Looking ahead, we’re less likely to see “last-minute slapdash attempts to overturn the results” like in 2020—but instead, “more systematic efforts to influence how elections are run months ahead of time.”
Read more: www.propublica.org/article/trum...
Honey has maintained close ties to Cleta Mitchell and other election deniers. propublica.org/article/elec... And she is now leading an increasingly aggressive push to investigate alleged noncitizen voting—despite no evidence it’s a widespread problem.
The merger of election denial networks with the federal government is also having more subtle effects.
For example, Heather Honey helped shut down a nonpartisan program studying college voter participation and turnout, as @hansilowang.bsky.social reported for @npr.org. bsky.app/profile/bren...
ProPublica revealed that Olsen personally pressed the head of the FBI’s Atlanta field office to investigate Fulton County’s role in the 2020 election—and the agent was then forced out after concluding there was no basis for a probe.
The consequences are already being felt.
For example, the FBI’s Fulton County raid was based on a referral from Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who sought to overturn the 2020 election, and claims from Clay Parikh, who has repeatedly promoted debunked allegations.
Both are now “Special Government Employees.”
As I told
@propublica.org:
“The election denial movement is now interwoven within the federal government, and they are working together toward a shared goal of reshaping elections” in ways that undermine the freedom to vote.
These political appointees have gone beyond just giving lip service to election conspiracy theories.
At least 10 were directly involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
11 have close ties to Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network.
A new investigation from @propublica.org's @dougbockclark.bsky.social + @jenafifield.bsky.social finds that at least 75 career staff previously involved in protecting elections are gone.
In their place: dozens of political appointees with roots in the election denial movement.
New reporting shows the election denial movement isn’t on the outside looking in anymore—it’s now embedded in the machinery of government.
Over the past several years, billionaires + right-wing foundations poured tens of millions into building that infrastructure. www.propublica.org/article/trum...
"The election denial movement is now interwoven within the federal government...It’s not just last-minute slapdash attempts to overturn the results but more systematic efforts to influence how elections are run months ahead of time." -CLC's @brendanfischer.bsky.social
Before, these campaigns came from the outside.
Now, the same networks are inside government—turning conspiracy theories into investigations, policy, and real-world consequences. (end)
This is the same playbook we saw with earlier attacks on ERIC and the Biden voter access order—nonpartisan programs get recast as partisan threats, then targeted until they’re weakened or shut down. npr.org/2024/06/30/n...
Importantly, these programs weren’t about helping one political party: they helped colleges understand who votes, and how to get more young people to participate.
Now that work just got harder.
As I told @npr.org, “this really shows the power and influence that a network of election conspiracy theorists are having over government policy and over the way that elections are run and civic participation is studied.”
Mitchell claimed that the end of the student voting study “is 100 percent the result of the work” from Honey and EIN activists, “so that’s a real victory lap and one that I think we ought to celebrate.”
According to Cleta Mitchell, after Honey joined DHS, she shared her report with Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who then launched an investigation into the Tufts program, known as NSLVE.
Within weeks, the nonprofit facilitating the program shut it down.
Fast forward three years. Trump is president again, and Heather Honey has become the Department of Homeland Security’s head of election integrity—and her claims about the college voting program gained traction inside the federal government.
That same year, Heather Honey—who was then an activist working with EIN—published a report attacking a Tufts University program studying college voter participation, and cynically claimed that the program violated federal privacy laws. www.thecollegefix.com/concerns-rai...
This story starts in 2023, when Cleta Mitchell and her Election Integrity Network began targeting college voting.
That’s when Mitchell complained to donors that students “just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed.” washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/...
A Trump administration probe just shut down a key source of data on college voting.
This is the result of a years-long campaign by election conspiracy theorists—some of whom are now inside government and wielding power, @hansilowang.bsky.social and @npr.org reports. 🧵
www.npr.org/2026/04/08/n...
President Trump isn’t sure how his executive order related to mail voting can be challenged. We have a few ideas. Starting with this: the President has no power over election rules. The Constitution gives those powers to states and Congress and no one else.
UPDATE: The Arizona Senate has released the federal grand jury subpoena for the records related to the partisan audit of Maricopa County's 2020 election.
Link to full record: www.documentcloud.org/documents/27...
ELLY also relies on the same limited data sources that led Eagle AI to produce false positives and wrongly flag eligible voters. www.cbsnews.com/news/eligibl...
But despite the rebrand, Eagle AI's problems remain.
An ELLY demo shows the platform’s own data breakdown flags high rates of “Incomplete Data or Error” across counties and states.
In other words: ELLY acknowledges its data is flawed—yet it is still being pitched as a tool to challenge voters.
The rebranded Eagle AI was also pitched to the Georgia State Election Board yestoday, following demonstrations to Missouri, North Carolina and Rhode Island, according to records obtained by
@weareoversight.bsky.social
ELLY--the rebranded Eagle AI--was demonstrated at last month's infamous DC meeting between top Trump officials and election deniers.
That same meeting, first reported by
@propublica.org, included Cleta Mitchell, Kurt Olsen, and Heather Honey. propublica.org/article/elec...
The controversial, Cleta Mitchell-backed mass voter challenge project Eagle AI has rebranded,
@janetimm.bsky.social reports. www.nbcnews.com/politics/ele...
It is now going by "ELLY," pitched to activists and county election boards, and "PSEPHOS," pitched to states as an alternative to ERIC.
Our full analysis breaks down how the pardon process is being reshaped — and why stronger transparency and safeguards are urgently needed.
Read the report: campaignlegal.org/update/insid...
One former prosecutor said defense attorneys “can’t get their clients to take…plea offers because they felt they’re better off spending their money on a political donation, drawing Trump’s attention & getting the case dismissed or going to trial and getting a pardon.”
Category 3: Brokered pardons, in which deep-pocketed individuals hire well-connected lobbyists or fixers to press clemency requests directly to the president.