nomination for U.S. attorney in December.
Lawyers who appeared in Albus’ court rated him as well prepared, professional and attentive, according to Missouri judicial performance reviews. They said he followed the evidence, applied the law correctly and gave clear reasons for his rulings.
Albus came under more critical scrutiny after Trump named him interim U.S. attorney last summer. Much of that attention centered on a fraud case he inherited when he took office. Prosecutors alleged that developers in St. Louis falsely claimed to be using minority- and women-owned subcontractors to qualify for city tax breaks, conduct the Justice Department has historically treated as wire fraud.
One of the defendants was represented by lawyer Brad Bondi, the brother of Pam Bondi.
The developers’ lawyers argued that even if the government’s claims were true, they were legally irrelevant because the Trump administration had taken the position that tax breaks based on race or gender were unlawful. Albus accepted those arguments and dropped the case. As part of the resolution, Albus personally hand-delivered to City Hall a check of about $1 million from one of the developers’ companies as restitution. He told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he intervened “to make it clear” his office wanted to drop charges and hand-delivered the check “to make sure they got it.”
In a letter to Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Congressional Democrats said the dismissal of the St. Louis case and other cases in which the Justice Department intervened on behalf of Brad Bondi’s clients raised “significant broader ethical concerns.” In the St. Louis case, and in a separate matter involving another Brad Bondi client whose charges were dropped, a Justice Department spokesperson said Pam Bondi’s relationship with her brother had “no bearing on the outcome.”
A spokesperson for the developers said their lawyers communicated only with the U.S. attorney’s office in St. Louis about the case and had no direct contact with Pam Bondi. He said the dismissal reflected “a recognition that this case should never have been brought in the first place.” Brad Bondi did not respond to a request for comment.
Weeks later, around the time of Albus’ meetings about election integrity, he posed with Martin in Martin’s office, flanked by a framed photo of Trump and a copy of “A Choice, Not an Echo,” the influential conservative manifesto by Phyllis Schlafly arguing that Republican voters were being manipulated by party elites and the media.
Martin posted the photo on X with the caption, “Good morning, America. How are ya’?”
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MMA
After years of right-wing media and election deniers pushing outrageous claim Venezuela stole the 2020 US election, the Trump administration is now probing for evidence
For over five years, right-wing figures have falsely alleged voting machine companies Dominion and Smartmatic were based in Venezuela or had ties to Venezuelan leaders
Written by Alex Kaplan & Reed McMaster
Research contributions from Zachary Pleat
Published 02/10/26
For over five years, right-wing media and election deniers have pushed long-winded conspiracy theories claiming that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen by the Venezuelan government via Smartmatic and Dominion voting machines. Figures on the right have falsely claimed that these companies were based in Venezuela, had ties to former Presidents Hugo Chávez or Nicolás Maduro, used software in their voting machines that could override security features and flip votes, and were even used to rig Venezuelan and U.S. elections.
Following the Trump administration's recent capture of Maduro and the FBI's raid of an election center in Fulton County, Georgia, election deniers are now openly declaring that the government will prove that their baseless election fraud claims about 2020 are correct.
The Trump administration is probing 2020 election fraud claims, elating election deniers
The administration began a major push to investigate President Donald Trump's repeatedly debunked claims that he won the 2020 election, with Trump's Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard making herself a public face in the probe and being on-site for an FBI raid of a Fulton County, Georgia, election center. According to The Guardian, the warrant for the FBI's January 28 raid “sought all ballots from the 2020 election in Fulton county, tabulator tapes, ballot images and voter rolls.” ABC reported Gabbard arranged a phone call between Trump and the FBI agents conducting the raid. CNN, [1/31/26; ABC News, 2/2/26; The Guardian, 1/28/26]
Election deniers cheered the Fulton County raid, saying it's “exactly what” they previously asked Trump to do. Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne claimed that the raid shows “they’ve crossed the Rubicon” and it was “exactly what we were asking him [Trump] to do” in 2020. Trump's former lawyer Sidney Powell, who has promoted baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, said she was “hopeful that means this administration is taking seriously the massive fraud that I believe occurred in the 2020 election.” Byrne — who has been a prominent fundraiser of election denial efforts — attended the December 2020 Oval Office meeting, alongside Powell and Michael Flynn, where Trump was urged to seize voting machines. Media Matters, [2/5/26; The New York Times, 1/31/22; NPR, 10/19/23; The Washington Post, 12/6/21; The Guardian, 7/20/24]
