Trump Officials Attended a Summit Of Election Deniers Who Want The President To Take Over The Midterms

This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Several high-ranking federal election officials attended a summit last week at which prominent figure…

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Also 🔸grifting Cryptocurrency, 🔸Screwing Immigrants, 🔸Scheming with #HeatherHoney and #MichaelFlynn, to steal the next election

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Trump Officials Attended a Summit of Election Deniers Who Want the President to Take Over the Midterms

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.

ProPublica

They tried to overturn the 2020 US election. Now, they hold power in Trump’s Washington – US elections 2020 – The Guardian

‘The federal government is no longer a trusted partner in democracy,’ the Colorado secretary of state, Jena Griswold, says. Composite: Rita Liu / The Guardian / Getty Images

Analysis

They tried to overturn the 2020 US election. Now, they hold power in Trump’s Washington

By Rachel Leingang

Those who tried to overturn the 2020 election now occupy key federal roles, shaping rules and sowing doubt for 2026

Published Sat 29 Nov 2025 07.00 EST

The people who tried to overturn the 2020 election have more power than ever – and they plan to use it.

Bolstered by the president, they have prominent roles in key parts of the federal government. Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer who helped advance Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election in 2020, now leads the civil rights division of the justice department. An election denier, Heather Honey, now serves as the deputy assistant secretary for election integrity in the department of homeland security. Kurt Olsen, an attorney involved in the “stop the steal” movement, is now a special government employee investigating the 2020 election.

A movement that once pressured elected officials to bend to its whims is now part of the government.

“The call is literally coming from inside the house,” said Joanna Lydgate, co-founder and chief executive officer of the States United Democracy Center. “Now it has its tentacles in the White House, in Congress and federal agencies, and with outside groups really feeding into that infrastructure.”

The Trump administration is going after states with dubious requests for voter data that could ensnare qualified voters and will serve as an underpinning for future claims of fraud. They are working to install rules that limit voter access or sow seeds of distrust in who can vote and how. Trump has put federal agents in cities around the country, raising fears that officers could be tapped for election purposes.

“All of this, while focused on past elections, is misdirection about what the actual intention likely is, which is to interfere with the 2026 elections and attempt to delegitimize them if the president’s party doesn’t do well,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research. The results of the 2025 off-year elections, in which Democrats saw big wins, likely “strengthen the administration’s resolve to interfere in state elections and to further spread doubt about outcomes”, he said.

Some state and local elections officials say they no longer have working relationships with the federal government and do not trust the expertise they used to tap into on election security.

“The federal government is no longer a trusted partner in democracy,” Jena Griswold, the Democratic secretary of state in Colorado, told the Guardian.

Arizona secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, said: “There would have to be a significant shift in the rhetoric and the attitude coming out of senior leadership in the administration before I open my door and say, ‘Yeah, you guys, come on in.’ It’d be foolish of me to let the fox into the hen house.”

Asked for comment, the White House did not address questions about what authority Trump believes he has over elections or whether he would use emergency powers to take control of elections, as election experts fear he may.

What have they done with their power?

Trump’s 2024 win ignited the promotion of election denialism, both in the ranks of the president known to reward loyalty and in outside groups that had long been lobbying for new laws and policies that fit with their false claims of rampant election fraud.

On the first day of Trump’s term, he granted clemency to all those who stormed the Capitol in the January 6 insurrection. By November, he issued dozens of preemptive pardons for those involved in a fake electors scheme and other attempts to subvert the 2020 elections results. Ed Martin, a stop the steal activist, has assisted with pardons.

Lydgate, of States United, said the administration’s strategy on elections is “death by 1,000 cuts, with the goal of making sure that this group of election deniers can get the results that they want”.

The three key pillars of the strategy, she said, are taking power away from nonpartisan elections officials, overwhelming election administrators with frivolous work and threats, and attempting to shape the electorate in their favor by removing them from the rolls.

“There have always been political leaders who complain about the results of elections, but not in this way where you are trying to discredit the entire system and that you’re channeling the resources of the federal government in furtherance of that measure,” said Derek Tisler, counsel and manager in the Brennan Center’s elections and government program.

