Advocated for administration to “regulate” voting machines

Who is Cleta Mitchell? Mitchell is an attorney who was involved with Trump’s 2021 call to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, in which the president asked Raffensperger to “find” votes to reverse his loss in the state in the 2020 election. In 2021, she founded the organization Election Integrity Network, “a group working to get grassroots conservatives to monitor their polls and protect the country from voter fraud.” The organization hosts “trainings and meetings, aimed at helping local folks ‘unrig’ the elections in their communities.”

What has Cleta Mitchell been up to? During media appearances, Mitchell has boasted of ties to the administration and called for election policies to stop supposed fraud. However, in September she said that she did not believe “that there's anything that can be done on a broad scale before this election, unfortunately.”

• In the days before Trump’s July 16 speech about alleged Chinese interference in the 2020 election, Mitchell “convened” a White House briefing with “about two dozen Trump-aligned activists” who “engaged in conversations” about the speech.
• Mitchell’s Foundation for Accountability, Integrity & Research in Elections Fund reportedly paid an organization run by Heather Honey, who was appointed in 2025 as the deputy assistant secretary of election integrity at the Department of Homeland Security, “for consulting and research services, according to tax filings.” Honey is also “listed in the tax document as a vice president and director for FAIR, for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2025.” As ProPublica reported, “Since moving into government, Honey has maintained close ties” to Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network, and “she and at least two other federal officials have given its members private briefings.”
• Mitchell has also reportedly worked with Marci McCarthy, who was an active contributor to the Election Integrity Network’s Leadership Council, served as the director of public affairs at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and now directs external engagement for the Defense Department’s chief information officer.
• Based on ProPublica reporting, there have been at least 11 administration appointees with ties to Mitchell's Election Integrity Network.
• Mitchell has suggested that Trump could use “emergency powers” to expand federal control over elections, and has called for the Commerce Department to “oversee and regulate” voting machines.
• Mitchell told Reuters that she suggested Patrice Johnson, the chair of the Michigan Fair Elections Institution, to the White House as a future commissioner for the Election Assistance Commission.
• In 2025, one of the Election Assistance Commission’s then-commissioners, Christy McCormick, was reportedly “regularly in touch with leaders of” Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network “about a public comment period opened by the agency on whether to require documentary proof of citizenship on the federal voter registration form.”

Proposed election-related policies to CISA

Who is Tina Peters? Peters is a former county clerk of Mesa County, Colorado. In 2024, she was convicted “for her role in a brazen plot to examine voting machines under her control after the 2020 election” before Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis commuted her sentence. Prior to Polis’ commutation, Trump claimed to have “pardoned” Peters — even though her conviction was for a state crime — and administration officials reportedly discussed “immediate actions that your department or agency can take with respect to Colorado.” Peters later said that Trump White House counsel David Warrington helped “effectuate and work with” Polis’ administration “for my release.” According to The Denver Post, “It’s unclear what exact role Warrington played in Peters’ release. Her attorney said the White House counsel ‘helped with communications’ with Polis.”

What has Tina Peters been up to? Since her release from prison, she has repeatedly appeared in right-wing media, discussing her election denial activity and alleged ties with the administration.

