Election '20

The FBI is revisiting President Donald Trump's 2020 election conspiracy theory as part of his ongoing effort to change the results of the election after he lost. The new focus is on Wisconsin.

So far, Trump's FBI has seized 2020 election ballots from Georgia and copies of voting data in Arizona from a review Republican lawmakers conducted. The Washington Post reported Friday that current and former election officials in Milwaukee have been interviewed by FBI agents in their own homes. The question will be whether the FBI demands the ballots as they did in Fulton County, Georgia.

The move would "set off alarms because Milwaukee maintains its absentee ballots in a way that could allow agents to determine who voters selected — undermining the secrecy of their ballots," the report said. One's vote is supposed to be a secret, but Trump would then have access to information on whether his allies supported him in 2020.

One question has been about an incident involving an official grabbing all of the flash drives and missing one of them. Another election worker then gave the flash drive to a police officer, who delivered it to the local official. It was never unattended, the report said. At the time, it became a huge conspiracy theory spread by MAGA supporters.

A man then filed a lawsuit claiming he saw a "secret room" in the election office and drew a floor plan showing where it was and indicated he heard someone snoring behind the door. The election denier has his own criminal history. The FBI demanded to know if there were ballots "printed" in the secret room.

Trump's agents went from the state’s deputy elections director to the former officials' homes, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. They next intend to interview police who were responsible for protecting election officials who delivered the results, reported WISN-TV.

The ballots haven't been seized yet, but there is a larger fear that things are headed in a worrisome direction.

"Ordinarily, election officials by now would have destroyed ballots from an election that was held nearly six years ago. But Milwaukee County officials have hung on to the 2020 ballots because of litigation," the Post explained.

One concern in Fulton County is that no copies were made of the ballots taken by the FBI. So, there would be no record to compare it to if the DOJ asserted that the count was "wrong." What's different in Milwaukee, however, is that numbers are assigned to a voter's absentee ballot, which can be traced back to the person. In other states, the ballots are simply thrown together.

Officials said that they are desperately trying to guard the ballots and said those numbers are redacted when copies are released to the public. In theory, the FBI wouldn't be able to match the numbers to the logbooks without them.

“Our secret ballot is secret for a reason,” declared elections chair Ann Jacobs. “It’s sacrosanct. It is at the heart of our American democracy. And those people who demand to know how everyone voted are violating those core tenets of what it means to vote as an American.”

“You’re going to see things like, ‘Here are the Biden voters in your neighborhood,’” said former Wisconsin chief election official Kevin Kennedy. “The bottom line is the potential for mischief is there, and we have seen in this age of social media that it will happen.”

President Donald Trump has a "fatal" obsession with easy "short-term" wins, according to one foreign policy expert, and it is about to be exposed by China, which has committed heavily to long-term strategies that could help it win the coming century.

James Rogers is a co-founder of the British think tank, the Council on Geostrategy, and on Wednesday, he published a new breakdown of Trump's impending visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping for The i Paper. Despite his efforts to "project an aura of U.S. power" at the meeting, with a military motorcade and entourage of leading tech moguls, Rogers argued that these efforts will only "mask the major challenges" that the country is grappling with in the face of China.

"Trump arrives in a China that has spent years making itself more resilient to US influence and pressure, leaving Trump attempting to secure rapid, transactional victories with a weakened hand," Rogers wrote.

He continued: "One challenge for the White House is its diminishing economic leverage. For the past year, Trump’s administration has pushed its sweeping tariff measures, including global duties and triple-digit levies on Chinese goods. These were seen as the ultimate tool to force Beijing’s co-operation. Yet this strategy is unraveling at home. A string of US court rulings... has dismantled the legal architecture of Trump’s approach, striking down his unprecedented use of Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. The US delegation arrives in Beijing with its primary economic weapon heavily restricted."

China, meanwhile, has retained its own economic leverages, particularly its "near-monopoly" on rare earth minerals that are critical for many modern technologies. In the face of American pressures, it has not hesitated to use the flow of these minerals to the U.S., creating a tough situation for military hardware at a time when the military is in dire need of it.

"This raises a critical question for Washington: who is hurting more?" Rogers continued. "While China has undoubtedly felt the sting of restrictions placed on US semiconductor exports, America’s defence industry and technology sector are feeling the squeeze of China’s mineral chokehold. Those materials are critical to modern munitions and advanced manufacturing."

This meeting, he argued, will be defined by "playing the long game," something which Trump is notably weak on. While Trump heavily favors "quick victories" that can be used "to boost his domestic position," China is making long-term plans to exert "control over the supply chains, minerals and diplomatic relationships that will define the mid-21st century."

"If the White House trades long-term economic statecraft for short-term political gains, it will validate the exact narrative that China is attempting to project around the world: that US leverage is quietly but steadily waning, as its own grows," Rogers concluded.

Fox News' ongoing efforts to stop the lawsuit by electronic voting equipment company Smartmatic failed this week when it lost its appeal for a "stay" and a motion to "vacate" the case.

A stay is a temporary pause of the lawsuit and a motion to vacate is a request for the judge to cancel all previous court orders.

