New Whistleblower Report Finds Fed Agents Likely Broke State Laws in Pursuit of Trump’s Conspiracy Theories

Agents Instructed To ‘Misrepresent Themselves’ Hello, and welcome back to The Franchise! Democrats released another damning whistleblower report this week. This one highlights some disturbing, and potentially illegal, activity from the Department of Homeland Security’s ongoing effort to access state voter rolls as part of the Trump administration’s relentless campaign to unearth proof of President Trump’s conspiracy theories about noncitizens voters. On Monday, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Alex Padilla (D-CA) released an anonymous 30-page whistleblower report on some “serious allegations of illegal and inappropriate activities” concerning DHS’s effort to find alleged instances of noncitizens on state voter rolls. The report was produced by the government watchdog group, Democracy Defenders Fund. It details a DHS effort surfaced by the New York Times last month known as the Unlawful Voter Initiative, in which DHS enlists U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agents to access sensitive voter information from internal and external sources. They then use that data to search public facing state voter databases, according to the Times. The ways in which DHS has directed agents to use the information to access state voter rolls may be in violation of some state laws, including instructing agents to “to misrepresent themselves” in order to access this data. The report notes that agents, in some cases, effectively posed as the voters or someone authorized by the voter to access the data. The conduct appears to violate some state laws against protecting personal identifying voter information from unauthorized access. “Several states, including Virginia, require a specific attestation that one is authorized to access the voter’s information, under penalty of law,” the report says. “However, the Department and USCIS are directing assigned personnel to make false claims, using Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from DHS data, on state government websites by affirming that they are the voter or have been authorized by the voter to obtain the desired state voter data.” “This appears to be a clear-cut violation of state laws regarding access to individual voter information and raises serious questions about federal privacy laws and data policies as well,” the report continues. As we know by now, noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare, illegal in federal elections and simply not a real issue. Trump, however, believes in conspiracy theories about noncitizens voting en masse in federal elections for Democrats and has been using the might of the executive branch to investigate his delusions. That includes this DHS effort. Schumer and Padilla included the whistleblower report in a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and USCIS Director Joseph B. Edlow. The senators urged them to both “be transparent about what they intend to do with the unreliable records they are generating” and demanded they “immediately stop this initiative and related activities.” In a statement to the Times, DHS denied it was encouraging agents to break any laws. “The Department accessed publicly available data from states’ voter rolls and cross referenced them with known aliens in our systems,” the statement said. “It’s not rocket science; it’s an easy step to secure our elections.” As always, there’s a lot to catch up on. Let’s dig in. Denver Fights Back Against Prospect of ICE Agents at Voting Sites The city of Denver has preemptively asked a federal judge to block the Trump administration from sending armed federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling places to execute warrants. Late last week, the city of Denver and the civil rights organization, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and government watchdog groups filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration to bar them from sending armed federal agents to polling places, arguing that the move would violate laws protecting free and fair elections. In the suit, the group of plaintiffs assert that DHS officials are sending federal agents to carry out federal immigration enforcement activities at polling places as official DHS policy. The groups cite recent sightings of ICE agents at or near polling places in the lawsuit — such as reports of an incident in San Antonio in May where ICE arrested someone in the parking lot of a voting place and another in upstate New York where ICE agents entered a polling place to question an election worker. “The specter of armed officers at polling places threatens the freedom of this upcoming election. It places voters in fear that they will be confronted by armed federal immigration enforcement officers if they choose to cast a ballot,” the lawsuit reads. The plaintiffs ask the federal judge to block DHS from being able to deploy federal agents to polling sites and to declare this activity illegal. “The presence of federal force at the polls interferes with the smooth administration of elections at the local level. It disrupts voting and makes it more difficult for state and local election officials and law enforcement to do their jobs by making polling places spaces of confrontation,” the lawsuit says. For many months now, the Trump administration has been evasive about whether they will send ICE agents or other federal law enforcement to polling places. In February, Heather Honey, the election denier and Department of Homeland Security official at the helm of the department’s election “integrity” efforts, said that ICE agents would not be present at polling places. But in March, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said that he might send ICE agents to polling places to address a “specific threat” or to execute a warrant, but that they would not be used for “intimidation.” The presence of armed federal agents would not only be extremely intimidating to voters, it is also, as we have reported before, one of the many ways the Trump administration is perpetuating the false narrative that noncitizens are voting en masse in federal elections. My colleague Nicole LaFond unpacks the reasons why Democrats are trying to nail Trump administration officials down on this issue ahead of the midterms more here. Trump Urges Fellow Republicans To ‘Cheat Like Hell’ in Midterms After bribing Americans to vote for Republicans this fall during his speech at the GOP midterm convention in Dallas last week, President Trump led supporters in a corrupt and bizarre pledge to “cheat like hell” in the upcoming November elections. He led supporters in a chant, asking them to raise their right hands and repeat after him in a pledge to … himself, whom he described as the “the greatest president in the history of the United States that loves us so much he can’t even breathe.” He then told the crowd to pledge to vote whether or not they are registered to vote and “to cheat like hell.” “… that I will go out with my family, my friends. I’ll do it any way. I don’t care if I’m registered or not. I’m going to try and cheat like hell, like they do.” During his speech, Trump, of course, referenced the non-existent 2020 voter fraud that he is still somehow trying to make relevant six years later. It’s all part of an act for him to potentially cry voter fraud once again if things don’t go well for Republicans in the midterm elections. In Other Election News: TPM: Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Effort to Break Vote-By-Mail Before Midterms Democracy Docket: Missouri voters seek $80 million in damages after Secretary of State Denny Hoskins’ redistricting debacle AP: Democrats and activist groups plan to push back if Trump tries to interfere in midterm elections