A former red-state chief election official who has falsely claimed the CIA stole the 2020 contest is playing a key role in the conspiracy theory-fueled effort by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate the vote.
His work appears to be part of a dangerous cross-government unit aimed at exacting retribution against President Donald Trump’s perceived enemies.
Andrew McCoy “Mac” Warner, who served until this year as the Republican secretary of state of West Virginia, is now a senior attorney in DOJ’s Civil Rights division, where he’s taken several steps to advance restrictions on voting and to investigate false claims about 2020 — including demanding access to voting machines used that year. The probe appears to be tied to Warner’s role in an inter-agency task force created to advance Trump’s executive order targeting the so-called “weaponization” of the federal government.
The existence of the task force, known as the “Interagency Weaponization Working Group,” as well as Warner’s participation, were reported this week by Reuters.
Other architects of DOJ’s sharp right-turn on voting issues — including Civil Rights division leaders Harmeet Dhillon and Michael Gates, and voting section chief Maureen Riordan — have drawn varying levels of scrutiny. But Warner has largely flown under the radar since starting at DOJ this year, despite his prior record of advancing election conspiracy theories.
Soon after Trump returned to the White House, Warner was appointed acting head of the Civil Rights division at DOJ, a post he filled until Dhillon’s April 3 confirmation. Since then, he has continued to serve as a senior figure in the division.
DOJ has not publicly detailed Warner’s responsibilities or role in the Weaponization Working Group. But according to a memo circulated by the Missouri Association of County Clerks and Election Authorities, Warner personally contacted at least two county clerks in the state earlier this year requesting “permission to access, physically inspect and perhaps take physical custody” of Dominion voting machines used in the 2020 election. Both clerks rejected the request.
The association’s president, Sherry Parks, said in an email to the Missouri Independent that such access by the DOJ would be illegal under state law.
Warner also has used his position as a member of the board of advisers for a key federal voting panel to push for more restrictive policies.
At a May 2025 meeting of the Election Assistance Commission’s Board of Advisors, Warner urged the commission to implement provisions of Trump’s anti-voting executive order, “especially the measures requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and guidance on voting machines,” according to state Rep. Pat Proctor of Kansas, who also attended.
Warner’s tenure from 2017 to 2025 as West Virginia’s top election official was defined by efforts to restrict voter access and amplifying far-right conspiracies about the 2020 election.
“The 2020 election was stolen, and it was stolen by the CIA,” Warner falsely claimed during a Republican gubernatorial debate in 2023. “They colluded to sell a lie to the American people two weeks before the election. I don’t want three-lettered agencies determining the outcome of presidential elections.”
Warner has argued that “Deep State” agencies like the CIA and FBI stole the election by conspiring with tech companies to suppress damaging information about former President Joe Biden’s family.
Warner also led West Virginia’s withdrawal from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a nonpartisan data-sharing consortium used by states to maintain accurate voter rolls. The state’s departure came after the program was targeted by far-right activists who falsely claimed it had a liberal bias and was run by Democratic operatives.
Election experts widely condemned the move, warning it would make it harder for states to maintain accurate rolls.
Testifying before Congress in 2023, Warner attacked the National Voter Registration Act, a landmark pro-voting law which requires state motor vehicle departments to offer voter registration — the most common method of registration.
“Congress should first revisit the NVRA. There is no need for DMVs to register people to vote,” Warner said. “The federal government needs to get out of the way and let the states run their elections.”
In a separate hearing, he also rejected the idea that state election officials bear any responsibility for increasing participation.
“That is a candidate, party or campaign’s job,” Warner said. “It’s my job to run a free, fair and clean election.”
In a December 2023 interview, Warner doubled down on right-wing anti-government conspiracies, and also argued that election officials illegally exceeded their authority for expanding voter access in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“You’ve got the Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin examples and so on, where the states and their elected officials stepped outside their authority,” Warner said. “We need to abide by the law and not let state authorities, whether it’s secretary of state at the state level, or the county authorities or the county clerks at the county level, to change those rules. If they do, then I contend that they are operating outside the law and the votes that come in outside the law should not be counted.”
Warner has written that restoring public faith in elections would require stricter voter ID laws and more aggressive roll maintenance — not expanded voter access.
And at a 2023 panel hosted by right-wing groups the Heritage Foundation, Honest Elections Project, and the Public Interest Legal Foundation, Warner touted West Virginia’s anti-voting policies as a model for election administration.