Smartmatic is suing over what it alleges were false allegations about its electronic voting equipment in the wake of the 2020 election. Each part of the case has exposed details about what Fox staff and on-air talent have said under oath that could undermine Fox's defense.

Fox has been working to stop the lawsuit every step of the way, including fighting interviews with its team, the discovery of emails and text messages.

“Smartmatic welcomes the appellate court’s decision denying Fox’s latest attempt to delay this case. For years, courts have repeatedly rejected Fox’s efforts to avoid accountability," the company said in a statement to AlterNet. "The facts have not changed: Fox knowingly spread false claims about Smartmatic, causing severe harm to the company and undermining public trust in elections, and has never apologized. We look forward to continuing toward trial and presenting the truth before a jury.”

In a ruling published Thursday, the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department, wrote that they "denied the motion of defendants Fox Corporation, Fox News Network, LLC, DebiDobbs, as Administrator of the Estate of Lou Dobbs, deceased, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro to vacate, in part, Judicial Hearing Officer Alan Marin’s October 14, 2025 report, and denied their separate motion to stay the action pending resolution of aseparate criminal proceeding against plaintiff SGO Corporation Limited (Smartmatic) and vacate the Note of Issue ..."

Conservative outlets are painting it as a success because the court also allowed for additional discovery to move forward. The report said that Fox will be allowed to obtain any information from Smartmatic about the impact of a recent case against the company brought by President Donald Trump's Justice Department.

The additional discovery was granted only after Fox lost its case to pause the suit. The court docket shows several dozen requests that Fox has made over the past year. While they have succeeded in drawing out the case and delaying a trial, they haven't been successful in putting an end to the case.

Smartmatic has alleged that attacks on the company by Fox and its on-air talent after the 2020 election significantly harmed its reputation. So, they sued for defamation, alleging $2.7 billion in damages. Court filings have cited numerous examples of Fox News personalities who knew that Trump lost the 2020 election. Still continued to repeat conspiracy theories about it and went further, falsely alleging Smartmatic was in on a huge international conspiracy that included Venezuela.

Smartmatic's lawsuit was filed long before the Justice Department filed charges.

Newsmax and One America News settled with Smartmatic, but the two continue to fight over the defamation suit. Smartmatic posted documents in November that revealed the testimony of a finance and damages expert.

Financial expert Christopher James submitted a report on Feb. 15, 2024, that used a formula to calculate the damages he feels Fox Corp. caused in its ongoing attacks against Smartmatic. The document, released at the time, was a June 12, 2025, update to that initial report. The Smartmatic expert testified that the damages from 2021-2025 totaled $526.2 million in lost profits and $165.4 million in expected profits from U.S. markets.

Last November, The Guardian reported that President Donald Trump's Justice Department would begin an investigation into conspiracy theories that allege Venezuela had a role in somehow rigging the election.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has complained that after his case with Smartmatic, he's in financial ruin.

President Donald Trump claims to be offering a big win to people saving for retirement with his plan to expand investment options, but according to one former Treasury Secretary, no one should be fooled by this "consequential mistake" that could expose hard-earned money to dangerous risk.

Steve Rattner is a veteran investor and financial analyst for various new organizations, who also previously served as Secretary of the Treasury under former President Barack Obama. On Tuesday, he wrote for the New York Times an extensive breakdown of Trump's pitch for retirement accounts and explained why his plan to offer a wider variety of higher-yield accounts is exposing people to "complexity, risk and illiquidity."

"Pressed by his Wall Street supporters, President Trump is moving to liberalize the types of investments Americans can make with their individual retirement accounts. Instead of betting their retirement savings on plain vanilla stocks and bonds, account holders would be allowed to move their funds into sexy sectors like private equity, private credit and cryptocurrency — no matter their complexity, risk and illiquidity," Rattner explained.

He continued: "All in all, the proposal, put forth by the Labor Department to fulfill a recent Trump executive order, is a consequential mistake. It could well exacerbate the challenges already posed by individual retirement accounts, a flawed replacement for the traditional corporate pension plans that many Americans used to enjoy."

Rattner argued that retirement accounts, as they currently exist, inundate people with complicated choices, forcing them to sift through "a dizzying array of choices for how to invest their money" to ensure returns for their retirement. He claimed to still find the prospect "daunting" himself, despite decades of high-level investing experience.

Trump's plans would dramatically worsen this problem by exploding the number of investment options available, as well as by flooding that pool of options with risky bets requiring further complicated research.

These accounts also do little to correct another problem that pension plans used to have covered.

"The other significant problem with individual retirement accounts is that they eliminate the social insurance aspect of traditional pension plans. Under the old regime, retirees didn’t have to worry about how long they might live; their pension benefit would steadily arrive in their bank accounts month after month," Rattner wrote. "Now, the elderly must make tough decisions about how to parcel out their assets. Use the money too quickly, and they might become impoverished. Spending it too slowly could mean unnecessary reductions in their standard of living."

Trump's plan, he noted, could potentially improve the ability of the current system to provide higher returns for everyday people, not just the wealthy, but again, that would require them to sift through "the many offerings, which will come with exceptionally high fees."

