kurt olsen E S Q

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FULTON FUCKERY ED FUCKING MARTIN GABBARD KASH HEATHER HONEY ALBUS

SEE BIG LIE 5 6

SEE GOP STEAL ELECTION 5 26

VOTER SUPPRESS CLETA SAVE act XO

SEE FLYNN 5 ELECTION INTEGRITY CONF BS

MIZZOU AG NETWORK BANNON

LINDELL PILLOW

DISBAR?

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democ docket 10 25?

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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.

Video

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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.

Video

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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.

Video

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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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### Right-wing figures and Trump allies are calling for Trump to declare a “national emergency” to prevent supposed election fraud

:{10/28/25

### QAnon influencer says he impacted decisions of secretary of state candidates in Colorado

:{03/11/22

### Election denier reportedly involved with Trump administration’s 2020 election probes suggests Maricopa County, Arizona, is the administration’s next target

02/11/26

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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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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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Former President Donald Trump made a “secret” $1 million donation to the election audit conducted in Arizona following his false claims that the election was stolen from him, the Guardian reports.

The audit was requested by Arizona GOP senators, and doubted by many of their colleagues due to the “wild conspiracy theories” it mirrored. An assertion “that bamboo fibers found in ballot sheets proved they had been printed in Asia” even caused some local GOP members to deem the probe a “grift disguised as an audit.”

But nevertheless, the audit persisted.

Although eventually proven baseless and unsuccessful, The Guardian reports that “one of the largest benefactors” behind this attempt to counter the 2020 election results remained a secret for nearly two years.

But watchdog group “Documented” was able to track funding for the failed assessment and eventually landed on Trump’s super PAC, Save America.

First, the group discovered that Cyber Ninjas, the Florida company that conducted the audit, was provided $5.7 million by far-right groups, and then given an additional $1 million from former Trump advisor and attorney Cleta Mitchell.

Still, questions around the origin of the $1 million remained unanswered.

TheNew York Timesreports that in September of 2021, “unnamed ‘officials,’” as well as Arizona GOP senators who requested the election audit, adamantly denied Trump’s contribution.

However, with its research on many corporate, tax and campaign finance filings, as well as emails and text messages between Trump allies that were obtained by nonpartisan accountability group American Oversight, "Documented" managed to counter those claims.

The Guardian broke down the process of how the watchdog group traced the donation back to Trump.

Like many incidents surrounding Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020, tracing back Trump’s contribution to the audit starts with the Jan. 6 committee.

The committee’s final report mentioned that Trump super PAC, Save America, donated $1 million to the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) — led by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows — but did not disclose the origin or the reason for the money.

Further research revealed that Trump’s contribution possibly began around June 2021, as accountability group American Oversighttracked text messages between retired Army officer and “arch election denier” Phil Waldron and Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based company that conducted the audit.

Waldron texted Logan, “Kurt is going to talk to 45 today, about $.”

According to the Guardian, “Kurt” likely referred toKurt Olden, an “election denying lawyer.” He continued, “Mike L talking to Corey L,” referring to CEO of MyPillow and devoted Trump supporter Mike Lindelland Trump campaign manager Corey Lewondowski.

A couple of weeks later, Waldron asked Logan if he had received a $1 million payment from Lewondowski. He texted, “Supposedly Kurt talked to Trump and they got 1 mil for you,” but he noted he “couldn’t verify who sent and received.”

According to The Guardian, the Federal Election Commission reported that less than two weeks later, on July 26, 2021, Save America transferred the $1 million to CPI. Two days later, a new group, American Voting Rights Foundation (AVRF) “registered as a corporation in Delaware.”

CPI donated $1 million to AVRF — the group’s first and only donation — in 2021, and although the date of donation is unknown, the clear relationship between the groups, the “timing and amounts” of the transfers, as well as the revealed text messages between Trump allies all leads to one culprit: Trump.

Furthermore, on the day AVRF registered as a corporation, Trump attorney Mitchell emailed Cyber Ninjas CEo Loganand put him in touch with the audit spokesperson, Randy Pullen as well as AVRF treasurer Tom Datwyler.

The Arizona Republic recently confirmed that Trump was notified of the process the whole time

GOP vice-chair of Maricopa County board of supervisors Bill Gates told The Guardian he is “disappointed, but not surprised” by the revelation.

