May07

electoral-vote.com

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GOP 53

How Trump Is Working to Rig the Midterms

ProPublica is an independent newsroom that investigates and publishes reports about abuses of power. It now has a report out on the ways the administration may try to rig the midterms. Here are some of their findings:

• The AG: After the 2000 election. Donald Trump pushed then-AG Bill Barr to find some election fraud. Barr looked and there wasn't any. He told Trump this. Trump was furious. No one expects the next AG, whether it is Todd Blanche, Jeanine Pirro, or someone else to do a repeat performance of what Barr did.
  
  
• Guardrails: There were also many guardrails in place in 2000. At least 75 career officials who have jobs related to election security have been fired or who have left since Jan. 20, 2025. Trump has placed dependable lackeys in at least two dozen key positions, many of them election deniers. All the guardrails in the Executive Branch are gone now.
  
  
• CISA: The DHS has an agency called the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency (CISA) that deals with, well cybersecurity, including elections. In Trump v1.0 it collected evidence disproving many of the circulating conspiracy theories. It even built a "Rumor Control" website. This time around, Trump is taking no chances. He froze all of CISA's election security work and fired or transferred all the employees working on election security. There is nothing left there now.
  
  
• Law Enforcement: However, other federal agencies also have cybersecurity teams, especially law enforcement agencies. Or we should say "had" teams. FBI Director Kash Patel dismembered the Bureau's public corruption team, which looked for criminal activity relating to elections. He also disbanded a team that looked at illegal foreign interference with elections. The DoJ's Civil Rights Division also had a team that protects voting rights. All of its 30 career lawyers have been reassigned or have quit. Trump has restocked it with his own people, including four lawyers who worked with him trying to overturn the 2020 election.
  
  
• Team America: In the summer of 2025, a small team of lawyers that called itself "Team America" began looking for federal levers it could pull to interfere with state elections, pursuant to a March 2025 XO in which Trump tried to exert power over the states. Team members include David Harvilicz, who is tasked with election security, including voting machines. He formed a company with the architect of Trump's claims of election hacking in Michigan. One of his workers is Heather Honey, who claimed there were more ballots cast in Pennsylvania than there are voters there. Many others have ties to a conservative organization run by Cleta Mitchell.
  
  
• Voter Rolls: The DoJ and Team America are trying to develop software to root out noncitizens. However, to do this, they need the states to supply the voter lists, which most states have refused to do. The software is of poor quality and turns up many false positives. Harvilicz and Honey are deeply involved in this project.
  
  
• Kurt Olsen: He worked to help Trump overturn the 2020 election and was sanctioned by judges for it. He is now Trump's director of election security. He is the driving force behind the raid on Atlanta, where the FBI seized all the 2020 ballots. Initially, the head of the FBI office in Atlanta, Paul Brown, refused to cooperate and was told to either resign or be moved. He resigned and the raid took place.
  
  
• The Public Integrity Section: The DoJ has a unit called the Public Integrity Section that makes sure the DoJ doesn't wander off into politics when enforcing the law. Lawyers from the Section tried to block the raid on Atlanta because there was no evidence of any wrongdoing. Trump reduced the Section from 36 people to two people.

Each of these moves eliminates a guardrail. In the past, attempts to break the law and interfere with an election would run into one or more of the above units that would try to stop them. They have all been muzzled or emasculated. This means if Trump tries to interfere with the midterms, he will not receive so much as a warning from any federal agency. Of course, this doesn't apply to state units, but the states can't count on any federal help if Trump ramps up an interference campaign. (V)