Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the president has made it clear that voter suppression is a top priority. In March, Trump issued a sweeping anti-voting executive order that could disenfranchise millions. And while courts have blocked key provisions of his order, the White House promised that another order, likely targeting mail voting, is on the way.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is engaged in an unprecedented attack on voting rights, through voter suppression lawsuits and election intimidation tactics. The DOJ is currently attempting to seize sensitive voter data from every state, as part of a broad, inter-agency push to build a national voter roll.
All the while, Trump refuses to let 2020 election conspiracies die — directing more officials to probe the false claims of voter fraud.
Fueling the Trump administration’s anti-voting effort are election deniers in key roles. Once-fringe figures are now serving in prominent positions in the Trump administration, emboldened to continue peddling election conspiracies and, even more troublingly, to undermine the fairness of future contests.
Here are some of the most important:
Jeffrey Clark, acting administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
A congressional probe into the Jan. 6, 2021 attacks identified Clark, who served as assistant attorney general in DOJ’s Civil Division during Trump’s first term, as one of the central figures in the plot to obstruct certification of the 2020 election. In coordination with Trump, Clark reportedly led a failed effort within DOJ to overturn the 2020 election results, citing baseless claims of voter fraud.
Clark’s new role as Trump’s regulatory czar doesn’t have him directly involved in election administration or shaping voting policy, but he’s still a major figure in the anti-voting community. On Flag Day, Clark addressed anti-voting activists in a video message recorded in the White House complex. A month later, the D.C. bar’s disciplinary arm recommended he lose his law license for his role in trying to steal the 2020 election. Clark has not been charged with any crime, but this month he was among the 77 people to receive pre-emptive pardons from Trump.
Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice
For decades, Dhillon has steadfastly attacked voting rights through her namesake law firm. During the 2020 election, Dhillon served as a legal advisor to the Trump campaign and, as votes were still being counted in key swing states, went on Fox Business to spread election conspiracy theories, calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and help Trump win.
“We’re waiting for the United States Supreme Court, of which the president has nominated three justices, to step in and do something,” Dhillon said. “And hopefully Amy Coney Barrett will come through and pick it up.”
In an interview last year, she spread more false claims about the 2020 election, insinuating that Joe Biden won because there was a “wholesale ignoring of laws passed by legislatures,” which “change the outcomes of the election in a few counties and that changes the outcome of the national election.”
As the head of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, Dhillon is spearheading the voting section’s shift from protecting voting rights to dismantling them. She’s leading the hunt to seize private voter data from every state — in an alleged attempt to build a national voter roll — along with the department’s effort to revive 2020 election conspiracies. Most recently, Dhillon requested 2020 election records from Fulton County, Georgia — one of the pivotal swing counties that helped Biden win the presidential race.
Heather Honey, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Elections Integrity at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Prior to her appointment at DHS in August, Honey was best known as the founder of Pennsylvania Fair Elections (PFE), an anti-voting group and state partner of the Cleta Mitchell-led Election Integrity Network. With PFE, Honey led efforts to remove registered voters from the states’ voter rolls, using false and misleading data culled from unverified sources. She has a long history of pushing election conspiracy theories — including one spread by Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, hours before a MAGA crowd stormed the U.S. Capitol.
At DHS, Honey works directly with state election leaders on voting policy — and is still pushing election conspiracies. During a September meeting with election officials from nearly every state, Honey reportedly claimed, falsely, that Trump lost the 2020 election because of widespread voter fraud.
“DHS now appears poised to become a primary amplifier of false election conspiracies pushed by our enemies,” David Becker, the founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former trial attorney in DOJ’s voting section, said in a statement in response.
Lake, a former TV news anchor and failed Arizona gubernatorial and U.S. Senate candidate, has a long history of spreading election conspiracy theories. She’s repeatedly insisted that Trump won in 2020 and has promoted false claims that Dominion voting machines were hacked to help Biden win. She refused to concede her 2022 gubernatorial race, instead filing multiple failed lawsuits to overturn the election. “I am the lawful governor of Arizona. The current occupant of the governor’s office is just a squatter,” Lake wrote in her memoir, released in June 2023.