“At the very least, it is highly hypocritical for the Arizona state senate to have allowed the audit to be funded in this fashion,” Gates said.

Ultimately, even after the great lengths Trump and his cohort of election deniers went to assist in the audit, the goal to overturn Arizona's election was never met. The Guardian reports that in 2020, President Joe Biden won Maricopa County, the most populated in Arizona and where the audit took place, by 45,109 votes.

Regarding the morality of the audit, Gates added that Arizona law states, “electoral candidates are not allowed to fund vote recounts which have to be financed with taxpayer dollars.” And although the audit was “technically not a recount,” it’s clear the intent was the same.

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The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports a network of far-right actors are working with President Donald Trump to derail elections in Georgia and cast doubt on any vote that removes Republicans from power.

“The meeting and the call recounting it offer a glimpse at how activists, once on the fringe of the conservative movement, are now trying to overhaul elections in Georgia and across the country,” reports AJC. “Now several are in the Trump administration, and Fulton County is firmly in their sights ahead of the 2026 midterms.”

For years, the AJC reports a “network of activists has cast doubt on Georgia’s 2020 election, questioning the integrity of the state’s voting machines and the voter rolls that determine who can vote.”

Legitimate election officials dismissed their challenges and investigators debunked their fraud claims, said AJC. But now several are in the Trump administration, “and Fulton County is firmly in their sights ahead of the 2026 midterms.”

The AJC reports a recent Zoom call revealed conservative activists eagerly sharing tips and tricks for election engineering, which they learned at a February summit in Washington with several Trump administration officials, including Kurt Olsen, Trump’s director of election security and integrity, who played a key role in the FBI’s January raid on an election warehouse in Fulton County.

“Kurt is leading a team and leading a charge of great people that are working together,” said Holly Kesler, a Georgia conservative activist, during a recent “election integrity” meeting of the Georgia Constitution Party, audio of which was obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“It is a multiagency approach,” she said, reports AJC. “And there are a lot of things going on behind the scenes. I’ve been a part of some of that.”

“Others involved in the Election Integrity Summit included Brad Carver of the Georgia Republican Party; Marci McCarthy, a former DeKalb Republican official who now oversees public affairs at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; and Clay Parikh, a cybersecurity expert whose expertise was used by the U.S. Department of Justice to justify seizing troves of Fulton County’s 2020 election records,” said AJC.

The AJC adds that Carver currently leads the “Election Confidence Task Force” within the Georgia GOP and was one of the 16 Trump fake electors in 2020. More recently he called Georgia “the biggest topic” at the Washington summit and expressed frustration with people in the Trump administration who were not pursuing Trump’s attacks on elections with proper vigor.

“But some of those involved in efforts to overhaul elections have been careful about how much they reveal to the public,” reports AJC. “In the Zoom, Carver said meetings like the ones hosted by the Georgia Constitution Party and Signal group chats are helpful because they allow information to be shared without ending up ‘on the front page of liberal media.’”

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Several high-ranking federal election officials attended a summit last week at which prominent figures who worked to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election pressed the president to declare a national emergency to take over this year’s midterms.

According to videos, photos and social media posts reviewed by ProPublica, the meeting’s participants included Kurt Olsen, a White House lawyer charged with reinvestigating the 2020 election, and Heather Honey, the Department of Homeland Security official in charge of election integrity. The event was convened by Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and attended by Cleta Mitchell, who directs the Election Integrity Network, a group that has spread false claims about election fraud and noncitizen voting.

Election experts say that the meeting reflects an intensifying push to persuade Trump to take unprecedented actions to affect the vote in November. Courts have largely blocked his efforts to reshape elections through an executive order, and legislation has stalled in Congress that would mandate strict voter ID requirements across the country.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that activists associated with those at the summit have been circulating a draft of an executive order that would ban mail-in ballots and get rid of voting machines as part of a federal takeover. Peter Ticktin, a lawyer who worked on the executive order and had a client at the summit, told ProPublica these actions were “all part of the same effort.”

The summit followed other meetings and discussions between administration officials and activists — many not previously reported — stretching back to at least last fall, according to emails and recordings obtained by ProPublica. The coordination between those inside and outside the government represents a breakdown of crucial guardrails, experts on U.S. elections said.

