Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon told his War Room podcast audience on July 29 that President Donald Trump will issue a national emergency declaration on election integrity at the end of August.

 “Block the last week of August out,” Bannon said, because “it’s coming.”

Bannon’s comments are part of a larger plot to undermine the midterm elections by manufacturing claims of foreign interference in 2020, especially by China. This scheme, which appears to include high-ranking administration officials like outgoing acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte and a coalition of MAGA media figures, has three stages. 

First, a White House “task force” that includes right-wing media figure John Solomon released a trove of documents that Trump falsely portrayed as evidence of China’s interference in 2020. Although the declassified material actually bolstered claims that Russia had attempted to interfere in the election on Trump’s behalf — not China on Biden’s. Nonetheless, the MAGA operation soldiered forward. 

Second, the White House and its MAGA media allies would use this purported evidence as a “predicate,” in Bannon’s words, to declare a national emergency on the grounds that U.S. election systems aren’t secure — this is the stage that Bannon now claims will happen in the last week of August. Bannon’s guest in that segment, right-wing pundit Wayne Allyn Root, has previously said he believed Trump would declare a national emergency in August or September. (Root also claims that he has personally texted with Trump about this part of the plan.)

The third step is for Trump to issue an executive order that could attempt to force voters to prove their citizenship or create a national voter ID law, both of which are aspects of the SAVE America Act, which has stalled in Congress. The scheme’s supporters have also suggested that the executive order could give Trump “king-like powers” to ban the use of voting machines or scale back access to early voting and mail-in or absentee ballots ahead of the midterms. 

During the July 29 interview, Bannon praised Root’s work and expressed his optimism for the plot overall. 

“The president is going to do it,” Bannon said. “The predicate is being laid perfectly — this is why Pulte is so important.”

Beyond Bannon and Root, other prominent MAGA media figures involved in this operation include former Colorado election official Tina Peters — who was imprisoned on charges related to improper access of voting machines in 2020 — and her lawyer Peter Ticktin. The two of them met with Trump in the White House on June 30, when, according to Peters, she told the president to issue an executive order banning voting machines. Tickin has reportedly been involved in drafting a proposed executive order declaring a national emergency for “power over voting.”

Both the national emergency declaration and any anti-voting rights executive order that followed it would almost certainly be immediately challenged in court.