Inside Trump’s efforts to ‘take control’ of the midterm elections

In mid-December 2020, federal officials charged with protecting America’s elections from fraud converged in a dark, windowless environment. fortified room at the Department of Justice headquarters in downtown Washington, DC.

They had been summoned by Attorney General William Barr.

In previous weeks, Donald Trump’s claims that the presidential election was stolen from him had reached a crescendo. He had become obsessed with a conspiracy theory that voting machines in Antrim County, Michigan, had switched his votes to those of Joe Biden.

Every day, Trump increased pressure unleash the power of the federal government to reverse its defeat.

Barr interviewed experts from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, crowded next to senior FBI officials around a cheap table. He needed a group of about ten people to answer a crucial question: Was it really possible that the 2020 presidential vote had been hacked?

ProPublica’s description of the previously unreported meeting comes from several people who were in the room or who were informed of the gathering. Everyone understood that the meeting represented an important moment for the nation, they said. Barr, who did not respond to requests for comment, took a delicate line with Trump, directing the FBI to investigate allegations of election irregularities while publicly declaring there had been election irregularities. no evidence “to date” of widespread fraud.

Nonpartisan CISA specialists, supported by their FBI counterparts, said they discovered what happened in Antrim County. A clerk had made a mistake when updating voting styles on the machines, leading to a software glitch that initially shifted votes from Republicans to Democrats, they said. There was no fraud, just human error – which would soon publicly confirmed through a hand count of county ballots.

Listening carefully, Barr seemed to understand both the truth and that telling it to the president would almost certainly cost him his job.

At the end of the meeting, Barr turned to his top aide, made hand gestures as if tying a bandana and declared he was going to “kamikaze” the White House.

What happened next is well known. When Barr met with Trump in the Oval Office on Dec. 14, the president launched into a monologue about how the events in Antrim County were “absolute proof” that the election was stolen. Barr waited until he had word before telling his boss what CISA experts had told him.

Barr then submitted his resignation letter, which Trump accepted. Barr left believing he had done his part to preserve democratic norms.

“I was saddened,” Barr wrote of Trump in his memoir. “If he really believed these things, he had become considerably detached from reality.”

Barr was one of several federal officials — most appointed by Trump — who refused to comply with the president’s demands, which only intensified after Barr left office. Although Trump-inspired rioters managed to delay the certification of his defeat by storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the institutional safeguards of American democracy ultimately held – barely.

But if we faced the same tests today, the guardrails and people holding the line would be largely absent, according to a review by ProPublica.

ProPublica looked at what happened the last time Trump lost a national election. Some of this happened in plain sight: After a cascade of court defeats, Trump began pressure state And local officials to reverse the results. But other things happened behind the scenes, like the meeting that helped persuade Barr to stay the course.

Our reporting revealed previously undisclosed aspects of a federal effort to safeguard the results of the 2020 vote, which involved at least 75 people across multiple agencies. Today, almost all of these people have left, having resigned, been fired or reassigned, including in the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. This included the cybersecurity specialists who determined that Antrim County’s allegations were false and reported their findings to Barr.

The people we identified as resisting attempts to overturn the 2020 results have been replaced by about two dozen people Trump installed in positions that could affect the election. Ten of them actively worked to overturn the 2020 vote, and the rest are associates of these individuals. In some cases, according to ProPublica, officials were hired from activist groups that are pillars of the movement. election denial movement. Experts warn this shows the movement has merged with the federal government.

These new officials could influence how Trump responds to the upcoming midterm elections, as polls show Republicans approaching what could be a significant election loss with the president’s decision to approval rating approaching record lowand public concern grows on the weakness of the economyTHE the administration’s mass deportation effort and the war against Iran. Apparently ready to ward off such a blow, Trump has stepped up his efforts to “nationalize” the 2026 electionssaying that Republicans must “take over” midterms. Democrats who followed Trump’s attempts to block his 2020 defeat began questioning whether he would allow a “blue wave,” particularly if it flipped control of the House of Representatives. who indicted him twice during his first term.

ProPublica’s review reveals new details about how the president unleashed his loyalists to turn the election. This includes the context of this year’s FBI raid in Georgia to seize 2020 election materials and how they use federal resources to seek out non-citizen voters. Ultimately, ProPublica’s reporting shows how thoroughly and extensively the Trump administration has overhauled the federal government in what some fear is a way to ensure that elections go the way he wants them to.

ProPublica’s reporting is based on interviews with about 30 current or former executive branch officials familiar with the work of Trump loyalists ensconced in electoral roles. Most spoke on condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation, including those with knowledge of Barr’s December 2020 meeting.