“The meeting shows that the same people who tried to overturn the 2020 election have only grown better organized and are now embedded in the machinery of government,” said Brendan Fischer, a director at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan pro-democracy organization. “This creates substantial risk that the administration is laying the groundwork to improperly reshape elections ahead of the midterms or even go against the will of the voters.”

Five of six federal officials who attended the summit didn’t answer questions about the event from ProPublica.

A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said federal officials’ attendance at the gathering shouldn’t be construed as support for a national emergency declaration and that it was “common practice” for staffers to communicate with outside advocates who want to share policy ideas. The official pointed to comments Trump made to PBS News denying he was considering a national emergency or had read the draft executive order. “Any speculation about policies the administration may or may not undertake is just that — speculation,” the official said.

In the past, Trump has expressed an openness to a federal takeover as a way to stem projected Republican losses in November. This month, he said in an interview with conservative podcaster Dan Bongino that Republicans need “to take over” elections and “to nationalize the voting.”

Mitchell did not respond to questions from ProPublica about the summit. A spokesperson for Flynn responded to detailed questions from ProPublica by disparaging experts who expressed concerns, texting, “LOL ‘EXPERTS.’”

The 30-person roundtable discussion on Feb. 19, at an office building in downtown Washington, D.C., was sponsored by the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a conservative think tank. Afterward, activists and government officials dined together, photos reviewed by ProPublica showed.

Flynn, the institute’s chair, told a social media personality why he’d arranged the event.

“I wanted to bring this group together physically, because most of us have met online” while “fighting battles” in swing states from Arizona to Georgia, Flynn said to Tommy Robinson on the gathering’s sidelines. Robinson of these. “The overall theme of this event was to make sure that all of us aren’t operating in our own little bubbles.”

Flynn has repeatedly advocated for Trump to declare a national emergency and posted on social media after the event addressing Trump, “We The People want fair elections and we know there is only one office in the land that can make that happen given the current political environment in the United States.”

In addition to Olsen and Honey, four other federal officials from agencies that will shape the upcoming elections attended the event. At least four of the six attended the dinner.

One is Clay Parikh, a special government employee at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who’s helping Olsen with the 2020 inquiry. A spokesperson at ODNI said Parikh had attended the summit “in his personal capacity.”

Another, Mac Warner, handled election litigation at the Justice Department. A department spokesperson said that Warner had resigned the day after the event and had not received the required approval from agency ethics officials to participate.

The department “remains committed to upholding the integrity of our electoral system and will continue to prioritize efforts to ensure all elections remain free, fair, and transparent,” the spokesperson said in an email.

A third administration official who attended the summit, Marci McCarthy, directs communications for the nation’s cyber defense agency, which oversees the security of elections infrastructure like voting machines.

Kari Lake, whom Trump appointed as senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, was a featured speaker. Lake worked with Olsen and Parikh in her unsuccessful bid to overturn her loss in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election.

Lake said in an email that she “showed up to the event, spoke for about 20 minutes about the overall importance of election integrity, a non-partisan issue that matters to all citizens — both in the United States and abroad. I left without listening to any other speeches.”

“Elections should be free from fraud or any other malfeasance that subverts the will of the people,” she added.

At the meeting, activists presented on ways to transform American elections that would help conservatives, according to social media posts and interviews they gave on conservative media, such as LindellTV, a streaming platform created by the pillow mogul Mike Lindell. They said the group broke down into two camps: those who wanted to pursue a more incremental legal and legislative strategy and those who wanted Trump to declare a national emergency.

Multiple activists left the meeting convinced Trump should do the latter, a step they believe would allow the president to get around the Constitution’s directive that elections should be run by states.

Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, a prominent funder of efforts to overturn the 2020 election, told LindellTV that Trump has “played nice” so far in not seizing control of American elections. “But at some point,” Byrne said, “he’s got to do something, the muscular thing: declare a national emergency.”

Byrne responded to questions from ProPublica by sending a screenshot of a poll that he said suggested “2/3 of Americans correctly do not trust” voting machines, which the proposed national emergency declaration aims to do away with.

Will Huff, who has advocated for doing away with voting machines, told a conservative vlogger that Olsen, the White House lawyer, and other administration representatives would take the “consensus” from the gathering back to Trump. “It’s got to be a national emergency,” said Huff, the campaign manager for a Republican candidate for Arkansas secretary of state.

In response to questions from ProPublica, Huff said in an email that Olsen and Trump would use their judgment to decide whether to declare a national emergency.