• She has claimed that Trump asked her to “get me the info” on supposed election fraud, and reportedly met with Trump at the Oval Office. According to Peters, when she met with Trump, he asked her who he should pardon, and his chief of staff Susie Wiles asked her “if I would go over some things that were getting ready to come out” in Trump’s July 16 speech alleging Chinese interference in the 2020 election. (According to Peters in late August, it’s been “six times now I’ve been in the White House.”)
• Peters also said she urged the president to fire members of the Election Assistance Commission, which he has.
• Since her release from prison, Peters has said that she’s “been in communication with a lot of the people in the administration, and I’ll get texts at 1:30, 3:30 in the morning.”
• Specifically, Peters claimed she had a meeting with officials at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — “facilitated,” she suggested, by Homeland Security official Heather Honey. Peters said that she sent the agency’s acting director a midterm “election-security plan” alongside a letter she crafted with Will Huff, Clay Parikh, and Conrad Renyolds.
• Peters has also suggested that she has made “input and suggestions” into a possible upcoming administration plan on elections, and that she “just was working with the AG's office to secure some machines that ... belong to Fulton County, Pennsylvania.”
• Additionally, Peters has said she met with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick “for two and a half hours” alongside her “inner circle” of Reynolds, Huff, and Peter Bernegger. Peters said she urged Lutnick to “get rid of these machines” and that Lutnick was texting with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin about a video she showed him during their meeting.
• She’s also said she has met with multiple Department of Justice officials, including then-Justice Department official Ed Martin, Attorney General Todd Blanche’s deputy chief of staff Shane Hedges, and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon. Peters claimed that she had “lunch with” Dhillon, “just she and I,” and that she could pass along to Dhillon supposed voting irregularities in a California county.
• Before announcing her own proposal, Peters said Trump “needs to sign an executive order” about voting machines and mail-in ballots, though after releasing her proposal she said that “we cannot afford to wait and hope for President Trump to do an executive order” for a national emergency and needed to implement her proposal instead.

Advocated for “national emergency” declaration and ICE at polling places

Who is Steve Bannon? Bannon is the host of War Room and was a White House chief strategist during Trump’s first term. Prior to the 2020 election, Bannon “told a group of associates that President Donald Trump had a plan to declare victory on election night—even if he was losing.” He urged Trump to try to cast doubt on — or overturn — the 2020 election on January 6, 2021.

What has Steve Bannon been up to? Bannon's show has become a hub for election denial, as right-wing pundits, administration officials, and Bannon himself have advocated on the show for a national emergency declaration for the midterms, as well as other election policies. However, Bannon said in September, “We’ve just got to be honest with the people at the coalition — all of it, all these hard workers about voter integrity — we didn’t get the voter integrity that we want. So November is going to be what November is, and we’re going to have to live with it and deal with it after that.”

• On his show, Bannon has repeatedly advocated for Trump to issue a national emergency for the midterms.
• Bannon has also repeatedly called for ICE presence at the polls.
• He has hosted election deniers on his show, including some who promoted election-related policies during their appearances. For instance, Wayne Allyn Root pushed for a national emergency declaration or executive order for the midterms, and Tina Peters called for Trump to “immediately” replace the Election Assistance Commission as part of an effort to get voting machines removed from the election process.
• Bannon has been a central node of this effort to undermine the midterms, using his podcast to promote the national emergency plan and the role of his Real America’s Voice colleague John Solomon, who is part of a White House task force related to the 2020 election, and former acting director of national intelligence Bill Pulte in this effort. Solomon has repeatedly appeared on Bannon's show to discuss supposed election issues and his work with the administration regarding it.

Involved with drafting proposal for “national emergency” executive order

Who is Peter Ticktin? Ticktin is an attorney and Trump’s longtime friend who has previously represented him in court. According to CNN reporting, he “speaks to Trump a few times a year and has an open line of communication.” For years, Ticktin has claimed the 2020 election was fraudulent, asking people to send him information supposedly proving “the fake election … you know, the election fraud.”

What has Peter Ticktin been up to? Ahead of the midterms, Ticktin has been involved in efforts to influence the administration's election policy:

• Ticktin helped craft a proposed national emergency executive order that circulated within the administration and would “empower the president to ban mail ballots and voting machines as the vectors of foreign interference” ahead of the midterms. He has also called for Trump to declare a national emergency during media appearances.
• He attended an Oval Office meeting with Trump alongside his client Tina Peters.
• Ticktin has also seemed to promote Peters’ CISA proposal, saying, “She and I are going to be seeing people in the White House to kind of push the plan.”
• Jerome Corsi claimed that Ticktin “briefed Trump” on supposed algorithms that can cause election fraud.
• Ticktin suggested that he “went to [Attorney General] Todd Blanche's right-hand guy” about securing machines in Pennsylvania “that were going from 2020, real machines that actually had a machine within the machine completely against what our laws were,” and that “those machines have now been secured.”