The Trump administration says its actions will make U.S. elections fairer and more secure — and prevent people barred from voting, like noncitizens, from doing so.

“Election integrity has always been a top priority for President Trump,” White House Press Secretary Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “The President will do everything in his power to defend the safety and security of American elections and to ensure that only American citizens vote in them. »

DOJ and DHS spokespersons emphasized that their departments strive to ensure free and fair elections and work closely with states to achieve these goals. Claims to the contrary, they say, are false.

A few safeguards persisted, preventing Trump from fully realizing his electoral program. Judges having blocked key elements of a March 2025 executive order in which Trump attempted to exert greater federal control over certain aspects of voting, and some Republican state officials resisted Justice Department lawsuits demanding state voter rolls.

Late last month, Trump released another decree on elections which is attempting to exert unprecedented federal control over mail-in voting and voter eligibility, which Democrats And voting rights groups contested in court.

Experts say 2026 will pose an unprecedented stress test for the integrity of U.S. elections.

“Our election system withstood Trump’s attacks after the 2020 election,” said Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat who has led the fight against the administration’s election actions, “but this will be an even tougher test, with more election deniers than ever before.”

The dismantling

Barr said. that in the high-stakes days following the 2020 election, it felt like he was playing Whac-A-Mole with Trump’s “avalanche” of false election claims.

DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency investigators provided intelligence that disproved many of them, not just those involving Antrim County.

CISA was created by Trump during his first term to counter cyber threats following Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 vote. It quickly came to provide crucial expertise and support to thousands of local election officials grappling with increasingly sophisticated attacks.

After the 2020 election, she also played a crucial role in combating misconceptions propagated by Trump supporters, producing a The “Rumor Control” site to refute them. And he partnered with state officials and technology providers. issue a statement calling the election “the most secure in American history.” Asset quickly pulled Chris Krebs, whom he had appointed to head CISA, but Krebs’s defense of the strength of the elect tion had a wide echo in the media and on Capitol Hill.

One of Trump’s first actions upon returning to the Oval Office was to gut CISA.

Starting in February 2025, DHS leadership focused its employees on combating disinformation and safeguarding elections. on leave. Management also froze the agency’s other election security workwhich included assessing local election offices for physical and cybersecurity risks, and disseminating sensitive threat information. Ultimately, around 30 CISA employees specializing in elections were fired or transferred to work in other areas.

“It took years of bipartisan, cross-sector partnership to build the security infrastructure we had, and dismantling CISA leaves a gaping hole,” said Kathy Boockvar, an election security expert who served as Pennsylvania secretary of state from 2019 to 2021. “We are making the task of securing our democracy exponentially more difficult.

A DHS spokesperson told ProPublica that the changes to CISA were a response to “a ballooning budget concealing a dangerous deviation from its statutory mission,” which included “campaigning instead of defending America’s critical infrastructure.” The spokesperson said CISA’s mission remains to coordinate the protection of critical infrastructure, including supporting local partners against cyber threats.

It’s not just CISA that has been gutted.

The Trump administration has sidelined or diminished other federal initiatives aimed at protecting election integrity or blocking foreign interference. Although many of these actions have been reported, together they reveal the scale of the changes.

First, the administration got rid of the National Security Council’s election security group, which brought together department leaders to coordinate federal voting-related actions. Then in August, the administration dismantled the Center of Foreign Malignant Influencea branch of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that had thwarted efforts by Russia, China and Iran to interfere in the 2024 election.

An ODNI spokesperson said the center was redundant and its functions were integrated with other parts of the bureau’s intelligence apparatus in a way that “arguably makes our ability to monitor and respond to threats from foreign adversaries stronger, more efficient and more effective.”

However, former national security officials, including one who had worked at the center, told ProPublica that his duties had largely ceased. Caitlin Durkovich, who led the NSC’s election security work under the Biden administration, said that under Trump the federal government had “abandoned” its traditional role in preserving the integrity and security of elections.

“Almost all programs and capabilities to stop bad actors and support election administrators have been dismantled,” she said. “As the midterm elections approach, this leaves states and localities exposed, without the intelligence support or federal coordination they need to detect and respond to threats in real time – precisely when the stakes are highest. »

The first months of the second Trump administration also brought seismic changes to three parts of federal law enforcement playing a central role in elections.

Kash Patel, the new director of the FBI, dismantled the public corruption teamwhich had been deployed in previous administrations to help monitor possible criminal activity on Election Day. THE Foreign Influence Working Groupwhich aimed to combat foreign influence on American politics, was also disbanded. (An FBI spokesperson said the bureau “remains committed to detecting and countering foreign influence efforts by adversary nations.”)