“The President has been briefed on findings of shortcomings in election infrastructure,” Huff wrote. “I believe there are steady hands around the President wanting to ensure that any action taken is, first, constitutional and legal, but also backed by evidence.”

McCarthy, the cybersecurity official, expressed more general solidarity with fellow attendees in a post on social media about the summit. “Grateful for friendships forged through years of standing shoulder-to-shoulder, united by purpose and conviction,” she wrote. “The mission continues… and so does the fellowship.”

Last week’s gathering was the latest in a string of private interactions between conservative election activists and administration officials, according to emails, documents and recordings obtained by ProPublica. Many have involved Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network. Before taking her government post, Honey was a leader in the Election Integrity Network, ProPublica has reported, as was McCarthy.

Previously unreported emails obtained by ProPublica show that just weeks after Honey started at the Department of Homeland Security, she briefed election activists, a Republican secretary of state and another federal official on a conference call arranged by her former boss, Mitchell.

“We are excited to welcome her on our call this morning to hear about her work for election integrity inside DHS,” Mitchell wrote in an email introducing presenters on the call.

Honey didn’t respond to questions from ProPublica about the call. Experts said Honey’s briefing gave her former employer access that likely would have violated ethics rules in place under previous administrations, including the first Trump administration — though not this one.

The prior “ethics guardrails would have prevented some of the revolving door issues we’re seeing between the election denial movement and the government officials,” said Fischer, the Campaign Legal Center director. Those prior rules “were supposed to prevent former employers and clients from receiving privileged access.”

---

GGL 4 26 TICKTIN

[### Trump Will Take Control of the Midterms–If This Florida ...

Vanity Fair

https://www.vanityfair.com › News › donald trump](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trump-will-take-control-of-the-midterms-if-this-florida-lawyer-gets-his-way?srsltid=AfmBOorXvROVNQ4p679s91j_YD2tTcmTQOl0soklEqk5JNdLpk6vHcfY)

Mar 17, 2026 — Foreign interests are putting their thumb on the scale of our elections,” Peter Ticktin claims. Senator Mark Warner is answering with a ...

[### How an election conspiracy theorist has Trump's ear on ...

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com › us-news › mar › trump-...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/27/trump-voting-election-conspiracy-midterms)

Mar 27, 2026 — Peter Ticktin, a Florida lawyer, is promoting a legally dubious plan experts say could sharply restrict voting rights.

[### At Summit, Election Deniers Press for Trump to Take Over ...

ProPublica

https://www.propublica.org › Archive](https://www.propublica.org/article/election-denier-summit-trump-midterms)

Feb 28, 2026 — The meeting's participants included Kurt Olsen, a White House lawyer charged with reinvestigating the 2020 election, and Heather Honey, ...

[### Trump officials attended a summit of election deniers who ...

Arizona Mirror

https://azmirror.com › 2026/03/02 › trump-officials-att...](https://azmirror.com/2026/03/02/trump-officials-attended-a-summit-of-election-deniers-who-want-to-take-over-the-midterms/)

Mar 2, 2026 — Several high-ranking federal election officials attended a summit last week at which prominent figures who worked to overturn Donald Trump's ...

[### The Dubious Legality of Trump Allies' Draft EO

Lawfare

https://www.lawfaremedia.org › article › in-case-of-eme...](https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/in-case-of-emergency--the-dubious-legality-of-trump-allies-draft-eo)

Mar 12, 2026 — Conservative activists say that declaring a national emergency would allow Trump to assert sweeping authority over elections. They're wrong.

[### 2 Trump-tied lawyers step into 2020 Michigan election cases

The Detroit News

https://www.detroitnews.com › politics › 2025/07/11 › l...](https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2025/07/11/lawyer-who-challenged-2020-election-now-working-on-michigan-case/84527145007/)

Jul 11, 2025 — Kurt Olsen, a Washington, D.C., attorney, appeared Friday in a Hillsdale County courtroom on behalf of Oakland County lawyer Stefanie ...

[### MAGA lawyer advises Trump to take over the midterms

Raw Story

https://www.rawstory.com › midterms-2676267622](https://www.rawstory.com/midterms-2676267622/)

Mar 17, 2026 — Peter Ticktin, an 80-year-old South Florida lawyer and Donald Trump's former New York Military Academy classmate, has advised the president ...