Involved with proposal for “national emergency” executive order

Who is Jerome Corsi? Corsi previously worked for Alex Jones’ conspiracy theory network Infowars. Corsi has a history of spreading conspiracy theories, including about the 2020 election and Obama birtherism.

What has Jerome Corsi been up to? Ahead of the midterms, Corsi has been involved in efforts to influence the administration's election policy.

• Corsi was involved with and circulated a draft national emergency executive order for the midterm elections, which Peter Ticktin explained would “empower the president to ban mail ballots and voting machines as the vectors of foreign interference.” Corsi claimed, “If there was a provable foreign intrusion, that would be a national security emergency and the order could be issued under his powers as commander in chief.”
• During an appearance on Stern American, Corsi called for Trump to declare a national emergency for the midterms, saying that a “national security emergency will allow Donald Trump to make sure that the elections in 2026 are secure, even if we have to go to extreme measures and get the military involved.”
• He also claimed that that he and Ticktin have worked together on exposing supposed algorithms that can cause election fraud. According to Corsi, Ticktin “briefed Trump” on it.

Advocated for “national emergency” declaration

Who is Wayne Allyn Root? Root is a radio host who has claimed that mail-in ballots were used to “rig and steal the 2020 election.” Root is “known for subscribing to conspiracy theories.”

What has Wayne Allyn Root been up to? On his show and elsewhere, Root has discussed his election denial activity and ties with the administration.

• He has repeatedly urged Trump to declare a national emergency for the midterms, and he has claimed to have messaged Trump about it. He said that Trump should “sign Jerome Corsi’s executive order on election integrity.”
• Root told Mark Cook, who was involved with the proposed national emergency executive order for the midterm elections, that he was “trying to turn” the proposed executive order “into a national security emergency because the EOs, they can legally challenge, but a national security emergency, they can’t.”
• He also said in August before Trump visited Las Vegas that he planned to meet with Trump and hoped that he could “push national security emergency for elections” to the president. Later that month, during an interview with Trump, Root told him that he had “the right to declare a national security emergency for elections,” to which Trump said, “Let me just say that stranger things have happened, OK? I’ll leave it at that.”

Involved with drafting proposal for “national emergency” executive order

Who is Juan O. Savin? Wayne Willott — known online as “Juan O. Savin” — is a QAnon influencer. During the 2022 midterm elections, he and Nevada secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant helped recruit a coalition of election denial candidates for positions where they would be in charge of election administration. Savin also collaborated with Patrick Byrne and advised Tina Peters, who has said that she and Savin are “really good friends.” 

What has Juan O. Savin been up to? Savin's election denial activism ahead of the midterms includes:

• Savin helped craft a proposed national emergency executive order for the midterms that circulated within the administration.
• He claimed in July that Trump “implemented with executive orders significant portions of” that proposal, and that the proposal was “just updated recently" and “sent over to the White House.”

Proposed election-related policies to CISA

Who is Conrad Reynolds? Reynolds is an activist and podcast host who reportedly “thinks Arkansas voting machines could be flipping votes.” He was involved with Restore Election Integrity Arkansas, a ballot question committee, and its push for an amendment “aimed at requiring all elections in Arkansas to be conducted with paper ballots and removing language in the Arkansas Constitution that permits elections to be conducted by voting machines.” Reynolds has also run the Arkansas Voter Integrity Initiative, which has aimed for “getting rid of voting machines” in favor of paper ballots.

Who is Will Huff? Huff often co-hosts Reynolds’ podcast and has pushed election-related conspiracy theories about “dirty voter rolls” and “the mail-in ballot scheme.” He has also been involved with Restore Election Integrity Arkansas.

What have Reynolds and Huff been up to? 

