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.
Election officials from nearly all 50 states gathered on a call last month with the Homeland Security Department’s point person on “election integrity,” eager to hear how the woman filling a newly created Trump administration position might help safeguard the vote ahead of next year’s midterms.
But many of them left alarmed.
Rather than offering assurances that the federal government’s election protection programs would continue uninterrupted, the new official, Heather Honey, instead used portions of the meeting to echo rhetoric that has infused the right-wing election activist movement that emerged since President Trump falsely claimed that his 2020 defeat was the result of widespread fraud, according to five people with knowledge of the call.
Ms. Honey, a leader in that movement until her appointment in August as deputy assistant secretary for election integrity, complained that her department’s cybersecurity experts tasked with combating misinformation about elections had “strayed from their mission.”
The remark echoed a widespread view on the right that the agency had sought to silence supporters of Mr. Trump’s fraud claims. Ms. Honey also repeatedly mentioned a report often cited by election conspiracists to support their claims that voting machines were rigged to favor Democrats, according to the people familiar with the call.
Election officials from nearly all 50 states gathered on a call last month with the Homeland Security Department’s point person on “election integrity,” eager to hear how the woman filling a newly created Trump administration position might help safeguard the vote ahead of next year’s midterms.
But many of them left alarmed.
Rather than offering assurances that the federal government’s election protection programs would continue uninterrupted, the new official, Heather Honey, instead used portions of the meeting to echo rhetoric that has infused the right-wing election activist movement that emerged since President Trump falsely claimed that his 2020 defeat was the result of widespread fraud, according to five people with knowledge of the call.
Ms. Honey, a leader in that movement until her appointment in August as deputy assistant secretary for election integrity, complained that her department’s cybersecurity experts tasked with combating misinformation about elections had “strayed from their mission.”
The remark echoed a widespread view on the right that the agency had sought to silence supporters of Mr. Trump’s fraud claims. Ms. Honey also repeatedly mentioned a report often cited by election conspiracists to support their claims that voting machines were rigged to favor Democrats, according to the people familiar with the call.
