Targeting Election Officials and Civil Society
The Trump administration, falsely claiming that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, has already targeted organizations and individuals it sees as adverse with baseless or inappropriate retaliatory actions. It now threatens to do the same with certain election officials, civic groups that mobilize voters, and other individuals and entities that protect elections and the rule of law. These kinds of actions can be tools of retribution, intimidation, or coercion.
Weaponizing Federal Agencies
A set of new federal task forces — the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group, the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office Election Integrity Task Force, and the Washington, D.C., Attorney’s Office Special Unit: Election Accountability — establish a federal law enforcement approach to elections focused on targeting voters, election officials, perceived political adversaries, and journalists. The task forces devote resources to search for supposedly widespread voter fraud — a problem that doesn’t exist — and sanction political targeting.
“They are poised to enable election interference by investigating perceived adversaries, targeting election officials, and casting doubt on election systems.”
Political appointees who have spread falsehoods about the outcome of the 2020 election, including U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, and FBI Director Kash Patel, have empowered and enabled these task forces. Bondi, Dhillon, and Patel have also made clear they are willing to use the federal government to investigate and prosecute people they claim are responsible for supposed election fraud. Patel has stated, “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you.” Bondi, in one of her first actions as attorney general, created the Weaponization Working Group, whose purpose is to “review the activities of all departments and agencies exercising civil or criminal enforcement authority of the United States over the last four years.” The administration has instructed the group to investigate some of the president’s perceived enemies, including former Special Counsel Jack Smith and his staff for investigating the January 6 riots, the Manhattan district attorney and the New York state attorney general for their involvement in the prosecution of Trump and his businesses, and anyone who investigated or prosecuted the January 6 rioters.
Impact: During President Trump’s first term in office, federal agencies and departments occasionally served as a restraint on his unlawful actions. For example, when the president asked the attorney general to seize voting machines after his 2020 election loss, then Attorney General Bill Barr refused. But in his second term, the president’s picks may not hold the line in the same way. Rather, they are poised to enable election interference by investigating perceived adversaries, targeting election officials, and casting doubt on election systems.
Why It’s Wrong: The DOJ can and should prosecute fraud in U.S. elections, but these task forces are premised on the false notions that U.S. elections are rigged and that there’s rampant voter fraud. Rather than ensuring election integrity, these task forces undermine it, part of the department’s serious shift away from protecting voting rights.
Status: The Constitution and the law serve as a limit on what these political appointees can do. Indeed, courts have already struck down this administration’s attempts to subvert the law. For example, multiple courts have found that the president’s executive orders targeting law firms violate the First Amendment, and two courts have preliminarily stopped the president from unlawfully trying to direct an independent, bipartisan agency to add a citizenship document requirement to the federal voter registration form.
Penalizing Law Firms
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