Election activists helped draft a bill that would require people to prove their citizenship in order to vote. When the US House passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) Act, Cleta Mitchell, the leader of an influential “election integrity” group, was presented with the vote count card.

When Trump issued an executive order in March about “preserving and protecting the integrity of American elections”, it appeared similar to a “US Citizens Elections Bill of Rights” that Mitchell had promoted, with both calling for documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. Much of the executive order has been stalled by the courts.

The quest for widespread citizenship verification among election activists convinced that high numbers of non-citizens are voting led to an expanded, controversial use of a system intended to screen for citizenship for public benefits, not voting. The Trump administration has said it expanded the service to search more databases and allow election officials to search for people in large batches instead of individually. Officials reportedly briefed Mitchell’s group to explain the new uses. Voting rights groups have sued over this expansion.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: They tried to overturn the 2020 US election. Now, they hold power in Trump’s Washington | US elections 2020 | The Guardian

Tags: Adrian Fontes, Arizona, Colorado, Harmeet Dhillon, Heather Honey, In Power, Jena Griswold, Kurt Olsen, Overturn 2020 Election, SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Elibibility), The Guardian, Trump's Washington, U.S. States Voter Data, US Citizens Elections Bill of Rights, Voter Data, Washington DC

#AdrianFontes #Arizona #Colorado #HarmeetDhillon #HeatherHoney #InPower #JenaGriswold #KurtOlsen #Overturn2020Election #SAVESafeguardAmericanVoterElibibility #TheGuardian #TrumpSWashington #USStatesVoterData #USCitizensElectionsBillOfRights #VoterData #WashingtonDC

Attorneys #BrianKabateck and #ShantKarnikian expose #HeatherHoney, the NEWEST #MAGAMuppet appointed as #DeputyAssistantSecretaryforElectionIntegrity at the #DHS despite having ZERO QUALIFICATIONS beyond being a #conspiracytheorist who pushed to overturn the 2020 election! youtu.be/YjItVuKa96M?...

Trump’s LATEST PLOT to Manipul...
Trump’s LATEST PLOT to Manipulate Elections EXPOSED

YouTube
Trump Empowers Election Deniers, Still Fixated on 2020 Grievances

The president has placed proponents of his false claims into government jobs while dismantling systems built to secure voting, raising fears that he aims to seize authority over elections ahead of next year’s midterms.

The New York Times

Rather than offering assurances that the federal government’s #election protection programs would continue uninterrupted, the new official, #HeatherHoney, instead used portions of the meeting to echo rhetoric that has infused the #FarRight *election activist* movement that emerged since #Trump falsely claimed that his 2020 defeat was the result of widespread fraud, acc/to 5 people with knowledge of the call.

#law #ElectionLaw #TrumpCoup2 #BigLie #autocracy #dictatorship #fascism #tyranny #US

#TFPeople #HeatherHoney

Seriously, Heather Honey? Lemme guess, she's pretty, blonde. (No offence to any blondes out there.)

TakeItBack.org

"Donald Trump is installing a loyalist who spread the same lies that fueled January 6th. Heather Honey, a 2020 conspiracy peddler, has been appointed as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity inside DHS. That’s the federal office tasked with safeguarding our election infrastructure. Instead of protecting our votes, Trump is stacking the deck with people who tried to overturn them.

DHS is supposed to partner with states to protect against hacking, foreign interference, and cyber threats. With Honey in charge, DHS is becoming a megaphone for election lies instead. This will erode trust between states and federal officials, making our elections less safe.

Honey has pushed long-debunked claims like “more votes than voters” in Pennsylvania, nonsense Trump repeated on January 6th before his mob attacked the Capitol. She backed sham reviews in Arizona and worked to delegitimize election results across the country. Now she’s positioned to oversee federal election policy. It’s like putting an arsonist in charge of the fire department. "

She Pushed To Overturn Trump’s Loss In The 2020 Election. Now She’ll Help Oversee U.S. Election Security.

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.techdirt.com/2025/09/16/she-pushed-to-overturn-trumps-loss-in-the-2020-election-now-shell-help-oversee-u-s-election-security/

She Pushed To Overturn Trump’s Loss In The 2020 Election. Now She’ll Help Oversee U.S. Election Security.

This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Heather Honey, a high-profile denier of Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, has been appointed …

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