"According to Federal Reserve data, the average retirement account balances of Americans in median households by income have barely budged (after adjusting for inflation) since the late 1980s, while Americans in the top 10 percent have seen their retirement account more than quintuple in value," Rattner continued. "But the answer isn’t to invite Americans to dabble in private equity, private credit and cryptocurrency. Other countries have done better at protecting their retirees without such risky schemes. Australia, for instance, requires participation in national retirement funds that are managed professionally on behalf of its account holders. (Australia has socked away $3 trillion in these funds, about $110,000 per citizen.)"

President Donald Trump's crusade to prove his false claims about election fraud and pave the way for future interference fell flat, according to a report from The New Republic, with leaders in Michigan rebuking his latest demand for Detroit-area ballots as "absurd."

Last week, the Department of Justice sent a letter, signed by Assistant Attorney General ⁠Harmeet Dhillon, demanding materials relating to the 2024 election from Wayne County, the home of Michigan's largest metropolitan area, Detroit. Among the letter's demands, it called for the county clerk to provide "election ballots, ballot receipts, and ballot envelopes from the last presidential election."

In a joint statement, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Attorney General Dana Nessel refused, calling it an "absurd" demand driven by a "baseless" conspiracy theory, and accused Trump of "weaponizing" the DOJ in the process.

"Once again, President Trump is weaponizing the Justice Department in an attempt to sabotage our democratic process and turn it into his own personal agency to interfere in state elections. This request is as absurd as it is baseless,” Nessel said in the statement. “Successful convictions underline that Michigan’s safeguards work and that instances of voter fraud are rare and addressed. Using these prosecutions and recycling debunked 2020 election conspiracy theories as justification to demand copies of the ballots of Michigan residents is a clear attempt to bully clerks and spread fear, even after Donald Trump won Michigan in 2024. If this administration wants to bring this circus to our state, my office is prepared to protect the people’s right to vote."

Nessel responded to Dillon with a letter of her own, "urging her to uphold the rule of law and reject the Trump administration’s fishing expeditions into the debunked conspiracies."

In her own statement, Benson accused the Trump administration of attempting to create the basis for casting doubt on the legitimacy of future elections, as well as trying to relitigate past ones.

"This is the Trump administration’s latest attempt to interfere in our elections," Benson said. "Their goal is to sow seeds of doubt about the legitimacy of the results this November and in 2028. We won’t be intimidated by these tactics. We stand with Wayne County to ensure we protect the integrity of our elections and the privacy of Michigan voters. And we are ready to do the same with any other Michigan clerks DOJ threatens in this way. As always, we will follow the law and fight to protect our secure, accessible election system against this administration’s ongoing abuse of power."

As The New Republic detailed, Trump has demanded similar information from every state and Washington, D.C., and has faced legal setbacks in places like Rhode Island, California, Massachusetts, and Oregon. He has also begun claiming that arrests and criminal charges stemming from his false 2020 fraud allegations are coming soon, with his embattled FBI Director Kash Patel claiming that they could come as soon as this week.

The GOP is admitting that President Donald Trump's minor efforts to present a strong economic agenda ahead of the midterms are dead on arrival, according to The Hill, as they are unable to distract from the 24/7 global economic crisis of his own making in Iran.

"Republicans are facing an increasingly difficult political environment in a midterm election year where their majorities in the House and Senate are on the line," The Hill explained in a Wednesday morning report. "The Iran war has been a drag on President Trump’s approval ratings while lifting prices for gas, undercutting GOP arguments on affordability and inflation... In the battle for the House, Republicans have a razor-thin margin and can afford to lose no more than two or three seats, depending on vacancies, to keep their majority. The president’s party generally loses seats in a midterm election, underscoring the difficulty."

Voters have consistently ranked issues like the economy, affordability and the cost of living as the biggest on their minds heading into the midterms. They have been consistently souring on Trump's economic agenda, with his tariff obsession and military interventions overseas being seen as actively driving inflation despite his being reelected to help lower costs.

Speaking with The Hill, Republican sources admitted that Trump's efforts to champion his positive economic impacts have not been enough to get voter attention off soaring gas prices caused by the Iran war. The recent stunt involving Trump tipping a DoorDash worker to promote his "No Tax on Tips" policy was singled out as a recent example of his too-little-too-late efforts.

"We’re already [facing] headwinds in terms of just history itself," an anonymous GOP strategist told The Hill. "Voters were already telling us they were concerned about affordability, and that was even before the conflict,” the strategist added, calling it “a growing momentum of affordability concerns. That’s a real political problem."

Trump is set to make visits to the swing states of Arizona and Nevada in the coming week to tout his economic agenda for midterm voters. Republican allies of the president have tried to spin his war with Iran as a "short-term pain for long-term gain," and argued that oil obtained from Venezuela will help mitigate soaring gas prices, though these supposed benefits have yet to materialize and it is unclear that they will before the midterms, if they do at all.