Gabbard also led an investigation last spring that was reportedly related to “claims that Venezuela had hacked voting machines in Puerto Rico,” where a U.S. attorney has allegedly been in touch with figures who have prominently promoted unfounded claims Venezuela helped steal the 2020 election. The Guardian reported U.S. attorney for Puerto Rico Stephen Muldrow, “a staunch Republican and Trump supporter,” had been briefed on “the old voting conspiracy and the allegations that Venezuela helped rig elections worldwide” by former CIA officer Gary Berntsen and Venezuelan expatriate Martin Rodil. Byrne has hyped Muldrow’s involvement, saying it meant an investigation into these conspiracy theories is “about as clean and squeaky clean as you get.” Reuters, [2/4/26; The Guardian, 11/21/25; LindellTV, The Absolute Truth with Emerald Robinson, 2/5/26]
After the Trump administration captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a January 3 raid and brought him to the United States to face trial, MAGA influencers suggested it was linked to the conspiracy theory about Venezuela's involvement in the 2020 election. Trump appeared to endorse the suggestion that the raid was retaliation for 2020, repeatedly amplifying references to the purported role Venezuela played on Truth Social. CNN, [1/3/26; Media Matters, 1/5/26]
## Voting machine companies Dominion and Smartmatic — common targets of 2020 election conspiracy theories — were not based in Venezuela, nor did they have ties to the country's leaders
Right-wing media used Dominion and Smartmatic voting machines to create a boogeyman for the 2020 election. For years, right-wing media figures falsely claimed Dominion and Smartmatic voting machines switched votes from Trump to Joe Biden and created election irregularities. Media Matters, [11/2/21, 12/22/20, 9/6/24]
Smartmatic and Dominion have sued several right-wing outlets that promoted conspiracy theories tying the companies to the purported 2020 election theft, with some of the outlets paying out multimillion dollar settlements. Fox News, which currently faces a $2.7 billion lawsuit from Smartmatic, ultimately settled a similar suit from Dominion for a record $787.5 million in 2023; filings in the case show that Fox executives and stars privately acknowledged that the election had not been tainted by large-scale fraud, even as the network broadcast false claims tying Dominion to Venezuela and suggesting it had rigged the 2020 vote. Business Insider, [4/18/23; Politico, 8/19/25; Media Matters, 1/21/21, 7/5/22, 3/2/23, 8/21/25]
Two Smartmatic founders are from Venezuela, but the company was founded in Florida and incorporated in the United States. A fact check from Reuters additionally reported that “Smartmatic confirms on its website that the company is not Venezuelan, adding, ‘Smartmatic has no ties to governments or political parties of any country.’” Reuters, [12/14/20]
Smartmatic voting machines were only used in one county during the 2020 election. FactCheck.org explained: “Apart from the dubious support for this conspiracy theory, the company it’s targeting doesn’t do much work in the United States. Smartmatic says it provided voting equipment to only one U.S. county in the 2020 election. Los Angeles uses the company’s VSAP touchscreen machines, according to the California Secretary of State’s list of certified voting equipment used in each county.” The article further explained that Los Angeles’ 2020 election results were similar to its 2016 election results. FactCheck.org, [11/25/20]
Dominion Voting Systems was founded in Toronto, Canada, and in recent years was based in Denver, Colorado. Dominion responded to false claims of Venezuelan ties in a lawsuit, stating: “Dominion was not created in or for Venezuela, has never been located there, and is not owned by Smartmatic or Venezuelans. Dominion has never provided machines or any of its software or technology to Venezuela, nor has it ever participated in any elections in Venezuela.” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, [10/10/25; US Dominion, Inc. v. Powell, 1/8/21]
## Right-wing media figures and election deniers repeatedly pushed false claims that Dominion and Smartmatic were Venezuelan or tied to Chávez or Maduro
On Fox Business, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani acknowledged Dominion was a Canadian company before claiming it was “a Venezuelan company that has Chinese parts in it.” Media Matters, [11/16/20]
On Fox News, Giuliani said that Smartmatic is “a Venezuelan company.” Giuliani further claimed that Smartmatic was “founded by Chávez,” and later claimed it’s “really being run by people that are close to Maduro and Chávez.” Fox News, *Sunday Morning Futures*, [11/15/20, 11/15/20]
On Fox Business, Sidney Powell argued Smartmatic “all Venezuelan and Cuban and essentially communist money.” Powell claimed, “This affidavit also explains it [Smartmatic] has been used to change election results all over the world. And it's all Venezuelan and Cuban and essentially communist money that's been doing this. It's a foreign-owned company.” Fox Business, *Lou Dobbs Tonight*, [11/16/20]
Newsmax contributor Dick Morris claimed, “The Dominion software is licensed from … Smartmatic, which is [a] Venezuelan-owned and -controlled company. So we’re dealing here with the most incredible kind of systemic fraud.” Morris added that “this is the exact same system they’re using in Georgia on January 5,” the date of a then-upcoming runoff election. Newsmax, *American Agenda*, [12/15/20]
Election deniers Gary Berntsen and Ralph Pezzullo argued that despite Smartmatic being founded in America, it was started with “source code” owned by the Venezuelan government. They also stated Smartmatic was “winning contracts in election districts all across the United States and it's Venezuelan owned,” that Smartmatic “bought another company called Sequoia,” and “from Sequoia, they were forced because of the CFIUS investigation to sell it to Dominion.” The Guardian reported that Berntsen promoted “the old voting conspiracy and the allegations that Venezuela helped rig elections worldwide,” and “in September, Pezzullo published an e-book called Stolen Elections: the Takedown of Democracies Worldwide, which described the Venezuela conspiracy theories.” The Guardian, [11/21/25; Going Rogue with Lara Logan, 11/21/25, 11/21/25]