Missing: ATTORNEY ‎| Show results with: ATTORNEY

[### Inside the Battle at DoJ to Get Trump What He Wants

New York Magazine

https://nymag.com › intelligencer › article › donald-tru...](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/donald-trump-doj-justice-department-revenge-political-prosecution.html)

Apr 6, 2026 — Bondi was fired because she couldn't arrest Trump's enemies, even as the DoJ has been turned into his own political prosecution team.

[### Peter Ticktin (561) 232-2222 PT@LegalBrains.com Fox News

https://static.foxnews.com › tina_peters_letter](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2025/12/tina_peters_letter.pdf)

PDF

Dec 7, 2025 — Moreover,. Clerk Peters was required to preserve the evidence of the election for 22 months pursuant to federal law 52 U.S.C. § 20701. Clerk ...Read more

9 pages

[### White House Hires 'Stop the Steal' Lawyer to Investigate ...

WSJ

https://www.wsj.com › Politics › Elections](https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/white-house-hires-stop-the-steal-lawyer-to-investigate-2020-election-claims-6395d322)

Oct 17, 2025 — Attorney Kurt Olsen in Maricopa County Superior Court, in Arizona, for a challenge to the results of the 2022 election for governor.Read more

Missing: TICKTIN ‎| Show results with: TICKTIN

---

2 26

FBI raid of Fulton County, Georgia election office - Wikipedia

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NO PROB CAUSE FOR SEARCHL WHAT JUDGE SIGNED OFF?

On January 28, 2026, the FBI conducted a raid at the Fulton County election office in Union City, Georgia. This operation was authorized by a warrant signed by Magistrate Judge Catherine M. Salinas. The raid aimed to seize physical ballots, ballot images, tabulator tapes, and voter rolls from the 2020 presidential election.

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SEE 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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REBOOT BAND BACK TOGETHER FULTON CTY BALLOTS 2 26

The newly released warrant application behind the FBI raid of 2020 election ballots from Fulton County, Georgia is under new scrutiny. A new report reveals the FBI's criminal investigation originated from a referral sent by a “stop the steal” campaign attorney known for “spreading baseless allegations of election fraud.”

The supporting affidavit for the warrant to search Fulton County election records was unsealed Tuesday, publicly revealing the mechanics behind the invasive search and seizure conducted by President Donald Trump’s politicized FBI.

“The FBI criminal investigation originated from a referral sent by Kurt Olsen, presidentially appointed Director of Election Security and Integrity,” stated an attachment to the application for the warrant approved by U.S. District Court magistrate judge Catherine M. Salinas.

Politico revealed that Olsen is also being furnished with "highly classified material" with few limitations, despite Olsen having no intelligence background or experience. Some of the documents he has received from American spy agencies reportedly includes "sensitive compartmented intelligence programs," which are among the most secretive materials held by intelligence agencies. He also reportedly has a direct line to Trump, and exploits those ties whenever agencies push back against his demands for material.

“Every time he hits a roadblock, he just calls POTUS," An anonymous source told Politico.

Social media slammed the news that the same lawyer receiving highly sensitive voter data is also the source of the warrant that delivered the info.

“A beleaguered election denier — who had already been debunked many times — somehow convinced Trump and Bondi and Patel and Gabbard that there was cheating in Georgia when, in fact, it was disproven many times over,” posted one commenter on X. "Poorest Loser Ever."

“So this is basically a rehash of every single conspiracy about the G.A. elections, filed as an affidavit by an FBI agent,” said another critic on X. “They're even bringing back the ‘folded ballots’ thing. Incredible.”

“Kurt Olsen was one of Kari Lake's attorneys when she kept suing to be the Governor of Az. He was charged with making FALSE STATEMENTS TO THE COURT,” posted yet another commenter.

“Basically, the person who issued the warrant has a big f—— red hat on their head right now,” said another.

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https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-jan-6-indictment/

no lnx

Why Trump indictments haven’t triggered another Jan. 6 — and why the worst may be yet to come

Jordan Green

andRaw Story

August 21, 2023

A grand jury handed up a 41-count indictment against Donald Trump and 18 alleged co-conspirators late Monday night inside a courthouse in Atlanta. Outside, law enforcement prepared for a Jan. 6-esque riot.

But as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis announced her case against Trump, no right-wing MAGA supporters, equipped with tactical gear and assault rifles, descended on the courthouse.