"Nobody’s going to be able to drive that message at this moment," the strategist continued, speaking about the GOP's ability to tout a pro-affordability agenda. "I think it’s very hard to have brief moments talking about no taxes on tips when the country is still riveted to what’s happening overseas, maybe not because they’re watching news 24/7, but because of all of the fallout as it relates to the economics of it."

Donald Trump’s second term is shaping up to be just as much about the past as the future. Not the past as it unfolded, but the version of events as he wants them remembered.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

There are a few troubling examples of how the president and his allies are actively attempting to reshape public views of the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — and how these efforts are starting to affect real people and real institutions.

Take Oklahoma. Teachers there are now facing updated social studies standards that instruct students to “identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results” — not to examine election systems or to discuss voter confidence, but to presume that the election was flawed. This language is a quiet but profound distortion: It accepts Trump’s false narrative of fraud and requires educators to teach that falsehood as fact.

This illustrates the insidious consequences of partisan narratives hardening into policy. Oklahoma’s education chief, Ryan Walters, has aligned himself with efforts to eliminate so-called left-wing indoctrination in schools. But he’s supporting these new standards, which contradict the facts made plain in every credible post-election review, from Trump’s own first-term Department of Justice to GOP-led audits. Courts, including those with Trump-nominated judges, rejected dozens of spurious legal challenges, and officials in every state certified the results.

These facts have been sidelined in shaping what schoolchildren learn, which has long-term implications for public trust in elections.

Or consider the protests against aggressive immigration raids in Los Angeles. Trump has called the demonstrators there “insurrectionists” and is moving military forces into the city.

And what about the convicted insurrectionists who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol? Trump issued them pardons and commutations as one of the first acts of his second term, erasing the crimes and violence of that day — including threats to execute his vice president — from the historical record. (A plaque honoring law enforcement officials who defended the Capitol that day still hasn’t been installed, despite pleas to House Speaker Mike Johnson.)

Trump’s administration is also reportedly developing a plan to pardon the “fake electors” and other Trump allies charged or convicted in connection with attempts to overturn the election, as well as the plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor, as part of a broader effort to shield MAGA supporters from legal consequences, and perhaps convey the sense that these events never happened.

That is, the president is using both his immense influence and his constitutional authority to bend justice, public education, and public memory toward a false understanding of the past. And his allies are bending to his will.

What does this tell us about Trump’s capacity to reshape perceptions in the face of actual facts? And can anything stand in his way?

Some answers may come from a federal courtroom in Denver, where one of the more surreal chapters of the 2020 fallout is still playing out. That’s where the defamation trial against Trump ally and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell — brought by former Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer — is underway.

Lindell, who has claimed that Dominion and Coomer were part of a scheme to steal the election from Trump, once promised that this trial would prove him right. But his lawyers seem to be arguing now that he’s so erratic, so impulsive, that nothing he says could be taken seriously enough to count as defamation.

“It’s just words,” said Lindell’s attorney, according to a Denver reporter covering the trial. “All Mike Lindell did was talk.”

That’s a hell of a defense, and itself a rewriting of history. The problem with it is that millions of people did believe Lindell, and still do.

Coomer may get to clear his name in the case against Lindell, but the broader effort to rewrite the past is gaining ground where it matters most: in classrooms, in Congress, and in the minds of voters. Juries and the judiciary can punish lies, but they can’t reach every classroom or undo every pardon.

With so many institutional guardrails already buckling under pressure, the remaining checks are public memory, a free press, and a willingness — from enough of us — to keep insisting on saying what actually happened.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

State Rep. Rachelle Smit, a former local clerk who believes the 2020 presidential election was stolen from President Donald Trump, will run the Michigan House’s committee on elections under the new GOP leadership.

Smit, a Republican from Martin, was named the chair of the House’s Election Integrity Committee, as it has now been renamed. Her claims that the 2020 election was stolen have been roundly debunked but won her an endorsement from President Donald Trump, who praised her as someone “who knows our Elections are not secure, and that there was rampant Voter Fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election.”

“I absolutely think that it was stolen, yeah, and I’m not shy to say that,” Smit said in an interview with Votebeat, repeating false claims that there were “ballot dumps” in the early morning hours after Election Day in 2020.

In 2023, she argued that a group of Michigan Trump supporters charged with creating a forged slate of electors for Trump after the 2020 election, despite Joe Biden’s win in Michigan, had not done anything wrong and said that their actions were “completely legal.” She has also supported Dar Leaf, the Barry County sheriff who has gotten national attention for his efforts to investigate the 2020 election.

Smit, who also serves as speaker pro tempore of the Michigan House, was township clerk in Martin, in southwestern Michigan, before running for state office. Last session, when Democrats still controlled the House, she was the minority vice chair of the elections committee.

Now, as head of the committee, she will direct its progress over the next two years on legislation related to voting, elections, campaign finance, and more. That includes the Republican-led effort to amend Michigan’s Constitution to require voters to show proof of citizenship, which Smit is co-sponsoring. The House joint resolution, introduced Wednesday, will stop first in the election integrity committee before it likely goes before the full House.

“It’s of the utmost importance,” she said. “That’s going to be the first order of business that we take up.”