Election denier Martin Rodil: “And then slowly but very steady, they were building a Smartmatic, then they purchased Sequoia in Colorado, and then they ended [up] controlling the software used by Dominion.” Rodil continued: “So you have two problems here. You have not just an election problem, but you have a counterintelligence problem where a country like Venezuela — which is completely ignored but it becomes some sort of proxy for China, for Russia, for Iran, for every enemy of the United States — was allowed to do everything they could inside the U.S.” According to The Guardian, Rodil promoted “the old voting conspiracy and the allegations that Venezuela helped rig elections worldwide” along with Berntsen. Patriot Party News, [11/19/25; The Guardian, 11/21/25]
One America News host Lilia Fifield, citing The Gateway Pundit, claimed “Smartmatic is partially owned by the Maduro regime and George Soros.” The segment’s chyron claimed the “Soros-backed firm installed socialism in Venezuela.” OAN, [11/17/20]
Mark Levin: “What in the hell are we doing with a company that had any ties with Venezuela’s government? ... This is Smartmatic with ties to the Hugo Chávez machine.” Westwood One, *The Mark Levin Show*, [11/16/20]
## Right-wing media and election deniers alleged that Smartmatic software could override security features and flip votes
Rush Limbaugh claimed that Dominion and Smartmatic “both have the same purpose ... to rig elections, and they are used in conjunction with one another.”Limbaugh: “Dominion is the software company out of Venezuela. Smartmatic is a piece of software that does all of the conniving. And they’re both manufactured — the same outfit — and they both have the same purpose, is to rig elections, and they are used in conjunction with one another.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Rush Limbaugh Show*, [11/17/20]
Fox host Maria Bartiromo repeated claims by Sidney Powell that Smartmatic software has “built-in functionality allowing the administrators to override security features.” She said, “Smartmatic election software was developed, Sidney Powell says, in Venezuela, with porous security and built-in functionality allowing the administrators to override security features.” Fox News, *Sunday Morning Futures*, [11/22/20]
On Fox Business, Powell also argued Smartmatic “had been used to change election results all over the world.” Fox Business, *Lou Dobbs Tonight*, [11/16/20]
Then-Fox host and current U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro called Trump lawyers’ claims that Dominion was started in Venezuela and Smartmatic software could flip votes “serious allegations.” She stated, “The president's lawyers alleging a company called Dominion, which they say started in Venezuela with Cuban money and with the assistance of Smartmatic software, a backdoor is capable of flipping votes.” Pirro added: “These are serious allegations, but the media has no interest in any of this. But you and I do, as we should.” Fox News, *Justice with Judge Jeanine*, [11/21/20]
## Right-wing media and election deniers repeated the suggestion that Chávez or Maduro were behind Smartmatic and Dominion efforts to rig Venezuelan and U.S. elections
Patrick Byrne argued Chávez directed the Venezuelan immigrants who founded Smartmatic to build a “system that can rig me an election.” During a 2023 interview, he stated Chávez “went to these three young guys and he told them to build a system that can rig me an election. They moved to Florida, to Boca, and they started a Delaware company called Smartmatic. And then Smartmatic rigged the election.” In 2024, Byrne also said that he “hacked the government of Venezuela” and has “stolen everything. And everything we’ve been asserting from November 4 [of 2020] is true.” He went on to say he had Dominion “source code” and the software is “Venezuelan junk, just as we’ve been telling you from a week after the election. And we have all the proof. We have everything.” Rumble, *The Courtenay Turner Podcast*, [5/19/23; Media Matters, 7/29/24]
Discussing Smartmatic in a stream on Locals, Byrne read from an affidavit about the 2020 election claiming that “it took the voting system approximately two hours — the operator — two hours to make the adjustments to the vote for Radonski to Maduro” in Venezuela’s 2013 election. Byrne read, “Then when they turned the Internet back on and the online reporting was up and running, they checked each screen state by state. And then at that moment, the Smartmatic system changed the votes from Radonski to Maduro. By the time the system operator finished, they had achieved a convincing but narrow victory of 200,000 votes for Maduro.” He added, “Is any of this sounding familiar?” Locals, [12/7/24]
Then-Newsmax correspondent Emerald Robinson claimed that Smartmatic software was used to “fix elections in Venezuela” for Hugo Chávez. The Washington Post reported that as part of its lawsuit, “Smartmatic has pointed to a Nov. 17, 2020, remark by Newsmax correspondent Emerald Robinson, who falsely asserted that ‘Smartmatic software is what was used by Hugo Chávez and his successors to fix elections in Venezuela,’ and a comment made by Newsmax host Chris Salcedo, who said that Smartmatic software comes with a ‘directive’ on ‘how you change the results’ of an election.” The Washington Post, [9/20/24]
