This may be the first time in 250 years that Americans have good cause to fear their president may be trying to steal an election. US President Donald Trump’s highly weaponized Justice Department is just the tip of the spear in an assault on electoral integrity, years in the making.
His near-term goal is to retain Republican – particularly his own – control of Congress and ensure that the new Congress doesn’t wield its power to investigate the endemic corruption of his administration.
But underneath is an ongoing campaign to undermine public faith in the electoral system to create a basis for greater federal takeover of a process assigned to the states by the Constitution. It is part of Trump’s maximalist vision of executive power.
The assault has been underway for years, notably marked by the president igniting an insurrection on January 6, 2021, that saw thousands of his followers violently storm the US Capitol to steal an election that he clearly lost at the polls. Today, he is better prepared with more experience, more power and a highly weaponized administration.
There is rising fear across the country that Trump and his cohorts will engage in unconstitutional efforts to subvert the electoral process by threats, intimidation, lawsuits, and even armed federal agents.
He told his attorney-general to sue the state of Alaska to block certification of the senate election if his candidate, the incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan, loses since there is another candidate with the same name.
Although the ballot makes a clear distinction between the two, clearly identifying one as the Republican incumbent, that apparently is irrelevant to Trump, whose only concern is limiting Democratic gains next week.
The Alaska Supreme Court already threw out a similar suit, and this one is likely to fail as well, but the goal here is intimidation, not legal niceties. Hopefully, Democrat Mary Peltola will win a clear majority making the issue moot, although that is unlikely to stop Trump from kvetching and suing.
Trump, a seasoned purveyor and creator of bizarre conspiracy theories, has a long history of trying to erode public confidence in the electoral system.
Knowing his and his party’s popularity are at historic lows, he fears that a Democratic takeover of one or both chambers of Congress will result in endless investigations of his corruption, and another impeachment.
His ploy to get Republican-dominated states to gerrymander away possible Democratic seats, so his party can hold on to the House, looks like it may backfire. Some districts intended to be solid red may turn blue. It apparently never occurred to him that Democrats might take the hint.
Trump may triple down on his assault on the midterm elections as a diversion from a report released this week by Congressional Democrats claiming he was an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of young women in the 1990s, the Meidas news site reports. Democrats are already planning hearings for when they win the House.
Trump’s favorite excuse for his pervasive election interference is to stop non-citizens from voting. Over years of making such accusations, he and his supporters have failed to come up with any credible evidence that such voting, which is extremely rare, has ever influenced the outcome of an election.
Voter fraud is 'extraordinarily rare'
A study by the Brennan Center for Justice showed such voter fraud to be “extraordinarily rare.” One survey found only 30 incidents of suspected non-citizens voting out of 23.5 million ballots cast.
That won’t deter Trump. His Justice Department has demanded election officials not count the votes of possible non-citizens or face criminal prosecution. Presumably, like ICE, they can tell possible violators by the color of their skin, possible accents, or their last name.
Election officials in several states report receiving intimidating letters from the Justice Department warning that it intends to monitor voting.
Fear that Trump may attempt to meddle in this election has prompted a group of current and former US national security officials to secretly advise state governments and bipartisan congressional lawmakers on preventing federal intervention, The Washington Post revealed
Several national Democratic groups and Congressional leaders have sued the administration, accusing it of a “persistent stream of threats and intimidation” aimed at tampering with state and local voter rolls. The suit quoted Trump’s threat to imprison California officials if they count mail-in ballots the administration claimed – without evidence – were non-citizens, according to the Post. A federal court temporarily blocked the move on Monday.
Former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin, in a New York Times essay, raised the specter of a repeat of January 6, 2021, when Trump tried to get vice president Mike Pence to block Joe Biden’s election. This time, instead of the principled Pence, who refused to join the coup, Trump would be looking to a more compliant Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House.
Trump, in Rubin’s scenario, would send armed federal agents to seize ballot boxes and persuade the lickspittle speaker, himself a 2020 election denier, to refuse to seat duly elected Democrats when the new Congress convenes on January 3. Far-fetched? Not for anyone who remembers January 6.
Johnson, arguably the weakest and most feckless speaker in history, was one of Trump’s lawyers trying to overthrow the 2020 election. He has shown himself to be an ineffectual speaker who takes his orders from the White House. He may have a law degree, but he seems ignorant of the Constitutional separation of powers, and that he is supposed to be the leader of an independent and equal branch of government.
Here’s my fearless prediction: Trump will take personal credit for all Republican victories; denounce every Democratic win as fraudulent; deny any election results he doesn’t like; throw around charges like hoax, rigged, fraud, and even treason. And then the most litigious president in American history will file a flurry of lawsuits to try to overturn elections he dislikes.
Whom can you trust? Your lying eyes, or an 80-year-old convicted felon with a record for sexual abuse, a fixation on men’s tushies, and possible signs of dementia?
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and former legislative director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.