Like other Republicans in the House, Smit said she has no reason to believe Michigan’s elections aren’t secure. Rather, she said, she hopes to make clear to Michigan residents that legislators take the integrity of the state’s elections seriously.

Leader of clerks group points to successful 2024 election

Groups dedicated to expanding access to the ballot box have approached Smit’s leadership position with cautious optimism. Promote The Vote, a coalition of voting access groups that helped get 2022’s Proposal 2 in front of voters, said in a statement that it looks forward to working with her “to ensure that our elections remain secure and accessible.”

Melanie Ryska, Sterling Heights city clerk and the president of the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks, said that her group is committed to supporting voters’ rights and the security of elections. She also wondered at what point elections officials at every level would move on from the false claims and conspiracy theories that grew out of the 2020 presidential election.

Both Ryska and Promote The Vote said that Smit’s time as a clerk was likely to give her “unique insight” into election administration in the state. But given that Michigan is just a few months past another successful presidential election, Ryska questioned the need for more expansive rewrites of election law. She said she felt local officials “answered the call,” despite a flurry of constitutional changes in recent years.

“Our clerks showed that elections are secure and that there are plenty of checks and balances in place,” Ryska said.

Smit’s other priorities for the committee include finding vulnerabilities in the state’s election laws and cleaning up laws on specific government vacancies like the one her district saw last term. When an Allegan County commissioner up for election died in August just before the primary, the remaining commissioners appointed a new member. But the law is fuzzy on who should have been on the ballot in place of the commissioner who died.

Smit introduced a bill with two other Republicans and a Democrat last year to try to address it, but it didn’t make it out of committee after legislative activity in the House effectively collapsed in the last few weeks of the year.

The Michigan Voting Rights Act, which also died late in the session after winning the support of the Michigan Senate, will not make a comeback. The package of bills would have expanded the availability of ballots in different languages and broadly aimed to prevent voter suppression, among other changes. Supporters said it aimed to fill in the gaps in the federal Voting Rights Act that have been eroded by court decisions.

Smit had expressed concerns about that package during committee hearings last session, and now that she’s leading the committee, she said she “can’t get on board” with the bills.

During a hearing on them in December, Smit said she had heard from a number of local clerks who were against it. The state’s clerks associations remained neutral on the proposals, supporting the ideas behind them but expressing concerns about funding and the additional burden on clerks who were already managing a variety of changes to election law in recent years.

“That’s a very strong message that this is not the right way about doing that,” she said last week.

Who is on the election integrity committee?

Other committee members on the Republican side include Rep. Joseph Fox, from Fremont, as the vice chair and Reps. Pat Outman of Six Lakes, Greg Alexander of Carsonville, Mike Hoadley of Au Gres, and Joseph Pavlov of Smiths Creek. Each of those representatives co-sponsored the House joint resolution that proposed the proof-of-citizenship constitutional amendment.

Democrats on the committee are Reps. Stephen Wooden of Grand Rapids, Matt Koleszar of Plymouth, and Mai Xiong of Warren. Wooden, who is in his first term in the legislature, will be the minority vice chair.

Wooden acknowledged he wouldn’t have much control over the agenda, but he told Votebeat that he looked forward to finding common ground with Republican committee members.

“I know that often, the elections committee can be a place where you see some of the most bipartisan, commonsense legislation by working with the clerks to get mechanical changes to our elections and ensure our elections are moving smoothly,” he said.

The committee is expected to meet in the coming days, although no official time has yet been set.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

The Department of Justice's internal watchdog released a report Tuesday finding some of the agency's officials under Donald Trump's first presidency "may have violated federal law" ahead of the 2020 election "by pushing for pandemic-related investigations that targeted states with Democratic governors," ABC News exclusively reports.

Furthermore, ABC reports that the same officials may have leaked "private information about those investigations to friendly media outlets in a potential attempt to influence the election," according to the watchdog.

The report, which the news outlet has obtained less than two weeks before Trump takes the White House once more, notes that a senior member of the DOJ's public affairs team sent a text message less than a month before the 2020 election "describing a proposed leak to a major New York-area tabloid about reviews of COVID-related deaths at nursing homes in New York and New Jersey as 'our last play on them before [the] election' -- 'but it's a big one,' he added."

READ MORE: 'Truth must prevail’: Garland urged to 'release the damn report' on Jack Smith’s Trump probe

That same senior public affairs team member, according to the watchdog's report, first launched the alleged ploy to leak the information to media.

ABC reports, "In late August 2020, when the Justice Department then sent letters to the governors of Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York seeking relevant data -- 'despite having been provided data indicating that the nursing homes with the most significant quality of care issues were in other states' -- the Justice Department's public affairs office issued a press release about the move," according to the report.

The inspector general's report, ABC notes, mentioned that "current and former officials more recently described the press release as 'unusual and inappropriate.'"

READ MORE: 'Insane': Experts condemn Trump plan to make DOJ 'manufacture evidence' that he won in 2020

ABC News' full report is available here.

President-elect Donald Trump’s long-held promise to pardon his supporters who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol is drawing fresh scrutiny from a government ethics group.

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, issued a terse statement Monday calling out Trump and his repeated signals that he is willing to grant clemency to those who breached the Capitol as Congress worked to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.