On Mike Lindell's streaming channel, Robinson talked up how a “team of wonderful American patriots” — naming “Patrick Byrne and Gary Berntsen” — had proof of the Venezuelan regime rigging U.S. elections. She stated, “This team had already recruited more than a dozen people, whistleblowers, who knew exactly how the rig system was built in Venezuela because they were former engineers from Venezuela who had worked for Smartmatic, and for Nicolás Maduro, and before that Hugo Chávez, who commissioned the building of this software so he could steal his referendum in 2004 to corruptly remain in power. Now, I've spoken to some of these whistleblowers myself. I've asked them about their information, their evidence, their work experience, the data, exactly how they steal it.” LindellTV, *The Absolute Truth with Emerald Robinson*, [12/1/25]
Following Trump's capture of Maduro, Infowars host Alex Jones argued it was about stopping Smartmatic from “stealing our elections.” He claimed, “So out of survival, out of existential threat, I understand why Trump went into Venezuela. The total election fraud — Smartmatic is in the five big voting machine companies. It's been certified, confirmed, stealing our elections. They steal elections in 100-plus other countries. They're a globalist command base with the CIA, the EU, NATO, the Chicoms, and the whole U.S. deep state has really been at the top of the pyramid in Venezuela. Trump's ending all that. And so the U.S. was already, through the deep state, in control of Venezuela. That's the big secret.” Infowars, *The Alex Jones Show*, [1/5/26]
Then-Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, citing “a whistleblower’s stunning affidavit,” claimed that “Smartmatic’s technology was used to rig elections in Venezuela.” Fox Business, *Lou Dobbs Tonight*, [11/19/20]
Powell told Fox Business that an independent investigation showed Dominion voting machines were “created for the benefit of Venezuela.” She stated, “We've known from early on in our independent investigation that the entire system was created for the benefit of Venezuela and Hugo Chávez to rig elections to make sure he continued winning. And then it was passed on to Mr. Maduro to do the same. And we know it was exported to other countries by virtue of some of the Dominion executives that proceeded to go about and essentially sell elections to the highest bidder.” Fox Business, *Lou Dobbs Tonight*, [12/10/20]
On Dobbs’ Fox Business show, Rudy Giuliani insisted that Smartmatic was founded by Chávez for “the specific purpose of fixing elections.” He stated that Smartmatic is “a company that was founded in 2005 in Venezuela for the specific purpose of fixing elections. That’s their expertise.” In the same show, he claimed, Smartmatic “was founded by Chávez” and was now being used “to call votes in America because their specialty in Venezuela is cheating.” Fox Business, *Lou Dobbs Tonight*, [11/18/20, 11/18/20]
//
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### MAGA media link Trump's overthrow of Maduro to 2020 election conspiracy theories
:{:{01/05/26}:
11/02/21
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AN 2 26
TENT PLACEMENT
As President Trump suggests the federal government should “nationalize” and take over the elections process from the states, we speak with Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes. He is the former county recorder for Maricopa County, Arizona, and oversaw elections there in 2020. The Justice Department has sued Arizona and over 20 other states for their full voter registration lists. “No means no,” Fontes says in response to the Trump administration’s encroachment on state authority. “We should not be handing over any of our personal identifying information to the president. Not only should we not be doing it, but it’s against the law for me to fulfill the request from the Department of Justice.”
*This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: President Trump doubled down on his calls to “nationalize” elections in the United States, as he continues to falsely claim he won the 2020 election over President Biden. On Monday, Trump appeared on a podcast hosted by Dan Bongino, who recently resigned as FBI deputy director.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The Republicans should say we want to take over. We should take over the voting, the voting in at least — many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.
AMY GOODMAN: Under the Constitution, U.S. elections are governed by states and administered by county and municipal officials in thousands of precincts. Trump was asked about his call to nationalize elections Tuesday.
KAITLAN COLLINS: What exactly did you mean when you said that you should nationalize elections? And which 15 states are you talking about?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I want to see elections be honest. And if a state can’t run an election, I think the people behind me should do something about it, because, you know, if you think about it, a state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don’t know why the federal government doesn’t do them anyway. But when you see some of these states about how horribly they run their elections, what a disgrace it is, I think the federal government — when you see crooked elections — and we had plenty of them — and, by the way, we had them last time, but go to 2020 and look at the facts that are coming out — rigged, crooked elections. If we have areas — take a look at Detroit. Take a look at Pennsylvania. Take a look at Philadelphia. You go take a look at Atlanta. Look at some of the places that — horrible corruption on elections. And the federal government should not allow that. The federal government should get involved. These are agents of the federal government to count the votes. If they can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.