• Huff and Reynolds “discussed election security issues last year with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Trump ally Ed Martin,” according to CNN. They “pitched Martin on sweeping changes the administration could impose before the midterms” and “sent Martin a ‘Proposed Ban Plan’” for voting machines, which Martin “forwarded to another senior Justice Department official.”
• Huff and Reynolds signed a letter with Tina Peters and Clay Parikh urging the adoption of an “election-security plan” for the 2026 elections, which Peters claimed she proposed to the administration by presenting it to CISA. Huff and Reynolds apparently met CISA officials alongside Peters.
• On their podcast, Reynolds and Huff claimed that during their meeting with Howard Lutnick alongside Peters, Lutnick “let me present a plan on what we’re thinking,” and said that “he was shocked at what we had to say, and he said he would be getting on it.”

Proposed election-related policies to CISA

Who is Clay Parikh? Parikh — who has referred to himself as a “conspiracy theorist” — served as an expert witness in Kari Lake’s unsuccessful litigation over supposed election fraud after she lost the race for governor of Arizona in 2022. Lake’s team was led by Kurt Olsen, an “election denier” who is now a Trump administration official.

What has Clay Parikh been up to? 

• Parikh has served as a “special government employee” in the administration and was “cited as a supposed expert in the F.B.I. affidavit supporting the search of Fulton County’s elections office.”
• He also collaborated with Tina Peters, Will Huff, and Conrad Reynolds on an “election-security plan” for the 2026 midterm elections, which Peters claimed she proposed to CISA.
• Parikh has said that he “educated some technical people up in the D.C. area on election systems and how they function and operate,” and that while he is “not a Fed anymore,” he still has “communication from time to time as has been requested of me.”

Advocated for fixing supposed voter roll errors

What is True the Vote? Founded by Catherine Engelbrecht, True the Vote is an organization dedicated to pushing claims of election fraud. It provided the foundational research for the debunked 2022 election denial film 2000 Mules. For the 2024 election, the organization promoted an effort to monitor and stream footage of ballot drop boxes, even attempting to partner with sheriffs.

Gregg Phillips, Engelbrecht’s business partner who has been a True the Vote board member, served for a time as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Office of Response and Recovery (and reportedly still has an undisclosed role in the administration). In 2016, Trump amplified Phillips’ baseless claim that millions of noncitizens voted in that year’s presidential election.

What have True the Vote and its leaders been up to? Engelbrecht was reportedly involved with a White House briefing of “about two dozen Trump-aligned activists” ahead of Trump’s July 16 speech about alleged Chinese interference in the 2020 election. (Engelbrecht has denied being there and wrote that “True the Vote did not participate in that meeting.”) The organization has also advocated use of an internal tool it created for reporting supposed voter roll errors that could lead to fraud, and plans to release a film “set to relitigate the 2020 election, making allegations about systemic election fraud in Black communities,” according to WIRED.

Claimed to be involved with drafting proposal for “national emergency” executive order

Who is Matt Meck? Meck is a board member of Fight Voter Fraud — an organization which “has been criticized in the past for repeatedly advancing unfounded claims based on its misinterpretation of voter registration information and other data.” He’s also Juan O. Savin’s “chief of staff.”

What has Matt Meck been up to? During a February appearance on the podcast Eyes on GITMO, Meck suggested he was involved with Savin on a proposed national emergency executive order for the midterms that circulated within the administration, saying that a group that included himself and Savin “put out something requested by folks in the administration” that was “ironically, 17 pages long, a proposed follow-on EO to Trump's first EO on election integrity that explained all this.”

Claimed to be involved with drafting proposal for “national emergency” executive order

Who is Laura Scharr? Scharr is the founder of SC Safe Elections, which Wired has called an “election denial group” that has urged the use of hand-marked paper ballots.

What has Laura Scharr been up to? On Stern American, Scharr called for a national emergency for the midterms, and in May 2025 said that she was involved with a proposed executive order for the midterms that circulated within the administration, saying, “We want to get rid of all machines and electronics in our election ecosystem, and that’s what started us really putting together this proposed EO. It’s something we’re suggesting to the Trump administration.”