“Some things are fights worth having,” CREW wrote in a social media post on X. “Not allowing Donald Trump to pardon January 6th insurrectionists is one of those things. Two-thirds of the country is with us on this.”

The warning shot comes just weeks before Trump is set to return to the White House. The incoming president has said he will “most likely” pardon at least some Jan. 6 rioters on the first day he takes office, according to media reports.

A HuffPost analysis this week found that the potential presidential Jan. 6 pardons would put hundreds of violent criminals back onto the streets.

During an Election Day Fox News special, the right-wing network's chief political analyst Britt Hume suggested that the January 6 attack on the US Capitol that Donald Trump inspired, continues to haunt the MAGA hopeful.

On Tuesday night, Washington Post reporter Jeremy Barr pointed out via X: "Hume now says that Jan. 6/Democracy is a 'BS issue.'"

Barr included a screenshot of a social media post written by right-wing commentator on the day of the attack.

READ MORE: Elections expert explains how to spot 'very first clues of the Trump phenomenon'

On January 6, 2021, National Review editor Rich Lowery tweeted: "This is obviously why we’ve always expected and demanded that our presidents say that they will respect the peaceful transfer of power."

Hume replied to Lowery's post, writing: "Instead, Trump has fueled the worst suspicions of his supporters with wild claims that the election was stolen. And now we see the result."

Hume appears to have changed his mind.

According to Media Matters for America — referring to the attack on the US Capitol that day — the right-wing commentator added, "It was the premise of the January 6 Special Committee that we -- as the co-chairman of the Committee put it, 'We came critically close to losing our democracy.' It's ridiculous. I mean, our democracy is pretty sturdy. Our checks and balances worked. The thing was over in a matter of hours. And yet, here we are, it's still a factor."

READ MORE: 'They tried to kill': Fox host explodes when pushed on unity with left if Harris wins

One of the police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol during the deadly Trump-incited January 6 insurrection is pushing back against the the ex-president’s claim that it was a “day of love.”

During a Univision-hosted town hall in Miami on Wednesday for undecided Latino voters the GOP presidential nominee was asked about the attack.

“I want to give you the opportunity to try to win back my vote,” Ramiro Gonzalez, a 56-year old “no longer registered” Republican told Trump. “Your — I’m going to say, action and maybe inaction during your presidency, and the last few years, sort of, was a little disturbing to me. What happened during January 6 and the fact that, you know, you waited so long to take action while your supporters were attacking the Capitol.”

“Coronavirus,” Gonzalez added, “I thought the public was misled, and many more lives could have been saved if we would have been informed better.”

READ MORE: ‘Aghast’: Trump Dodges and Dismisses Latino Voters’ Concerns at Univision Town Hall

After blasting his former vice president, Mike Pence, Trump distanced himself from the events of that day, claiming his supporters “didn’t come because of me — they came because of the election. They thought the election was a rigged election, and that’s why they came.”

“There were no guns down there, we didn’t have guns,” Trump also told Ramirez. “The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns. And when I say we, these are people that walked down. This was a tiny percentage of the overall, which nobody sees and nobody shows. But that was a day of love from the standpoint of the millions, it’s like hundreds of thousands, it could have been the largest group I’ve ever spoken before. They asked me to speak, I went, and I spoke. And I used the term peacefully and patriotically.”

Trump’s “day of love” remark clearly hit Aquilino Gonell, the former U.S. Capitol Police sergeant who had to retire after being gravely injured on January 6.

READ MORE: ‘What’s Going On?’: Critics Charge ‘Very Weak’ as Trump Pulls Out of Another TV Interview

Gonell had “joined the Army, fought in Iraq and became a police officer at the U.S. Capitol,” WBUR reported earlier this year. “On Jan. 6, 2021, Sargeant Gonell was attacked and beaten by rioters as he and his fellow officers tried to hold the line.”

“Gonell and his fellow officers were badly outnumbered. The mob beat them with pipes, sticks and rocks, sprayed them with chemicals, as they tried to hold the line and defend the Capitol and the peaceful transfer of power.”

He told WBUR, “I almost lost my life a couple of times,” on January 6.

On Thursday, responding to Trump’s “day of love” comment, Gonell posted video of him being attacked on January 6.

“Here’s me receiving an outpouring amount of affection during the ‘day of love’—January 6, 2021,” he wrote. A few minutes later, he added, “They almost loved me to death.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Is He OK?’: Trump’s Dark of Night Rage Posting Backfires

Former President Donald Trump has long pushed what has become known as the "Big Lie" that President Joe Biden did not actually win the 2020 election — he did.

The lie is what stoked the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, and it's what has landed the ex-president in legal trouble with Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

Although Trump and many of his MAGA allies still push the same claim today, Vanity Fair co-Editor-in-Chief and author Ramin Setoodeh revealed on Wednesday that the former president does, in fact, know that he lost to Biden.

READ MORE: George Conway urges 'full-blown discussion' about Trump’s mental health over bizarre book interview

During an interview with MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, the Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass author shared a glimpse into one of his many conversations with Trump.