KAITLAN COLLINS: But the Constitution says that it should be states that administer elections.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Go ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: Trump’s remarks come days after the FBI raided an election facility in Fulton County, Georgia, and seized truckloads of ballots and documents, something like 700 boxes, from the 2020 election. U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was present at the raid and later used her cellphone to let President Trump speak to the FBI agents, a move that has alarmed former Justice Department officials.
This all comes as Republicans continue to face major electoral losses. On Tuesday, Democrat Taylor Rehmet won a Texas state Senate seat, receiving 57% of the vote in a district that Trump had won by 17 percentage points in 2024. Trump has publicly expressed fear he’ll be impeached again if Democrats win back control of the House in November.
To look more at President Trump’s attacks on the nation’s voting system, we go to Phoenix, Arizona, where we’re joined by Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s secretary of state. He is the former county recorder for Maricopa County, Arizona. He oversaw the elections there in 2020. The Justice Department has sued Arizona and over 20 other states for their full voter registration lists.
Secretary Adrian Fontes, thanks so much for joining us. If you can start off by just responding to President Trump saying he wants to federalize, to nationalize the elections, and what exactly that means?
ADRIAN FONTES: Well, what it means is that you, as an American, if you are comfortable right now in the face of this rhetoric, then you are with the regime. It’s really that simple. This is the moment where the American public should be exercising its power under the First Amendment to stand and be counted. What we have right now is sort of a “welcome to the Third World” doormat, and we’re walking right over it as if nothing is going on. And so, very clearly, my call is not what my reaction is. It ought to be what your reaction is as an American. Again, if you’re comfortable, you’re with the White House.
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about what it means that Arizona has refused to hand over the voter rolls. It’s very interesting. I was just watching Minnesota Governor Walz, who, you know, was responding to Pam Bondi saying maybe they would pull out, you know, end the surge, if Minnesota would give over the voter rolls. I want to go right now to Governor Walz.
GOV. TIM WALZ: Look, I think everybody understands what the last request was, totally unrelated to anything on the voter files. This is again, as the attorney general said, Donald Trump telling everybody that the election was rigged, who started all this nightmare for America — has nothing to do with it.
AMY GOODMAN: So, he believes that, ultimately, this isn’t even about immigration, what’s happening in Minnesota and the killing of two U.S. citizens there by immigration agents, that this is about getting control of the voter rolls. I mean, Pam Bondi specifically said she wants those voter rolls. A number of states — what, about a dozen? — have said they’ll hand them over. But Arizona, your state, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, says no. What does that mean?
ADRIAN FONTES: Well, no means no. And what’s happening in Wisconsin with that extortion letter — “We’ll take our gang off the streets if you hand us, you know, this thing that we value” — speaks again to what I said earlier. Look, if they were comfortable with their policies and they were excited about facing the public, they would love to have an election. They would love to have the states just running things the way they did. And the clip earlier, where Donald Trump said, “Oh, 2020 was corrupt, but 2024 was OK,” you know, it just speaks to the notion that he understands very, very clearly that there are consequences to leadership when facing the power of the American people. And that power regularly gets exercised through the normal process of elections.
Elections are the predictable, normal — I’ve likened them to a golden thread that runs through the fabric of our society. It binds everything together. And what he’s trying to do is pull that golden thread out and disintegrate the entire fabric of our society and throw us into chaos, unpredictability. And that’s bad for business. It’s bad for science. It’s bad for the arts. It’s bad for innovation. It’s bad for, you know, entrepreneurs. It’s bad for everyone.
This is a moment right now when, like here in Arizona, we should not be handing over any of our personal identifying information to the president. Not only should we not be doing it, but it’s against the law for me to fulfill the request from the Department of Justice. But let me make one thing very, very clear here, as well: The Department of Justice has never asked the state of Arizona, through my office or any other means that I’m aware of, for the regularly available voter list, that is available through a public records request. What they’ve asked for is all of the personal identifying information that we are charged by law to keep confidential, under penalty of felony conviction. OK? We’re talking about mothers’ last names, date and month of birth, part or whole of your Social Security number, tribal ID numbers. These are the things that we are charged to keep confidential, and the Department of Justice is asking for it. And I’m just saying no. So, to your question: What does no mean? No means no.
AMY GOODMAN: You oversaw the 2020 election in Maricopa County, another extremely important county, you know, another very, very important county in voting, in national elections, also targeted by a conspiracy and misinformation campaign to say that the national election was fraudulent. What’s your reaction to this latest step by the Trump administration to seize ballots in Georgia? And six years later, how has that turmoil from 2020 impacted voters and politics in Arizona?
