Leaker reveals FBI role in Trump's 'voter suppression' scheme

On Wednesday, a whistleblower from President Donald Trump’s first term revealed how FBI agents may be used as part of a “voter suppression” scheme to sway the fast-approaching midterms. According to Miles Taylor – who served as Deputy Chief of Staff for Homeland Security during the previous Trump administration, famously leaking insider secrets at the time – FBI Director Kash Patel’s hints that agents could be sent to polling places should be taken seriously.

“Yesterday, under oath, Kash Patel refused to promise that his agents will stay away from polling places in the midterms, despite strict federal laws barring the practice,” writes Taylor. “In fact, Patel seemed to hint that the Bureau was pre-positioned to do it across America, a move that election experts widely view as an attempt to intimidate voters of the political opposition — i.e. to scare them away from the voting booth.” Patel was asked outright whether he could promise that FBI agents would not be sent to polls on election day. “He wouldn’t,” notes Taylor. “Instead, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee: ‘I don’t know that we can’t legally do it.’ Then he boasted that the Bureau has an election crimes coordinator in all 56 field offices, promising, ‘you bet we’re going to have them there and manning the post.’ Meanwhile, a Republican candidate for governor in Michigan says ‘my friend Kash’ already told him the FBI will have a presence in his state leading up to Election Day.”

Taylor suggests that Patel is “teeing up the possibility, if not the likelihood, that the FBI will deploy personnel toward the polls across its field offices.” He writes that the regime’s lawyers “think they’ve found a clever workaround, namely, leaving their guns at the office.” Their logic is based on federal statute 18 U.S.C. § 592, a Civil War-era law that makes it a felony to station “troops or armed men” at polling places. As Taylor notes, the military has already ruled out sending troops to voting locations on behalf of Trump, so “it appears the FBI might be looking to do it instead, possibly under the belief that if its agents aren’t armed, the statute doesn’t apply.”

District attorneys have pointed out not only that sending agents to polling places is illegal, but that the “unarmed” loophole is false. As Taylor writes, “Federal law separately makes it a crime to intimidate voters or interfere with an election, armed or not. 18 U.S.C. § 595 bars federal employees from using official authority to affect an election. 52 U.S.C. § 20511 criminalizes intimidating voters or anyone helping them vote. No firearm is required to stumble over this tripwire. In this case, wearing the FBI windbreaker to instill fear is the weapon.”

According to Taylor, “It doesn’t take much imagination to see what they’re trying to do. You can visualize Election Day coverage of polling places in Detroit, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Atlanta with clusters of people in FBI jackets standing outside and holding clipboards, staring down voters as they line up to cast a ballot. Agents of the regime. Agents of the president. Do you really think they’re trying to spot fraud? Or perhaps to make Democratic voters think twice about showing up?”

“This is a naked attempt at voter suppression,” Taylor warns. “MAGA groups already tried to do this in recent midterm elections, including staking out ballot drop boxes while armed in Arizona in 2022, until a federal judge forced them to back off. But now the MAGA movement has control of federal law enforcement agencies themselves and the ability to send them out with the thinnest veneer of legitimacy.”