Fears mount that Trump administration could meddle in U.S. elections
CBC
Concern is mounting among political observers and critics of U.S. President Donald Trump that his administration is laying the groundwork to meddle in crucial midterm elections that will determine which party controls Congress.
The fears peaked this week with Trump saying in an interview that Republicans in Washington should "take over" elections in at least 15 states, despite the U.S. Constitution giving states the lion's share of authority over conducting elections.
Despite his press secretary's subsequent attempt to downplay those comments, Trump went even farther on Tuesday, alleging there were "rigged, crooked elections" in the swing-state major cities of Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta and calling again for a federal government takeover of vote counting.
"When you see some of these states about how horribly they run their elections, what a disgrace it is," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
"The federal government should not allow that," he said. "If they can't count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over."
Trump's comments are just the latest development to trigger suspicion about his intentions for the voting system, coming after:
David Laufman, a former senior official at the U.S. Department of Justice specializing in national security, describes Gabbard's presence at the Fulton County ballot seizure as "astonishing and deeply disturbing."
It's "unprecedented for the director of national intelligence to be personally involved in a domestic criminal investigation, let alone to be on the scene of the execution of a search warrant of any kind, let alone a search warrant carried out against a state electoral facility," Laufman said in an interview.
He said the string of events combine to "raise particularly chilling concerns about the administration's intent for politicizing the upcoming elections in November."
Trump's comments calling for a federal takeover of elections are "authoritarianism, said out loud," according to Adam Kinzinger, a former House Republican who has become a staunch critic of the president.
"If Trump convinces his base that elections are inherently fraudulent unless he wins, then any action he takes to 'correct' that supposed fraud can be framed as justified," Kinzinger wrote Tuesday on Substack.
He warns those actions could include "pressuring election officials, intimidating voters, purging rolls [and] refusing to certify results."
Trump has based his complaints about election integrity primarily on two claims that have been repeatedly discredited: that he won the 2020 presidential election against Joe Biden but was robbed of his victory through fraud, and that Democrat vote totals are dramatically boosted by droves of non-citizens voting illegally.
He was in the midst of an extended monologue about illegal immigration in conversation with conservative podcaster Dan Bongino when he made his comments urging federal Republicans to "take over" elections from certain unnamed states.
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Concern is mounting among political observers and critics of U.S. President Donald Trump that his administration is laying the groundwork to meddle in crucial midterm elections that will determine which party controls Congress.
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