"He slips," Wallace said to Setoodeh. "You talk about the mask coming off moment, when [Trump] told you that he lost."

The award-winning journalist replied, "He does. In one of our conversations we were watching clips of The Apprentice, and I showed him a clip of Geraldo Rivera, who was a contestant. And he got worked up over their falling out and the feud that they had, and he said 'when I lost the election.'

And that was a really revealing moment to me and proved something I'd been thinking about, is Donald Trump is playing a character. He's a reality show character that projects this image that people want to see. And I think truthfully, if we were able to get inside of his head and find the truth, he would admit that he lost the election, because he said it to me."

READ MORE: GOP's Big Lie about 2020 is 'more about identity than evidence': expert

Watch the video below or at this link.

'When I lost the election': Author shares 'revealing moment' during Trump interviewwww.youtube.com

Attorney Kenneth Chesebro was one of three former President Donald Trump allies charged by the state of Wisconsin Tuesday in connection to the 2020 fake elector's scheme led by the ex-president's campaign in efforts to overturn the election.

The fake elector ploy architect was indicted alongside Wisconsin lawyer James Troupis and former Trump campaign officialMichael Roman — each on one count of forgery. CBS News reports, "The three are set to make their initial appearances in Dane County Circuit Court on Sept. 19, court records show. The charge carries a sentence of up to six years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000."

MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin explained to host Katy Tur how the Wisconsin charges differ from 2020 election fake elector charges in Georgia and Arizona, and why Chesebro is the "most important person charged in this document today."

READ MORE: Kenneth Chesebro among Trump allies hit with new fake elector indictments in Wisconsin

Rubin explained, "There are five suits now with respect to these fake elector schemes. Ken Chesebro is charged only in two of them. He was charged in Georgia, where he pled guilty and, now today, he's charged in Wisconsin. I want to tell you what makes this different, because Ken Chesebro's involvement in Wisconsin is qualitatively different. First of all, Wisconsin is where it all began. This is the state for which he wrote the original memo about fake electors in early December of 2020."

The legal expert continued, "Secondly, he attended the meeting of fake electors in Wisconsin. He basically crashed it, even though he had no right to be there."

Tur asked, "Isn't the argument in Georgia that he never went to Georgia and he couldn't be involved in the conspiracy because he never stepped in the state?"

Rubin replied, "It may have been one of his arguments before he pled guilty, but now having pled guilty, whether or not he stepped into the state of Georgia is irrelevant."

READ MORE: Watch: Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro strikes last-minute plea deal with Georgia prosecutors

"But here, he was in Wisconsin?" Tur added.

Rubin emphasized, "But here he was in Wisconsin, definitely involved in the meeting itself, then with the Wisconsin documents don't reach Washington, DC, and aren't received by members of congress, the Wisconsin republican party has a part-time aide fly them out there, who is there to receive them from her? None other than Ken Chesebro. And finally, while he did conduct an interview with wisconsin investigators, they discovered that he lied to them about his Twitter account, something that Michigan investigators also discovered. So, unlike in other states where he is theoretically a cooperator and an unindicted co-conspirator, here, he's probably the most important person charged in this document today.

Watch the video below or at this link.

Why Kenneth Chesebro is 'most important person charged' in Wisconsin: legal expertyoutu.be

US Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) was one of the 17 Texas Republicans who refused to certify the 2020 election results, according to the Texas Tribune.

During a Wednesday night interview with the GOP senator, CNN's Kaitlan Collins noted Cruz's refusal to acknowledge President Joe Biden win over Donald Trump in 2020, and asked whether the Texas leader plans to accept the November election results in the case Biden wins again.

"Do you plan to object or will you accept the results regardless of who wins the election?" Collins asked.

READ MORE: Ted Cruz slapped with campaign finance laws violation complaint

"Kaitlan, I got to say, I think that's actually a ridiculous question," Cruz replied.

"It's a yes or no question," Collins insisted.

"Let me explain why it's ridiculous question," the Texas leader said, asking, "Have you've ever asked a Democrat that?"

Collins replied, "Have you ever had a sitting president who refused to facilitate the peaceful transition of power, refused to acknowledge that his successor won the presidency?

Cruz claimed, "We had peaceful transfer of power, I was there on January 20."

"Barely," Collins replied, before noting that in 2016, when Biden was vice president, "he went to the Senate floor and certified the votes."

READ MORE: 'Ted Cruz isn’t fooling anyone': Texas senator slammed over outreach to Democrats

Cruz said, "You only ask Republicans" this question.

Collins replied, "Because it was Republicans who tried to block the transition of power. You have to acknowledge that. We've never seen it on a scale of what happened in 2020. And We've never seen the president refuse. He wouldn't even let Joe Biden get classified briefings at the beginning.I recall that. So my question for you again: Free and fair election, will you accept the results regardless of who wins?"

The senator replied, "If the Democrats win, I will accept the result, but I'm not going to ignore fraud," before claiming there was voter fraud in 2020. Collins replied, "No there wasn't, and you still objected."

"Oh you know, for a fact, there were zero voter-fraud?" Cruz asked. "What's your basis for that? Show me your evidence.'