No one stormed any government buildings.

The scene was quiet — eerily so — and largely replayed the relatively orderly, if not placid scenes outside courthouses in New York City and Washington, D.C., where authorities have also charged Trump with felony crimes.

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Even one of Trump’s most ardent bomb-throwers urged MAGA-ites to restrain themselves.

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“Don’t go to the Fulton County courthouse. Don’t give them an ounce of your flesh. Let them have their empty streets, barricades, and media circus,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) cautioned on Twitter, now X, the morning after the indictments.

ALSO READ: 11 ways Donald Trump doesn’t become president again

But while the arrests of more than 1,100 people for participation in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — and more recently, charges against high-profile Trump allies such as former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani — appear to have temporarily deterred a broad mobilization of violence, far-right unrest is simmering under the surface as Trump’s legal troubles mount.

It occasionally emerges in the form of one-off violent acts, such as when an Ohio man who attacked the FBI office in Cincinnati in response to federal authorities searching Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago died in a shootout with law enforcement last year.

More recently, a Utah man died in a shootout with the FBI after he posted threats to kill President Joe Biden.

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A Texas woman is accused of threatening the U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the federal case against Trump for attempting to overturn the 2020 election.

And just this week, after the names of the grand jurors were published in the Fulton County indictment against Trump and 18 co-defendants, trolls reportedly posted their names and purported addresses on a fringe website.

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On another site that allows users to post anonymously, users reportedly encouraged one another to shoot members of the grand jury, with one invoking a notorious white supremacist text that provides a blueprint for political terror. The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office has announced it is investigating the threats.

And as Trump’s legal troubles mount and his supporters become increasingly desperate going into the winner-takes-all stakes of the 2024 presidential election, analysts who monitor right-wing extremism warn that political violence is only likely to worsen over the next 18 months as 2024 election approaches and the next president is inaugurated in 2025.

The seeds of such a scenario are being planted right now, largely out of view, in some of the darkest corridors of the internet.

Mixed messages: Culture war and vigilance

Just because there wasn’t an instantaneous reaction to the Fulton County indictment doesn’t mean the news didn’t push someone over the edge and cause them to start plotting, security analysts say. Violent plots take time to plan and carry out.

Online reaction among far-right influencers and groups to the indictment has been mixed, with the news jostling for attention alongside other conservative fixations, like the viral right-wing populist folk song “Rich Men North of Richmond” and the apology from the “crazy plane lady.”

Samantha Kutner, an extremism and terrorism analyst with Glitterpill LLC, told Raw Story that the current moment is a “focus-testing period for many extremist groups.”

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“Right now, it might be safe to say their reaction is similar to their reaction to Barbie,” she said. “Culture war fodder with attempts to fundraise.”

On Telegram accounts linked to the Proud Boys, posts about the Maui wildfires — typically suggesting sinister causes or accusing the Biden administration of neglect — appear to outnumber references to the Trump indictment roughly four to one.

Dozens of members of the Proud Boys face criminal charges for their role in the attack on the Capitol, and high-profile leaders, including former national chairman Enrique Tarrio, have been convicted of seditious conspiracy. This potentially dampens enthusiasm for physically rushing to the support of a former president who infamously told them during a 2020 campaign debate to “stand back and stand by.”

But that shouldn’t offer peace-loving Americans comfort.

ALSO READ: Trump maintains trademarks with Russia, China and numerous other U.S. enemies and frenemies

Kutner predicted that as the consequences of Trump’s legal troubles become increasingly tangible, theProud Boys will “martyr him and use the event to organize and they’ll get more and more desperate as the 2024 elections pick up.”

One indication of that line of discourse is evident in a recent commentary posted on Telegram by the Cape Fear Proud Boys, one of the most influential and active chaptersto emerge in the aftermath of Jan. 6.

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The commentary posted on Aug. 1 following Trump’s first Jan. 6-related indictment accused Democrats of “plotting to subvert the 2024 election” while claiming “they will do anything to see Trump in jail.”

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The post included a vague call to action by urging readers to “come to the realization that you have to do more than ‘just vote,’” adding, “See you in the streets.”

Following Trump’s new indictment in Fulton County, Ga., on Monday, the Cape Fear Proud Boys chapter warned, “If he loses this he goes to jail, just like they have been planning all along.”

