Over the past year, election-denying allies of President Donald Trump from both inside the government and out have sought voting data from across the country in an effort to “investigate” their assertions of electoral fraud. Now, according to new reporting from Talking Points Memo, “election conspiracy theorists” are attempting to lay the groundwork for a Department of Justice probe into Michigan.
In April, Michigan officials were left in “bewilderment” when DOJ Civil Division chief Harmeet Dhillon demanded public records pertaining to the 2024 election from the Wayne County clerk, asserting that it was part of an investigation into voter fraud. Officials weren’t bewildered because they were surprised at the request — quite the opposite, as the FBI has been scooping up voting data from districts across the country that voted against Trump, from Arizona to Georgia — but because Dhillon had sent it to the wrong office entirely, addressing it to the county clerk, when in Michigan, townships run elections.
According to local officials, her request not only suggests that Trump’s DOJ doesn’t understand the basic facts of electoral processes, but it raises pressing questions about what the president’s allies intend to do with the voting data. Election denying activists in Michigan are not shy about answering that question, asserting that they’re conducting what they call an “audit” of electoral results in an effort to fight a “cabal” of their enemies.
As Talking Points Memo explains, these investigations are “being carried out with the help of various election conspiracy theorists who are now in positions of power in the government. Kurt Olsen, a 2020 election denier, has been working as White House election security czar. Heather Honey, another activist, has an election security role at DOJ. Clay Parikh, another special government employee involved in the Fulton County raid.” While these figures provide federal support, election denying activists on the ground are doing much of the legwork.
According to Talking Points, “voter fraud alarmists” are “using documents obtained last year from a massive FOIA lawsuit that sought copies of Detroit’s 2020 ballots and other records. Yehuda Miller, a New Jersey-based activist who has been involved in election denialism for the last several years, obtained hundreds of thousands of ballot images from the City of Detroit. The question now on the minds of some Michigan elections officials is whether Miller’s ‘audit’ — regardless of how baseless and misleading the results may be — will prompt federal action. And, whether the conclusions that Miller has drawn may have already made their way to the Trump DOJ.”
Chris Thomas, who ran elections for the state of Michigan for nearly 40 years and faced a “mob” trying to stop the count in 2020, says that “those seeking the records have been in communication with a voter fraud alarmism nonprofit called Michigan Fair Elections and with the far-right, conspiracy theorist website Gateway Pundit, and say that they’ve enlisted dozens of volunteers to comb through the ballots.” He says it’s possible that the DOJ already has the FOIA data, and that the “‘audit’ could yield results that, while bogus to anyone familiar with election law, prompt some form of action” from the agency. He has his doubts, however, that the amateur investigation would prove useful in any potential criminal proceedings, saying, “I don’t think that stuff would stand up at all.”
While Talking Points notes that it’s unclear whether Miller is working directly with the DOJ, his activist allies have said they would share their findings with the agency.
“I sure as heck am going to be sharing it with everybody that I know, and I’ve got a lot of contacts up in the DOJ,” said Patrick Colbeck, an election conspiracy theorist and former GOP Michigan state senator. “Everything they share, I will make sure it gets to them,” he asserted, referring to the DOJ.