Collins said, "We've spoken with [Georgia Republican] Governor [Brian] Kemp. They did three hand recounts in the state of Georgia. the director of CISA [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency] said that this was one of the safest most legitimate elections."

READ MORE: 'Taking a lot of ribbing': Ted Cruz now the butt of senators’ jokes amid FAA bill markup

The CNN host emphasized, "Republicans are twisting themselves in knots."

Cruz claimed Collins never asks Hillary Clinton, Stacey Abrams, or Al Gore whether they will certify election results.

"I haven't had any of them on my show," Collins said. "We'll talk to them, but I don't remember there being a president who was refusing to turn over the transition of power."

Watch the video below or at this link.

'Republicans are twisting themselves in knots': Kaitlan Collins flattens Ted Cruz on election denialwww.youtube.com

Following a New York Times report earlier this week reporting that US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito flew an upside down American flag outside of his home after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, top Democratic law makers are calling for his recusal from any cases related to the insurrection.

"Flying an upside-down American flag — a symbol of the so-called 'Stop the Steal' movement — clearly creates the appearance of bias," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) Durbin told the Hill.

"Justice Alito should recuse himself immediately from cases related to the 2020 election and the January 6th insurrection, including the question of the former President’s immunity in U.S. v. Donald Trump, which the Supreme Court is currently considering. The Court is in an ethical crisis of its own making, and Justice Alito and the rest of the Court should be doing everything in their power to regain public trust, Supreme Court justices should be held to the highest ethical standards, not the lowest.”

READ MORE: Senate Judiciary Committee Chair calls for Samuel Alito’s recusal from January 6 cases

Bloomberg opinion columnist Stephen L. Carter, in a Sunday, May 19 op-ed suggests Alito's claim that the upside down flag "display signaled his wife’s exasperation at her inability even to walk down the street without suffering the frequent and often obscene verbal assaults of neighbors."

The Yale law professor writes, this explanation, if true, "still raises important questions, about both the ethical rules governing judges and the imposition of similar restrictions on their families."

"So let’s suppose that Alito’s tale is correct, and what was really happening was the suburban front lawn equivalent of an online flame war," the Yale law professor writes. "Nevertheless, the inversion of the flag remains a problem."

"There’s nothing in what we might call the ethics of marriage requiring a spouse to surrender the right to many forms of public expression, and we shouldn’t assume that one spouse’s beliefs are the same as the other’s."

READ MORE: Alito tells Fox News story behind his 'Stop the Steal' flag — but critics unconvinced

Carter writes:

But the burden that rests upon the spouse of a public official is heavy, and the one that rests upon the spouse of a Supreme Court justice might be weightiest of all. Even if the significance of the inverted flag has been misconstrued, those restrictions remain the same. Whatever other spouses might be free to do, the ethics that must govern this particular marriage require even the justice’s spouse (and sometimes other family members as well) to bend over backwards to avoid misconstrual.

Carter's full op-ed is available at this link.

Former Donald Trump lawyer John Eastman — who aided the former president in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election — was handed a loss Wednesday amid in his efforts to continue practicing law.

Politico's Kyle Cheney reports via X (formerly Twitter), "JUST IN: The judge who recommended John Eastman’s disbarment denies his urgent request to delay her ruling, which resulted in his automatic suspension from practicing law. She cites the gravity of his misconduct and his refusal to acknowledge any wrongdoing."

This comes one month after California State Bar Judge Yvette Roland ruled that "Eastman violated ethics rules when he helped to orchestrate the ex-president's ploy to overturn the 2020 election," according to Politico.

READ MORE: 'I’m sure Trump will compensate him': Experts praise John Eastman’s disbarment ruling

Although the former Trump attorney was given the option to appeal, Politico noted that Roland's ruling forced Eastman's law license into 'inactive' status during pending review — meaning he was barred from practicing law in California.

Roland's Wednesday ruling reads: "[Eastman] has provided declarations from his current clients who express a strong desire for him to continue representing them in their ongoing matters. However, the court made no finding that Eastman's ethical violations resulted in client harm. Instead, the court found that disbarment was the appropriate sanction for Eastman's misconduct in part to safeguard the public."

It continues, "The court's decision determined that Eastman made deceptive and misleading claims in legal documents, public forums, and other contexts concerning the 2020 presidential election and the extent of Vice President Michael R. Pence's authority to override the electoral process."

Furthermore, the judge wrote, "Eastman's motion fails to demonstrate that he no longer presents a threat to the public. Despite his clients' desire for Eastman to continue representing them, based on the gravity of Eastman's transgressions, particularly those involving moral turpitude, and the increased likelihood of future misconduct due to his refusal to acknowledge any wrongdoing, there is insufficient evidence to justify a stay of his involuntary inactive enrollment.'"

READ MORE: Trump ally and January 6 architect John Eastman now on the verge of losing his law license

Roland concluded, "Accordingly, Eastman's motion to stay the court's March 27, 2024 order placing him on inactive enrollment or in the alternative, imposing interim remedies in lieu of inactive enrollmentis DENIED, no good cause having been shown."