The Cape Fear Proud Boys’ call to “do more than ‘just vote’ is echoed in the messaging surrounding an “Election Summit” in Springfield, Mo., on Wednesday and Thursday.

Hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who helped finance a bus tour to fuel protests against the outcome of the 2020 election, the “Election Summit” promised an all-star cast of pro-Trump election deniers.

Businessman and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell talks with reporters outside the club house at the Trump National Golf Club hours ahead of a speech by former U.S. President Donald Trump on June 13, 2023 in Bedminster, N.J. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The MAGA luminaries billed as speaking at the event include Giuliani, who has been ordered to turn himself in for arrest in Fulton County by Aug. 25, Laura Loomer, an anti-Muslim provocateur who recently met with Trump at his Bedminster club in New Jersey; former White House strategist Steve Bannon; retired Lt. General Michael Flynn; and criminally indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Lindell has been promising to unveil a “plan” on Thursday, the second day of the summit. Details of the “plan” have been teased by the Gateway Pundit, a far-right outlet that traffics in conspiracytheories.

ALSO READ: National security at 'high risk' as 'old school' methods degrade government security practices

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A recent article quoted Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who reportedly assisted Paxton with his unsuccessful lawsuit to invalidate Biden’s 2020 electoral victory in Pennsylvania, as being among a select group of Trump allies who have reviewed Lindell’s “plan.”

“We can no longer cast our vote and walk away,” Olsen said in the quote published by the Gateway Pundit. Through exposure to the “plan,” Olsen said viewers of Lindell’s livestreamed event will “learn how to become the watchman for elections — not just to cast a ballot — and you will be equipped for that task in ways we’ve never seen before.”

Lindell’s event has received promotion from Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, along with “The Pete Santilli Show,” whose host pleaded guilty to conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer in the 2014 armed standoff at Bunkerville, Nev., over rancher Cliven Bundy’s refusal to pay grazing fees for use of federal lands.

Discussing his plans to travel to the “Election Summit” during his show on Aug. 12, Santilli suggested some unspecified “wingnuts” might try to intercept him, before imploring listeners: “Anybody messes with me, everybody get your bulldozers and come get me. Okay? Bulldozer brigade. They do not want what is coming on the 16th and 17th.”

Santilli’s “bulldozer brigade” reference likely resonated with far-right antigovernment listeners who have lionized Marvin Heemeyer, who rampaged through the town of Granby, Colo. in an armored bulldozer in revenge for a zoning dispute before taking his own life.

During the same show, Santilli instructed his listeners: “Any time you see CNN, you smash their cameras, okay?

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“I say ‘smash their cameras,’ figuratively, I don’t know,” Santilli continued. Laughing he added, “Constitutionally.”

Then he showed footage of himself harassing a camera crew at one of Lindell’s previous events.

Radicalized by election disinformation

Trump is continuing to stoke fear and conspiracy theories, just as he did during the 2016 and 2020 elections, with predictable consequences, said Daryl Johnson, a former senior analyst at the Department of Homeland Security who was pushed out of the agency after authoring a prescient reported that highlighted the threat of right-wing extremism early in the administration of President Obama. Johnson told Raw Story that the “heightened threat environment” can be largely attributed to one man: Donald Trump.

“We’re at the precipice of another national election, and he’s continuing to do the same thing he did in 2016 and 2020,” Johnson said. “He’s talking about how the last election was stolen, and a significant number of people believe it, despite the courts and the media saying otherwise. He continues to perpetuate the lie that the election was stolen. He’s radicalizing his base of supporters, and now that he’s facing all these indictments, unfortunately the hardcore Trump supporters believe this was orchestrated to keep him from becoming president again.”

A key question is whether Trump still has the ability to mobilize mass crowds in the streets, as he did following the 2020 election, when he tweeted, “Be there, will be wild,” summoning his supporters to Washington, D.C. for the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.

ALSO READ: Neo-Nazi Marine Corps vet gets break over alleged possession of classified documents

The absence of large-scale extremist mobilization fits a pattern from the 2022 mid-term election, when many election-denialist candidates loyal to Trump were on the ballot, to the previous indictments earlier this year in New York, Miami and Washington, D.C., said Jared Holt, a senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

Holt said a post by Trump on his TruthSocial platform on Election Day 2022 suggests that the former president’s command over his most violence-prone supporters has weakened.