Allegedly involved with proposal for “national emergency” executive order

Who is John Goodman? Goodman is a member of the “Florida Election Integrity Committee,” and he has pushed claims about fraudulent mail-in ballots in the 2020 election.

What has John Goodman been up to? 

• Wayne Allyn Root suggested that Goodman worked on a proposed executive order for the midterms with Jerome Corsi and Peter Ticktin. He called Goodman “my election expert” who said to him that a national security emergency is “the way to go.”
• According to Goodman, he was put in touch with Root in March “and we started talking and discussing” the national emergency idea and wanted to “try to find a way that was legal” where there would be “no obstruction.”
• On Root’s program, Corsi claimed to “have been working also with” Goodman.

Claimed to be involved with drafting proposal for “national emergency” executive order

Who is Mark Cook? Cook has been described as one “of the most influential election deniers in Colorado.” Cook traveled the country in 2024 for the “Hand Count Roadshow,” claiming that voting machines can be manipulated and advocating for hand-counting votes. As Slate reported, he “has been a featured guest on MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s show Lindell TV to promote the theory that Dominion Voting Systems rigged the 2020 election.” 

What has Mark Cook been up to? During media appearances, Cook has discussed his election denial activity and ties with the administration.

• Cook has said that he was a “co-author” of a proposed executive order for the midterms that circulated within the administration.
• During a podcast interview, he called for Trump to declare a national emergency for the midterms, with the military’s involvement.
• Wayne Allyn Root had Cook on his show to discuss the national emergency proposal, saying Goodman had connected them. During the interview, Cook said again that he “was a co-author of that 17-page EO,” which Root said he was “now trying to turn into a national security emergency.”

Advocated for “national emergency” declaration

Who is Michael Flynn? Flynn is a former Trump national security adviser. After the 2020 election, he reportedly urged Trump to declare martial law and was in an Oval Office meeting with attorney Sidney Powell and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne where Trump was urged to seize voting machines. Since Trump began his second term, he appointed Flynn to West Point’s board of visitors.

What has Michael Flynn been up to? Flynn has called on Trump to declare a national emergency for the midterms, and in February, he also organized a summit for election deniers that featured “several high-ranking federal election officials.” During the summit, several figures who tried to overturn the 2020 election pushed for a national emergency declaration.

Claimed to be involved with administration efforts to look into election conspiracy theories

Who is David Clements? Clements, a former professor, is a podcaster who has “criss-crossed the country to evangelize about purported election fraud.” As Reuters reported, Clements “told his audience that rigged voting machines had robbed former President Donald Trump of victory in 2020.”

What has David Clements been up to? During media appearances, Clements has boasted of ties to the administration and called for election policies to stop supposed fraud.

• Clements has said it would be “very easy” for Trump to “issue an executive order through a national emergency and have the National Guard count those ballots by hand.”
• He has also claimed to be “a technical liaison with national security advisers,” saying he is “trying to introduce people ... that have credentials that hopefully the president will take hold of their expertise.”
• Months later, Clements claimed that many people he had “talked to are ... national security clearance types” who’ve “closely worked in conjunction with” then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard “and ODNI," and said that Trump’s “messaging seems to be in lockstep with the findings that we’ve made” about supposed election fraud.

Claimed to be involved with administration efforts to look into conspiracy theories about Venezuela

Who is Patrick Byrne? Byrne is the former CEO of Overstock. In December 2020, he took part in an Oval Office meeting with Michael Flynn and attorney Sidney Powell where Trump was urged to seize voting machines. Since then, he has been a prominent donor for election denial activity.

What has Patrick Byrne been up to? Reporting indicates Byrne has ties to the administration's election efforts.