Additionally, the Justice Department significantly reduced the role of its Public Integrity Section, which was responsible for ensuring that department investigations were not unduly influenced by politics.

After the 2020 elections, the section’s senior lawyers warned against asking the FBI to investigate fraud allegations raised by Trump allies, saying the agency’s involvement could harm his reputation and appears motivated by partisanship. In this case, they were overruled by Barr and his deputies, but former officials said it was a rare case in which their directives were ignored. The need to directly cancel unity, they said, made it an obstacle – one that no longer exists.

A month after Trump’s return to the Oval Office, senior managers of the unit resigned when agency leaders ordered them to dismiss corruption charges against then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Others later resigned or were transferred. The section of 36 people was reduced to two. The administration no longer requires him to review politically sensitive cases, according to several people familiar with the matter.

Another key DOJ office, the Elections Section of the Civil Rights Division, had enforced federal laws that protect voting rights, particularly those that combat racial discrimination. In December 2020, the assistant attorney general overseeing the Civil Rights Division was one of several department heads who said they would resign whether Trump promoted Jeffrey Clark, a leader who supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results, to head the department after Barr resigned. This massive threat of resignation ultimately led to Trump not promoting Clark.

But today, almost all of the approximately 30 career lawyers who make up this section have resigned or been transferred. Much of this began last spring after Harmeet Dhillon, Trump’s deputy attorney general for civil rights, publish a memo saying their mission would shift from ensuring voting rights to enforcing Trump’s executive order on elections.

The Trump administration then filled the section with conservative lawyers who are now in court against the lawyers they replaced. At least four of these newly appointed lawyers participated in challenging the 2020 vote or worked with people who helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election.

“This is simply a shocking and depressing reversal of the federal government’s role in making good on the promise of nondiscrimination in voting and racial equality,” said Anna Baldwin, an appellate attorney for the Civil Rights Division who resigned last year and is now among those litigating against the Justice Department in a new role at the Campaign Legal Center.

The Justice Department did not respond to specific questions about dismantling the Public Integrity Section or changing the mission of the Civil Rights Division.

In total, at least 75 career officials who had played significant roles in election work at DHS, DOJ and other departments have left or been fired, ProPublica found.

Team America

Late last summer, after the Trump administration expelled most career specialists, a small group of political appointees began meeting at Department of Homeland Security headquarters.

The group — which once called itself “Team America,” according to sources familiar with the matter — sought federal levers it could pull to make Trump’s executive order on elections a reality, an effort that has not been previously reported.

They represented the new type of people who ran the show.

Its key members included David Harvilicz, the DHS deputy secretary responsible for overseeing the security of election infrastructure, including voting machines, and three of his best collaborators. As ProPublica reportedHarvilicz had co-founded an AI company with an architect of Trump’s claims about Antrim County.

Despite the setbacks the executive order has faced in the courts, there hasn’t been “much discussion or disagreement” about what to do with the directive from Harvilicz or any of his deputies, said a former federal official who interacted with members of the group. “It was just us cheering to do it.”

This small group was part of a larger team from DHS, DOJ and the White House seeking to advance the president’s agenda. Some members of Trump’s new guard are well-known: After the 2020 election, Patel military officials pressured to help investigate a conspiracy theory about voting machines, according to a former official of the Ministry of Justice. (Patel did not respond to a request for comment but asserted in congressional testimony that he did not remember the event.) Others, like Harvilicz, are more obscure but still wield substantial powers.

These newcomers seek to carry out Trump’s decrees and are unlikely to oppose his false claims that US elections are riddled with fraud.

Members of Team America have themselves taken up or distributed this type of material.

Heather Honey, who serves under Harvilicz in a newly created position focused on elections, falsely claimed that there were more ballots cast in Pennsylvania than voters in the 2020 presidential election. Trump cited this claim, which was attributed to himwhile urging his supporters to march on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

At least 11 people appointed by the administration, including honeyhave ties to the Election Integrity Network, a conservative grassroots organization that seeks to transform American elections. It is led by Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who I tried to help Trump cancel the 2020 elections. Gineen Bresso, who holds a high-level position in the Office of the White House Counselcoordinated with network leadership in 2024 as Election Integrity Chairman of the Republican National Committee, ProPublica reported. Since joining government, Honey has maintained close ties to Mitchell’s organization, and she and at least two other federal officials agreed private member briefings.

