In late April of 2020, a top political appointee in the Trump administration called for Department of Homeland Security officials to scrutinize an unusual topic for a national security agency: possible voter fraud in the upcoming election. A subsequent directive included a focus on mail-in voting, according to a document reviewed by POLITICO.
That guidance came as then-President Donald Trump fomented claims that the expansion of mail-in voting would corrupt the 2020 election — which later fed his unsubstantiated assertions that the election was stolen.
DHS’ intelligence office did not release any materials substantiating the president’s claims. But it did find that the Kremlin spread lies about mail-in voting.
The issuance of a directive involving voter fraud to the DHS’ Office of Intelligence and Analysis, which has not been previously reported, casts a new light on the extent of Trump World’s efforts to use government resources to investigate spurious claims about U.S. elections.
It also raises new questions about how a domestic political complaint found its way onto the intelligence community’s to-do list.
The House Jan. 6 committee has been probing how Trump’s false claims led to an attack on the U.S. Capitol, and the extent of the president and his allies’ efforts to interfere with aspects of the election.
The DHS saga began in late April of 2020, when Ken Cuccinelli — the former Virginia attorney general with close ties to Trump who was then the department’s...
A person in his 30s who demanded compensation for alleged foreign substances in cup noodles and the absence of meat in stir-fried pork was sentenced to prison in both the first trial and the appel...