• Byrne has claimed to be part of a group of election deniers who helped spur Trump administration officials to reportedly investigate “claims that Venezuela had hacked voting machines in Puerto Rico,” with Byrne saying, “We brought all kinds of counterintelligence and other and cartel information to” then-U.S. Attorney for Puerto Rico W. Stephen Muldrow. He mentioned that he, Martin Rodil, and Gary Berntsen had been “running around the world.”
• Byrne is allegedly one of the figures involved with a proposed national emergency executive order for the midterms that circulated within the administration, and he has called for Trump to declare a national emergency.
• In January, Byrne’s attorney confirmed that Byrne “got called in to the White House.”

Involved with administration efforts to look into Venezuela conspiracy theory

Who is Martin Rodil? Rodil is a Venezuelan expatriate who has promoted the conspiracy theory that Venezuela was involved with election fraud in the 2020 election.

What has Martin Rodil been up to? During media appearances, Rodil has boasted of ties with the administration and its election efforts.

• Rodil was reportedly part of a group of figures who gave “information, documents and witnesses about the voting claims to [W. Stephen] Muldrow, the US attorney out of Puerto Rico and to an organized crime taskforce called Panama Express, or Panex, which is based out of Tampa.”
• Rodil claimed in June that he “recently met with a U.S. government official who has been on top of investigating” the conspiracy theory and told Rodil that he only “found 5% of the problem.”
• Additionally, in February, following the FBI raid of the Fulton County, Georgia, election center, Rodil said that he knew of “a similar effort right now being conducted in Arizona in Maricopa County, where the U.S. government is conducting a deep investigation” — weeks before Arizona's state Senate president said that he had received a federal grand jury subpoena “seeking records from a flawed review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County.”

Involved with administration efforts to look into Venezuela conspiracy theory

Who are Gary Berntsen and Ralph Pezzullo? Berntsen is a former CIA official who worked in the agency’s clandestine service and commanded forces during the war in Afghanistan. Pezzullo is the author of Stolen Elections: The Takedown of Democracies Worldwide and has written about terrorism with Berntsen.

What have Gary Berntsen and Ralph Pezzullo been up to? Reporting indicates that Berntsen and Pezzullo have been involved in the administration's election efforts.

• Bernsten and Martin Rodil reportedly gave “information, documents and witnesses about the voting claims to [W. Stephen] Muldrow, the US attorney out of Puerto Rico and to an organized crime taskforce called Panama Express, or Panex, which is based out of Tampa.”
• Pezzullo was also reportedly part of that effort, with Pezzullo telling The Guardian that a phone call he had with Muldrow “was set up by Berntsen.” According to the publication, he “claimed Muldrow assured him that the claims of election fraud were correct.”
• Trump shared a podcast interview of the duo pushing the conspiracy theory that Venezuela was involved with election fraud in America.
• Pezzullo has claimed to “know other people who are involved” with a Justice Department probe, previously led by Joe diGenova, about a “grand conspiracy” against Trump. Pezzullo said, “We’re in contact with them loosely.”
• Pezzullo has also claimed that “14 engineers that Gary and Martin [Rodil] recruited” as part of an investigation into supposed election fraud “were deposed by the Justice Department.”
• While speaking at a conference co-moderated by Juan O. Savin and Joe Hoft, Berntsen claimed Trump can “outlaw the machines himself” and called for the president to “just do it.”

Involved with the administration's raid of Fulton County, Georgia, election office

Who is Kevin Moncla? Moncla is, as described by ProPublica, “a conservative researcher” who “has tried repeatedly to prove that the 2020 vote in Fulton County was tainted by fraud,” but those “theories have often been rejected by Georgia election overseers.” True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht announced in May that Moncla had joined the organization “a handful of months ago.”

What has Kevin Moncla been up to? Moncla has boasted in the media about having ties to the administration's election efforts.