ADRIAN FONTES: Well, let’s just be clear: The turmoil in 2020 was not turmoil as it pertains to the administration of the election. The 2020 election was run by regular U.S. citizens like you, me and the viewers of this program. It’s just folks who show up and do this work every couple years, whenever they’re called upon, because Americans value good, solid, clean, fair and accessible elections, so we just do that work. The turmoil is caused by those folks who are out in the parking lot of our offices, at our warehouse with their long rifles, including the Q Shaman and Alex Jones and those types. That’s where the turmoil came from, the folks who wanted to disrupt the election system.
And let me be really clear about something: I was on that ballot in 2020 with Donald Trump, and I lost my reelection bid, just like Donald Trump did, in a clean election, a free and fair election. Now, since I’ve become secretary of state after that, we’ve made sure to maintain the same kind of integrity, the same processes, for the most part, just improving some access for voters across the state.
What really bothers me here is that so many Americans are just depending on somebody else to make sure that things go well. They’re depending on somebody else to do the job. We, as Americans, individually, every single one of us, have not just the right, but the duty, to stand up when things like this happen. And so, when we don’t have outrage, when we don’t actually move that outrage into action, we’re essentially complicit with what is happening. And so, I’m doing everything that I can in my office to not only maintain the integrity and the lawful course of the actions of the secretary of state, but I’m also calling on American citizens to be lawful and peaceful and assert our rights and our power. Remember, if they weren’t afraid of our power, they wouldn’t be trying to squelch it and keep us from using it.
AMY GOODMAN: Secretary Fontes, I wanted to read from the Arizona Mirror in 2020. “Trump himself has repeatedly fanned the flames, alleging without evidence that Dominion machines deleted 2.7 million votes for him and tweeting … 'Now it is learned that the horrendous Dominion Voting System was used in Arizona (and big in Nevada). No wonder the result was a very close loss!'” And again, you were formerly the recorder for Maricopa County through 2021.
And I wanted to go to this other issue. These two are connected. Atlantic magazine recently published an article headlined ”MAGA Thinks Maduro Will Prove Trump Won in 2020.” The article quotes MyPillow founder Mike Lindell saying, quote, “I’m hoping now that Maduro will actually come clean and tell us everything about the machines and how they steal the elections,” unquote. Some have speculated Trump could pardon Maduro in exchange for him stating Venezuela interfered in the 2020 election, even though no evidence of that exists. Again, that, I was reading from The Atlantic.
Since you were really at the heart of it then — and Fox had to pay something like over $750 million, three-quarters of a billion dollars, for libeling Dominion Systems. But can you comment on all of this and the presence of — this is such a complicated issue, but the presence of Tulsi Gabbard, saying she was there in Georgia because she’s interested in foreign interference in the election, sort of stringing this whole thing together?
ADRIAN FONTES: You know, I’m reminded of some of those scenes we see in sitcoms sometimes, where there’s a big board with a red thread that just kind of goes from here to there in conspiracy theories. But this time, there’s a little ketchup splattered on the wall, as well.
The bottom line is this: The elections in America have been free and fair since their inception. There have been minor issues here and there that get worked out through the courts. But it is in the courts, by the way, where that settlement that you mentioned happened. It is under oath and through the regular process of law and procedure that we end up with the just results. And in that case, the just results were someone was held accountable for the lies.
In the world of politics, the courts will give great deference, because they want politicians to be able to share ideas. And so, the lies that are being spread about our elections get to go a little bit further, except when they get into the courts and when you have actual accountability. Remember, after the 2020 election, there were like 60 or 61 cases, and not a single one showed any actual evidence of wrongdoing on the part of elections officials. And being in Maricopa County, boy, let me tell you — and Maricopa, by the way, at the time and still is the second-largest voting jurisdiction in the United States of America. We’re talking about two-and-a-half million voters in the metro Phoenix area — no small potatoes. And it was a tough task. But I had a great team in 2020, and we did an amazing job.
So, kudos to the folks on the ground, kudos to the folks in the polling places, kudos to everyone who knows that they can stand on their integrity, they can stand on actual history, and we can put all of the conspiracy theories aside, except that the greatest threat to American elections and our republic is the idea that Donald Trump is still lying about the 2020 election. Everything else is just a symptom of that illness, and we need to figure out a way to get past that. We, the American public, have to stand up to this president. We have to stand up to our own president, as was charged by our founders, to make sure that, in our discomfort, we exercise our power and we move forward as a nation, so that we can get past this, and we can go back to being the folks who can innovate, who can create, who can just hang out and love one another once in a while, without every single day having to worry about the grievance of the resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
AMY GOODMAN: Adrian Fontes, I want to thank you for being with us, secretary of state for Arizona, elected in 2022. Previously, he was the Maricopa County recorder, who oversaw the 2020 elections.
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TENT PALCEMENT
In the days since President Donald Trump called for the federal government to “nationalize” elections, two former high ranking officials from Pennsylvania, former Gov. Tom Corbett and former U.S. District Court Judge John Jones III, have spoken out.
Both have a history in Republican politics. Corbett was the last Republican governor of the commonwealth, leaving office in 2015, and Jones ran as a Republican for Congress before being appointed to the U.S. District Court bench by GOP President George W. Bush.
