Several top federal election officials attended a summit last week at which prominent figures who worked to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election defeat pressed the president to declare a national emergency to resume this year’s midterm elections.
According to videos, photos and social media posts reviewed by ProPublica, participants in the meeting included Kurt Olsen, a White House lawyer. tasked with reinvestigating the 2020 electionsand Heather Honey, Department of Homeland Security election integrity official. The event was called by Michael Flynn, Trump’s president. former national security advisorin the presence of Cleta Mitchell, who leads the Election Integrity Network, a group that spreading false claims about election fraud and non-citizen voting.
Election experts say the meeting reflects a intensification of thrust to persuade Trump to take unprecedented steps to influence the November vote. The courts have largely blocked his efforts reshape elections through executive order and legislation is at a standstill in Congress, which would impose strict voter ID requirements across the country.
The Washington Post reported On Thursday, activists associated with summit participants circulated a draft executive order that would ban mail-in voting and remove voting machines as part of a federal takeover. Peter Ticktin, a lawyer who worked on the executive order and who had a client at the top, told ProPublica that these actions were “all part of the same effort.”
The summit follows other meetings and discussions between administration officials and activists — many previously unreported — dating back at least to last fall, according to emails and recordings obtained by ProPublica. Coordination between those inside and outside government represents a breakdown of crucial guardrails, U.S. election experts said.
“The meeting shows that the same people who tried to overturn the 2020 election have only become better organized and are now integrated into the government apparatus,” said Brendan Fischer, director of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan pro-democracy organization. “This creates a significant risk that the administration will lay the groundwork to inappropriately reshape elections ahead of the midterms or even go against the will of voters.” »
Five of the six federal officials at the summit did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about the event.
A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said federal officials’ participation in the rally should not be construed as support for a national emergency declaration and that it was “standard practice” for staffers to communicate with outside advocates who want to share policy ideas. Official highlighted comments made by Trump PBS News denies he was considering a national emergency or had read the draft decree. “Any speculation about what policies the administration may or may not pursue is just that: speculation,” the official said.
In the past, Trump has declared open to federal takeover as a means of containing Republican losses predicted in November. This month, he said in an interview with conservative podcaster Dan Bongino: Republicans must “take control” of the elections and “nationalize the vote.”
Mitchell did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about the summit. A spokesperson for Flynn responded to ProPublica’s detailed questions by disparaging the experts who expressed concerns, texting “LOL ‘EXPERTS’.”
THE Round table of 30 people on February 19, in a downtown Washington, D.C., office building, was sponsored by the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a conservative think tank. Afterward, activists and government officials had dinner together, photos reviewed by ProPublica show.
Flynn, the institute’s president, explained to a social media personality why he organized the event.
“I wanted to bring this group together physically, because most of us met online” while “fighting battles” in swing states from Arizona to Georgia, Flynn told Tommy Robinson on the sidelines of the gathering. Robinson videos posted of these online interactions. “The overall theme of this event was making sure we’re not all operating in our own little bubbles.”
Flynn repeatedly said recommended for Trump to declare a national emergency and published on social networks after the event, speaking to Trump, “We the people want a fair election and we know there is only one office in the country that can make that happen given the current political environment in the United States.”
Besides Olsen and Honey, four other federal officials from agencies that will shape the next election attended the event. At least four of the six people were present at the dinner.
One of them is Clay Parikh, a special government employee in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. who is helping Olsen with the 2020 investigation. An ODNI spokesperson said Parikh attended the summit “in his personal capacity”.
Another, Mac Warner, took care electoral dispute has the Ministry of Justice. A department spokesperson said Warner resigned the day after the event and did not receive the required approval from agency ethics officials to participate.
The department “remains committed to maintaining the integrity of our electoral system and will continue to prioritize efforts to ensure that all elections remain free, fair and transparent,” the spokesperson said in an email.
A third administration official at the summit, Marci McCarthy, heads communications for the nation’s cyber defense agency, which oversees the security of election infrastructure such as voting machines.
Kari Lake, who Trump nominated as senior advisor to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, was one of the guest speakers. Lake worked with Olsen and Parikh in his unsuccessful attempt to overturn his defeat in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election.
Lake said in an email that she “showed up to the event, spoke for about 20 minutes about the global importance of election integrity, a nonpartisan issue that matters to all citizens – in the United States and abroad. I left without listening to any further speeches.”
“Elections must be free from fraud or any other malpractice that could subvert the will of the people,” she added.
At the meeting, activists outlined ways to transform U.S. elections that would help conservatives, according to social media posts and interviews they gave to conservative media outlets, such as LindellTV, a streaming platform created by pillow mogul Mike Lindell. They said the group divided into two camps: those who wanted to pursue a more progressive legal and legislative strategy and those who wanted Trump to declare a national emergency.
Several activists left the meeting convinced that Trump should make the latter choice, a move they say would allow the president to circumvent the Constitution’s directive that elections be run by the states.
Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, a major backer of efforts to overturn the 2020 election, told LindellTV that Trump has “played nice” so far by not taking control of the US elections. “But at some point,” Byrne said, “he has to do something, something strong: declare a national emergency.”
Byrne responded to ProPublica’s questions by sending a screenshot of a poll that he said suggested that “two-thirds of Americans rightly do not trust” voting machines, something the proposed national emergency declaration aims to remove.
Will Huff, who advocated the removal of voting machines, says conservative vlogger that Olsen, the White House counsel and other administration officials would report the “consensus” from the gathering to Trump. “This has to be a national emergency,” said Huff, the campaign manager of a Republican candidate for Arkansas Secretary of State.
In response to questions from ProPublica, Huff said in an email that Olsen and Trump would use their judgment in deciding whether to declare a national emergency.
“The President has been briefed on the deficiencies noted in the election infrastructure,” Huff wrote. “I believe there are firm hands around the president who want to make sure that any action taken is, first of all, constitutional and legal, but also supported by evidence.”
McCarthy, the cybersecurity chief, expressed his broader solidarity with other participants in an article on social media about the summit. “Grateful for the friendships forged over the years spent side by side, united by purpose and belief,” she wrote. “The mission continues…and so does the camaraderie. »
Last week’s rally was the latest in a series of private interactions between conservative election activists and administration officials, according to emails, documents and recordings obtained by ProPublica. A lot having involved Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network. Prior to her government role, Honey was an executive with the Election Integrity Network, ProPublica reportedas was McCarthy.
Not previously reported emails obtained by ProPublica show that some Just weeks after Honey began working at the Department of Homeland Security, she briefed election activists, a Republican secretary of state and another federal official in a conference call by his former bossMitchell.
“We are excited to welcome him to our call this morning to hear about his work supporting election integrity within DHS,” Mitchell wrote in an email introducing the call presenters.
Honey did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about the call. Experts said Honey’s briefing gave her former employer access that likely would have violated ethics rules in place under previous administrations, including the first Trump administration — but not this one.
Earlier “ethical guardrails would have avoided some of the revolving door issues we see between the election denial movement and government officials,” said Fischer, director of the Campaign Legal Center. These previous rules “were intended to prevent former employers and clients from gaining privileged access.”