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Trump, for example, attempted to capitalize on a temporary software glitch at one of the city’s polling locations, and urged his supporters to “protest, protest, protest” in Detroit.

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Yet, “there was no major protest beyond a few dozen people,” Holt recalled. “That was a really interesting moment for me, as Trump explicitly saying, ‘I want people to protest here,’ and his supporters didn’t respond.”

More recently, in March, as his arrest in New York City neared, Trump issued a Jan. 6-like charge to supporters.

“PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” Trump’s Truth Social message concluded.

The former president also warned of "potential death and destruction" if he was charged with a crime.

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But few protesters came, and the scene was more comedic than chaotic.

The massive federal crackdown on rank-and-file Trump supporters who took part in the Jan. 6 insurrection has prompted the far-right movement to retreat from mass-scale events, and strategically redirect energy towards small-scale local actions targeting local institutions and marginalized communities.

During the past two years, the targets have included school boards and hospitals over issues such as COVID-19 restrictions, teaching race and gender identity and books that highlight marginalized people.

More recently, drag shows have come to the forefront as a target of far-right harassment.

It's hard to tell how that model might be applied to a presidential election cycle with a sequence of events playing out on a national scale, Holt said.

But he suggested Moms for Liberty, a far-right group at the forefront of battles over COVID restrictions and gender identity that has forged strong ties with Republican officeholders such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, as the kind of group that might be able to harness the disparate impulses of the far right.

“There’s a lot of infrastructure on the right to support small, local stuff,” he said. “You can see how Moms for Liberty has exploded into this major force in a couple years after getting money dumped on it.Moms for Liberty is both grassroots and Astro-turfed. It exists in this weird gray area.A lot of organizing is local, but there’s a really strong reward structure on a national scale that gives them talking points and hands out targets.”

The culture war issues pushed by Moms for Liberty, building on the backlash to the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020, are all examples of an “activism and organizing muscle that the right is very good at keeping exercised,” Holt said.

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He added that “if someone stepped up and tried to use it in that way” during the election, “in theory it could cause a lot of havoc.”

Holt said he expects that the Republican primaries and the Republican National Convention will be key pivot points in the potential emergence of a far-right movement capable of mass action.

ALSO READ: U.S. Army reservist ran a ‘white nationalist’ training camp and touted KKK ties

“That’s when I’ll be looking to see who can flex the muscle and show that willingness to act on a broader scale,” he said.

Regardless of whether the leadership and organizational infrastructure falls into place to cause major chaos, Johnson observed that the far right now has something it’s been missing since January 2021 — a unifying objective.

“The 2024 election and Trump’s ongoing legal problems begins to create a cohesion and glue for people to rally around,” he said. “What we could see in the coming 12 months is these scattered groups of people coming together under a banner and fighting for a cause again.”

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Given the far-right’s reorientation toward more small-scale actions and localized targets, Johnson said it’s hard to imagine Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol again. But he said it’s not out of the question that something like that might happen at a capitol building in a swing state such as Georgia or Ohio.

The Jan. 6 arrests have had some deterrent effect, Johnson said, while Holt noted that the conspiracy mindset of many of Trump’s supporters causes them to look with suspicion on anyone who proposes large-scale political action, often accusing them of being federal agents intent on setting them up for arrest.

Johnson added that the law enforcement crackdown on Jan. 6 rioters, similar to a previous period after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, drove many of the most violent extremists underground. That increases the likelihood of more incidents like the Ohio man who attacked the FBI office last year, or the two individuals who threatened Biden and Chutkan earlier this month.

“What this boils into is more violence towards Democrats, judges, juries, the FBI and the Justice Department, more plotting assassinations and carrying assassinations,” Johnson said. “It’s very reminiscent of the 1960s, when we saw the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy.”

As Trump and his supporters continue to falsely claim that the 2020 election was stolen and that Democrats are scheming to steal the next one, while demonizing political opponents and embracing aggressive tactics, the conditions appear ripe for unrest.

Johnson, the former Department of Homeland Security analyst, Trump being convicted or put in jail could be a catalyst for violence. He noted that a few of Trump’s supporters have already been “pushed over the edge,” while others are already mobilizing by training with firearms.

“The catalyst is the event that triggers violence — Trump gets convicted and goes to jail, running for election and losing,” he said. “Even the fact that Trump wants to run and all of a sudden he can’t — that’s another triggering catalyst.”

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