But that hasn’t stopped them from speaking out against the party’s current standard bearer, President Trump, especially when it comes to matters pertaining to elections.
The two have been involved with a nonprofit called Keep Our Republic, which was founded in 2020 to push back on unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud through civic education and work with elections officials in swing states.
Corbett and Jones spoke to the Capital-Star about what the U.S. Constitution says about what powers the federal government has to administer elections (unambiguously, very little), and their concerns and hopes for the 2026 election as the Trump administration continues to sow distrust in its potential outcome.
“The constitution’s pretty clear that the manner of the elections is left up to the states, and not to the federal government,” Corbett said. “The president would like to have it differently, but I don’t think he can have it differently.”
Elaborating on his comment that he’d like to “nationalize” elections, Trump named Philadelphia as a county he would like to see the federal government have a presence. Philadelphia was also a target of Trump’s unprecedented efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, cited in numerous failed lawsuits and false claims about widespread fraud.
But Corbett, who also served as Pennsylvania Attorney General, says Article I, Section Four of the Constitution spells out unambiguously that election administration is a power given to states and their legislatures, not the Executive Branch or Congress.
“We can wish to win the lottery, but it’s not gonna happen,” Corbett said of Trump’s goals. “Unless he’s found some scholar who thinks it can be done, and he can say, ‘Well, that scholar says it can,’ I don’t think there’s anything there.”
Trump and his allies notably did cite fringe legal theories in some of their attempts to overturn the 2020 election. However, they did not pass muster in courts.
That’s why Corbett’s not particularly concerned about the federal government taking over elections in part of the state, despite what Trump has said and may even attempt.
“I think the courts would become very involved, very quickly,” Corbett said. “They’re not gonna agree with just allegations. They’re gonna be looking for facts.”
And Corbett is confident that federal courts would uphold state and local governments’ abilities to administer elections on their own terms. As precedent, he cited the dozens of lawsuits brought by Trump in 2020 attempting to have the results of that year’s election dismissed or overturned. Virtually all were thrown out, and a number resulted in disciplinary actions against lawyers working for the president.
But Corbett isn’t convinced Trump’s end goal is to have the federal government administer elections.
“I don’t know the president personally, and I’ve never read his book, “The Art of the Deal,” but I think this is a negotiation tactic on his part,” he said. “I’m not sure what the endgame is at the moment … But I think it’s a political ploy.”
The goal, Corbett said, could be to get access to state voter rolls, or an attempt to push states to require voter ID, something Corbett is in favor of for Pennsylvania.
I think the courts would become very involved, very quickly. They’re not gonna agree with just allegations. They’re gonna be looking for facts.
– Former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett
Still, the former governor acknowledges that Trump’s rhetoric, along with his administration’s push to investigate the 2020 election, despite numerous judges finding no evidence of fraud, have put the country in “uncharted waters.”
“We’ve never been here,” he said. “If you’re asking me for a prediction, to a certain extent, I can’t predict. What I can say is, ‘This is what’s happened in the past.’ And I’m confident that [judges and elections officials] will do what they’re supposed to do — what they’re legally obligated to do — until somebody demonstrates that’s a wrong confidence.”
As a former federal judge, Jones, who is now the president of Dickson College in Carlisle, brings a different perspective to the discussion than Corbett, a former prosecutor. He heard about Trump’s call to “nationalize” elections shortly before appearing on CNN to discuss the U.S. Department of Justice’s “Weaponization taskforce” — a team assembled by the Trump administration to look into prior federal investigations of the president and his allies.
However, just before air, the anchor asked Jones if he could pivot to discuss Trump’s latest comments about the election. Despite some concern from his communications team, Jones agreed to discuss the new topic.
“When I went on CNN central, I said to the anchor who was interviewing me, ‘I mean this respectfully but very directly, the president of the United States needs to read the Constitution,’” Jones said. “It’s pretty clear from the overwhelming pushback since then that everyone recognizes you can not, without a constitutional amendment, ‘nationalize’ elections to the extent the federal government takes over. That’s just a nonstarter.”
Ballots and voting machines are seen at the Allegheny County Elections warehouse in Pittsburgh Nov. 20, 2024 (Capital-Star photo)
Like Corbett, Jones is confident in the ability of U.S. courts to stop the administration from taking illegal steps to exert powers over elections. He points to cases both in the aftermath of the 2020 election and during the current second Trump administration, where lower court judges displayed a willingness to stand up to the president and his policies under difficult circumstances.
“The lower courts have done extremely well with an onslaught of executive orders that have been issued since last year,” he said. “You’ve seen what’s happening in Minnesota. The lower courts are inundated with these cases, and they’re handling them in the face of frankly ICE disregarding court orders … That’s not easy when you’re on the bench.”
However, Jones sounds less optimistic than Corbett about the upcoming election.