Experts say these former activists who helped forge a movement based on the idea that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump are seeking to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“The election denial movement is now embedded within the federal government, and they are working together to “It’s not just botched last-minute attempts to overturn the results” like in 2020, “but more systematic efforts to influence how elections are conducted months in advance.”

In response to questions sent to DHS, Harvilicz and Honey, a DHS spokesperson disputed that they were seeking to use the department’s powers to benefit Trump, writing that its employees “are focused on the security and freedom of our elections” and work to “implement the President’s policies.” In response to questions about their ties to the election denial movement, the spokesperson wrote: “To address the diverse and evolving challenges facing the ministry, we recruit experts from diverse backgrounds who go through a rigorous selection process. »

Mitchell did not respond to detailed questions from ProPublica. The White House responded to questions sent to Bresso about his ties to Mitchell’s network by reiterating its commitment to securing U.S. elections.

Over the fall and winter, as the Justice Department demanded that states turn over confidential voter roll information, Team America worked to resolve issues hindering the use of digital tools to comb through lists of noncitizens who had illegally registered to vote. Honey and others worked out the technical details of merging information from different agencies and worked out data-sharing contracts. When Honey or others ran into roadblocks, they would go to the White House or senior DHS leaders who would “come hot” to clear the way for her, officials who interacted with them said.

Initially, the plan was to pass voter information obtained by the DOJ through a Homeland Security tool called the Systematic Alien Verification System.

More recently, according to two people familiar with the matter, Team America has worked to exploit a more powerful tool used by another branch of DHS, Homeland Security Investigations, to increase its ability to track down non-citizen voters and bring criminal charges against them.

While DHS told ProPublica that SAVE identified more than 21,000 potential noncitizens on voter rolls over the past year, officials who verified those results in detail discovered vast inaccuracies: as ProPublica reported. Most states — including those with millions of voters — ultimately marked only a few to a few hundred potential noncitizens as registered voters, and far fewer have ever voted. The DHS spokesperson also called SAVE “secure and reliable.”

As the election approaches, current and former officials as well as election security experts have expressed concerns that Harvilicz and Honey, who espoused debunked conspiracy theories on the electionsare able to control the discourse around the strength of the vote.

It’s difficult to debunk false claims “bearing the stamp of the federal government,” said Derek Tisler, an attorney and director of the elections and government program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “I certainly worry about the damage this could do to voter confidence.”

Red flags

Perhaps nothing better reflects the breakdown of the guardrails that thwarted Trump’s most reckless impulses in 2020 than his creation last fall of a special White House post. I’m not reinvestigating his loss to Biden.

In December 2020, just days after Barr rejected Trump’s claims about Antrim County, lawyers in the White House counsel’s office helped block the president from responding to activists’ call to essentially declare martial law to seize voting machines. This hours-long shouting and insulting match was called the the craziest meeting of the first Trump administration.

But the lawyer Trump hired in 2025 as his Director of Election Security and IntegrityKurt Olsen, had worked to overturn Trump’s defeat in court in 2020 and was later sanctioned by the judgesincluding for manufacturing baseless allegations on the Arizona elections.

Olsen’s work in the second Trump administration broke down the firewall between the White House and DOJ officials, established after Watergate to prevent law enforcement officers from making decisions based on political pressure, said Gary Restaino, a former U.S. attorney in Arizona.

“This is not a constitutional requirement or even a legal requirement,” Restaino said, “but it is a democratic requirement to ensure that citizens across America understand that decisions about life and liberty are made objectively and consistently.”

In a previously unseen series of events, in late 2025, Olsen flew to Georgia to meet with Paul Brown, the head of the FBI’s Atlanta field office, according to people familiar with the matter.

Olsen wanted the FBI to seize 2020 ballots in Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold, and gave Brown a report that he said would justify the extraordinary action. Brown and his team stressed to Olsen that any investigation his team conducted would be independent and fair.

When Brown and his team reviewed the report, they discovered that the Georgia Elections Commission had already looked into his allegations, rejecting a lotand concluding that others were due to human error and not criminal wrongdoing. The report was written by a longtime Olsen ally and participant in the Election Integrity Network who had a history of discredited claimsProPublica reported.

Based on their own investigation, Brown’s team submitted an affidavit to his DOJ superiors that did not present a strong enough case to move forward with what Olsen wanted.

Shortly afterward, Brown was offered a choice: retire or transfer to a new office, people with knowledge of the exchange told ProPublica.

Olsen did not respond to requests for comment.

An FBI spokesperson said Brown “chose to retire” and that his “work in election security was entirely in compliance with the law.”