• Before the FBI’s raid of the Fulton County, Georgia, election center, Moncla “told ProPublica he’d been interviewed twice by ‘investigators, attorneys of various offices, who work on behalf of the U.S. government’ regarding his claims that proof of fraud could be found in Fulton County’s 2020 voting records.”
• ProPublica also noted that “the affidavit underlying the warrant for the FBI’s raid to seize 2020 election materials in Fulton County, Georgia” cited “many of the allegations highlighted” in a report from Moncla, “including issues that Moncla told ProPublica he had briefed investigators on.” True the Vote also claimed soon after the raid that a report “principally authored by” Moncla “formed the probable cause foundation for the FBI’s Fulton County, Georgia raid.”

Claimed to be involved with the administration's raid of the Fulton County, Georgia, election office

Who is Garland Favorito? Favorito is a leader of the Georgia organization VoterGA, who CNN has reported has “a long history of promoting debunked conspiracy theories” and a “penchant for pushing election misinformation.” According to CNN, VoterGA peddled “claims that ‘significant evidence of fraud’ existed in Georgia’s 2020 election” and “launched an effort to inspect ballots in Fulton County, home to Atlanta.”

What has Garland Favorito been up to?

• He has encouraged Trump to “execute his National Emergency Act powers” to supposedly protect elections.
• Favorito claimed that he “sent information to the DOJ” regarding Fulton County, Georgia, before the FBI’s raid of that county’s election center.

Claimed to be involved with administration efforts to investigate conspiracy theories about Venezuela and China

Who is Seth Keshel? Keshel is a former U.S. Army intelligence captain and blogger who, as described by The New York Times, “has become a darling among election deniers by factoring widespread voter fraud — the existence of which has been widely debunked — into his election predictions. ... He played a central role in ‘Stop the Steal’ efforts in 2020, attending meetings with Mr. Trump’s inner circle at the South Carolina plantation of Lin Wood, a Trump-aligned lawyer.” 

What has Seth Keshel been up to?

• Keshel claimed that he was “part of a small group given access to” information ahead of Trump’s July 16 speech about alleged Chinese interference in the 2020 election “in order to help shape the information space.”
• Keshel has claimed that he has “worked many hours with his [Trump’s] staff in the White House helping them understand the election issues.”
• Keshel has also posted a letter apparently signed by Trump thanking Keshel for sending him a copy of his book pushing election fraud claims.
• Keshel has also suggested that a Trump executive order to require voter ID based on a “national security threat” would be “a good scenario” and “need[s] to happen.”

The election denial activists in this list characterize American elections as rife with fraud and imperiled by foreign influence. Many of these people, such as Tina Peters and Steve Bannon, will be familiar to some from the wave of election denial that followed Trump’s loss in 2020, the subsequent attempts to overturn that result, and the violence that followed when those efforts failed. They have held out despite scores of investigations and assessments showing that there is no sound evidence of widespread fraud in that election, or that “any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process” in 2020.

Some of the specific proposals about how to address this supposed fraud ahead of the upcoming midterms seem far-fetched, just as they did in 2020, and the courts have already blocked several of the administration’s efforts. But the outlandishness of these proposals — and of the additional conspiracy theories that may bubble up in the days and weeks ahead — does not undermine the serious threat posed by their proponents and their access to power, especially as the administration has demonstrated that it is amenable to this push. These people have ties to Trump and administration officials; some even have held positions in the administration themselves; and the administration has advocated for and tried to implement policies that could curtail voting rights and relaunched investigations based on those conspiracy theories, which could serve as a predicate for policies.

In 2020, losing the election only reinforced Trump and his allies’ convictions about the ubiquity of election fraud and the need to rectify it. This pattern has continued since 2020, as they’ve doubled down on conspiracy theories after other unfavorable results, despite a lack of evidence. There’s no reason to believe that would be any different in 2026 — only this time there is a deep bench of activists with access to power and years of experience in the movement that makes them poised to stir up chaos as the election unfolds, kick up more conspiracy theories to undermine unfavorable outcomes, echo Trump’s reasoning that only massive election fraud could explain Democratic victories in November, and continue to push for measures that could suppress voters in this election cycle and beyond.