Podcaster whose group was connected to a January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally suggests she was involved in creating the SAVE Act

Written by Alex Kaplan

Research contributions from Kayla Gogarty

Published

Tea Party Patriots founder and podcaster Jenny Beth Martin — whose group was listed as a “coalition partner” of a rally in Washington, D.C. ahead of the January 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol — suggested during a rally later aired on her podcast that she played a role in the creation of the SAVE Act, which would curtail voting access nationwide and has been pushed by the Trump administration in its current iteration.

The SAVE Act, which was introduced by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and has since been modified and rebranded as the SAVE America Act, would bar noncitizens from voting in federal elections — something which is already illegal and exceedingly rare— and would create new barriers for people attempting to register to vote.

Roy already said that he “drafted that bill … alongside our good friends Stephen Miller, our good friends Hans Von Spakovsky, Cleta Mitchell, other good friends of President Trump and patriots across the country who have been fighting for election integrity for years.” These remarks suggest Martin may have been involved as well.

Martin was involved with early promotion of the SAVE Act, speaking at the 2024 congressional GOP press conference announcing the bill, endorsing an iteration of the bill, and repeatedly campaigning for its passage.

At an April 25 event, which was broadcast on Martin’s podcast The Jenny Beth Show on May 5, Martin gave a speech and described being in contact with Lee, along with Mitchell. She mentioned a January 2024 conference call in which Mitchell “gave an update about problems with elections,” specifically Arizona, and a text exchange in which Martin said “we need to make a law” that will “fix” Arizona.

Martin portrayed those conversations as being how the SAVE Act got started.

From an April 25, 2026, event, broadcast on the May 5, 2026, edition of The Jenny Beth Show on YouTube

JENNY BETH MARTIN (HOST; PRESIDENT, TEA PARTY PATRIOTS): In January of 2024, Sen. Mike Lee, Cleta Mitchell with the Election Integrity Network, and I were in a car — in a meeting, and I was — I had joined by conference call. And we were talking of — Sen. Lee was giving an update on things that were happening in the United States Senate. Cleta gave an update about problems with elections, urging some action to be taken, and she described exactly what happens here in Arizona.

You have to show proof of citizenship to register to vote, but the Supreme Court, as James — right? Got your name right? As James said earlier, that the Supreme Court said that you also must take the voter registration form from the National Voter Registration Act, the motor voter law, the NVRA. And that law or that form, which stems from federal law, is supreme — federal law is supreme law of the land, so you must take that form. So now you in Arizona have the bifurcated ballot, meaning if you show proof of citizenship, you can vote for president and governor and senator. Well, president and senator and Congress and governor and all the way down to school board or whatever your lowest level office is. If, however, you haven’t, and you’re part of the 43 or so thousand people who have not shown proof of citizenship, you still get to vote for president, Senate, and Congress. And I heard this — I heard it before because when I started working on election integrity issues, I heard about it and just it makes no sense to me.

And so I texted Mike Lee. And I said, “We need to make a law. This is ridiculous. We have to fix this because if Arizona wants to require proof of citizenship, they are a border state for Pete’s sake. Let’s make sure that we have proof of citizenship.”

And when you’re talking about a state where fewer than 10,000 people decided the 2020 election, if you believe the results, but let’s just go with the results on record. Fewer than 10,000 people decided it and you’ve got over 40,000 people who haven’t shown proof of citizenship? Yeah. We need to have proof of citizenship. And the federal government should not be preventing your state from showing it.

That’s how this bill got started. Now, it has turned in — in addition to being proof of citizenship to register to vote — it has also turned into voter ID. And Sen. Mike Lee and Congressman Chip Roy and Congressman Bryan Steil, who is from Wisconsin, and the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Mike Johnson, have championed this bill from the beginning. And without Speaker Johnson being such a huge champion of it, I don’t think it would have gotten as far as it did.