Brown’s ouster after refusing to seize 2020 election materials was reportedbut Olsen’s involvement and the details of their interactions leading to Brown’s retirement have not been previously disclosed.

With Brown’s departure, the matter moved forward under his replacement.

Trump administration officials also took a new step to maintain control of the investigation.

Pam Bondi, then attorney general, chose Thomas Albuswhom Trump had appointed as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, to prosecute the case, even though it went well beyond his usual regional jurisdiction. Albus had met Olsen around the time the White House counsel had been hired, ProPublica reported. (Albus declined a request for comment.)

At the end of January, the FBI conducted an investigation unprecedented raid in Fulton County – and agency affidavitset up by Albus and Brown’s replacement, cited a version of the report Olsen gave to Brown as evidence supporting the seizure. ProPublica was part of a media coalition that sued to unseal the affidavit.

An FBI spokesperson said its agents “followed all procedures to ensure everything was in order, and that the FBI evidence team had the court-authorized search warrant before arriving on scene.”

Ryan Crosswell, who worked in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section for about half a decade, handling a number of election cases, called Brown’s replacement and Albus’ involvement a “wake-up call” because of the unusual circumstances of their appointments.

“They just cycle through people until they find someone who is willing to do exactly what they want,” Crosswell said.

The Justice Department did not respond to a question about Crosswell’s comment.

The extraordinary raid was also made possible, in an unprecedented way, by the destruction of the public integrity section of the Department of Justice.

Several former attorneys for the section said they likely would have tried to block Fulton County’s investigation because it lacked solid evidence, had a clear political focus and ran counter to the investigation. department guidelines that measures should not be taken “with the aim of giving an advantage or disadvantage to a candidate or a political party”.

Crosswell said: “From everything we know, if the PIN was still there, we would say no. »

John Keller served as principal deputy chief of the Public Integrity Section from 2020 to 2025 and as interim chief when he resigned in early 2025. He is concerned that allegations of irregularities in the upcoming election will be treated on a partisan basis.

“Without this review and without apolitical, objective, honest intermediaries involved in the process, the risk of intentional manipulation or unintentional interference is much greater,” Keller said.

“Dismantle the brain”

The week the FBI seized Fulton County ballots, about half of the nation’s secretaries of state converged on Washington, D.C., for their winter conference.

They had pressing questions about the election from Bondi, then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and other luminaries who had promised to appear at the event. But none of the titles appeared, leaving conference attendees staring at an empty podium, until the session was abruptly canceled.

The rift is emblematic of the growing divide between state officials and the parts of the federal government that until recently had worked with them to secure U.S. elections.

Shenna Bellows, Maine’s Democratic secretary of state, said in an interview that trust between the Trump administration and the states was “absolutely demolished.”

This loss of trust reflects the fact that election deniers have taken on many high-profile roles within federal agencies. Honey sometimes represents DHS on interdepartmental conference calls with state election chiefs, a troubling reality for those who have spent years countering false claims she did outside of government.

In a February phone call, state officials expressed confusion over whether the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency would still assess their election systems for physical and cyber vulnerabilities. Honey said it would, but Bellows said she was told no.

Two DHS officials said remaining ProPublica CISA staff avoided election work, fearing they would lose their jobs if they engaged with state and local officials. “In CISA, elections are a toxic poison,” one said.

A DHS spokesperson said state and federal officials still work together “every day” to protect elections and that “the claim that DHS has broken its partnership with states and made our elections less secure is simply false.”

Career cuts to election specialists and their divisions eliminated information channels that highlighted threats during voting, including Election Day command posts run by the Justice Department and the FBI. Another information channel, funded by DHS, will still operate but will only be accessible to state and local election offices, not the federal government.

Jessica Cadigan, a former FBI intelligence analyst who investigated Election Day threats, said the command post at FBI headquarters was key in her case.

“It’s like dismantling the brain, if you will,” she said. “They are the ones who put everything together. »

An FBI spokesperson said the agency will still have the ability to monitor the situation on the ground through designated election crimes coordinating experts in all of its field offices.

Jena Griswold, Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state, has come to view the federal government as an adversary of elections and their administration, rather than a partner.

Colorado is one of about 30 states that the Justice Department has sued over confidential voter registration information. At least four courts that have so far fully considered these cases have rejected them, although the Justice Department has appealed most of the decisions. (The others are on hold.) Griswold told ProPublica that she has added another lawyer to her team to fight whatever comes next from the Trump administration.

“Donald Trump,” she said, “has made American elections less secure.”