“I think that given how imperiled the administration feels it will be with a Democratic majority in Congress, you’re going to see them use every tool in the toolbox to disrupt the election,” Jones said. “I’m sorry to say that, but that’s probably the reality we’re facing.”
Jones cited recent actions by Trump such as seizing material related to the 2020 election from Fulton County, Georgia, another county the president has repeatedly targeted like Philadelphia. He also cited a recent interview in which Trump said he “regrets” not having the national guard seize voting machines following the 2020 election.
Jones also pointed to Jan. 6, 2021, as proof that Trump may be unwilling to accept election results that he doesn’t view favorably. Though following the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Congress passed a law clarifying that the vice president can not, as Trump insisted, overturn the results of an election.
And, he notes, there are steps the federal government can take to influence voting, short of administering an election itself.
Gov. Josh Shapiro speaks with former Gov. Tom Corbett at the 2025 Eradicate Hate Global Summit in Pittsburgh on September 16, 2025. (Photo courtesy of PAcast)
“There are ways to sort of chip around the outside of this that I think may predict that there’s some trouble ahead,” Jones said. He pointed specifically to efforts to seize voter role information in states like Minnesota, which Jones noted he struggles to see legal justification for, or how it could make an election safer.
“What are we doing here?” Jones said. “Is this to delegitimize the election consistent with Trump’s narrative? Good luck with that because it’s been investigated and reinvestigated. Or maybe it’s to intimidate people.”
Jones repeatedly pointed to the dozens of failed cases brought by Trump in 2020 , none of which were able to turn up evidence of large-scale voter fraud that Trump continues to allege took place.
And, like Corbett, that history, both in court and in local election bureaus, is what gives Jones hope.
“By and large, my experience is Pennsylvania county commissioners, heads of election bureaus, councilors, solicitors, they really want to get it right,” Jones said. “So despite all the noise, so to speak, I’m going to put my faith in the 67 counties and their ability to conduct an election.”
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President Trump and his Republican Party are in danger of losing one or both houses of Congress during the upcoming midterm elections, according to NPR — and there is more than one reason why this is the case.
NPR points to five specific variables that suggest Trump and the Republicans will suffer significant losses in November. Trump’s approval rating is currently at 39% and has remained below 40% since November, even though parties whose presidents have less than 50% approval ratings lose an average of 32 House seats during midterm elections. On average, the president’s party has lost 27 House seats and four Senate seats since World War II. Because of Trump’s unpopular economic, immigration and foreign policies, he is polling poorly among key groups that he won during the 2024 election, including independents, young voters and Latinos.
Honing in on the economy, NPR pointed out as its second observation that 54% of Americans feel Trump should prioritize lowering prices and only 36% approve of his handling of the economy. Almost three out of four voters (72%) say his economy has been either fair or poor, while roughly three out of eight (38%) say they believe conditions will worsen. More than half (52%) say Trump’s policies have made things worse.
NPR’s third point is that Democrats have recently overperformed in special elections, including a recent Texas State Senate race held in a district that Trump won by 17 points in 2024 but was won by the Democratic candidate by 14 points, indicating a 31-point swing. Overall Democrats have overperformed their 2024 margins by an average of nearly 16 points in the various congressional, gubernatorial and special elections that have occurred during Trump’s second term.
Making matters more ominous for Republicans, NPR’s observes as its fourth point that 30 Republican House members are retiring this cycle compared to only 21, both reflecting on Republicans’ feelings of vulnerability and because — with only a four-vote margin in the current House — the nine-vote deficit eliminates House Republicans’ potential incumbency advantage.
Finally, Democrats currently hold a roughly 5-point advantage over Republicans when voters are asked which party they want to control Congress, a significant shift from when Republicans led on this question last year.
Further fleshing out Republicans’ midterms dilemma, Press Pass author and Bulwark congressional correspondent Joe Perdicone explained that Trump’s dominance over the Republican-controlled Congress has actually hindered individual members’ ability to serve their constituents’ local needs.
“Mike Johnson does everything that Trump says and he doesn't allow anything that Trump won't allow. And, so, the House doesn't get to do anything,” Perticone said. “You don't get to prioritize your little pet projects. A lot of these members of Congress, they like to do things that are very specific to their interests. But when you have this paralyzed floor, you have a very thin majority. So they're not having fun right now and they know it's only going to get worse when they're in the minority. So, you know, go find a job elsewhere. Go get rich lobbying.”
Many of Trump’s critics worry that, in anticipation of losing the midterm elections and facing potential impeachment, he will try to rig them in his favor. Trump has lent credibility to these concerns by baselessly claiming the 2026 midterm elections will be rife with fraud and that he therefore may need to send ICE to monitor them. The White House even recently announced a position of FBI Election Executive, a seemingly-new position they claim is not an original creation.
To explain Trump’s actions, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday that there is “horrible corruption on elections — and the federal government should not allow that. The federal government should get involved.”
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