As head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Lake oversees Voice of America (VOA), the federally funded international news broadcaster. Under Lake’s leadership, VOA has been in turmoil: She purged a majority of the organization’s staff — only for a judge to reverse the dismissals. Litigation is ongoing.
Trump previously said VOA was “a total left-wing disaster” and Lake called the organization “a rotten piece of fish” during a House hearing in June. She falsely suggested at the hearing that VOA was producing pro-China and pro-Iranian propaganda, and that the organization hired Russian spies.
“The CCP has more control over what we put out editorially than people who are management at the agency,” Lake said.
Since taking over VOA, Lake said in sworn court testimony that she reached content-sharing agreements with One America News Network (OAN) and was discussing a similar one with Newsmax — two right-wing news outlets that have both spread election conspiracy theories. But a representative for OAN disputed Lake’s testimony to the New York Times.
Ed Martin Jr., pardon attorney and director of the Weaponization Working Group at DOJ
Trump withdrew Martin’s nomination for U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia in May after several GOP senators said they wouldn’t vote to confirm him because of his involvement in the 2020 “Stop the Steal” movement and work defending Jan. 6 rioters. Instead, Trump rewarded him with a DOJ position as pardon attorney and head of a new unit to probe what the president calls the political “weaponization” of the department under Biden.
Martin’s election conspiracy views have heavily influenced his work in these DOJ roles. Martin discussed pardoning some of the final Jan. 6 defendants — including the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys leaders who were convicted of seditious conspiracy. As head of DOJ’s nascent Weaponization Working Group, Martin is leading the charge in investigating Trump’s political enemies — including anyone involved in the Jan. 6 investigations. Most recently, Martin coordinated the president’s symbolic pardon of 77 allies who tried to help him steal the 2020 election.
Marci McCarthy, director of public affairs at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
As chair of the DeKalb County, Georgia Republican Party, McCarthy amplified false claims of mass voter fraud, raised doubts about the results of the 2020 election, and spread disinformation about faulty voter machines in Georgia. McCarthy led a failed Republican lawsuit challenging the Peach State’s use of Dominion Voting Systems that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) called a “last-minute effort to push false claims about Georgia’s voting system and cast doubt on the upcoming presidential election.”
Now McCarthy is the chief spokesperson for CISA, the nation’s top cybersecurity agency, which is a part of DHS. Since Trump’s return to power, CISA has ceased all its election security work, leaving states without a critical resource for securing elections from foreign and domestic cybersecurity threats.
During a recent call with state election leaders, Honey, the senior DHS official, explained that CISA gutted its election security work because the agency was “moving into censorship and telling Americans what they should believe,” according to an election official who was on the call.
“It was deeply disturbing,” said the election official, who spoke with Democracy Docket on the condition of anonymity. “It’s not accurate, it’s defamation, and it’s just absurd.”
Kurt Olsen, special government employee at the White House
Olsen, a former Trump campaign lawyer, played a key role in the president’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. Olsen was involved in Texas’ challenge of the election results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. And Olsen pushed DOJ officials to file a motion with the U.S. Supreme Court to nullify the election results, urging the court to order a special election in four states where Trump lost.
Trump reportedly tapped Olsen last month to join the White House as a “special government employee” to investigate the 2020 election and other voting-related issues. The scope and circumstances of Olsen’s new role are vague, but the Wall Street Journal reported that it’s a temporary, 130-day appointment. Trump reportedly asked Olsen to “work on election issues important to him,” which includes examining election machines, probing the 2020 election, and helping to weed out disloyal federal employees.
Mac Warner, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division at DOJ
As the top election official for West Virginia from 2017 until earlier this year when he was appointed to his DOJ role, Warner amplified far-right conspiracies about the 2020 election and restricted voter access.
“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.”
Now Warner is working in a nebulous “Interagency Weaponization Working Group,” where he’s investigating false claims about 2020 and taking steps to restrict voting access. Warner was reportedly behind a DOJ effort in Missouri to access voting machines used in the 2020 election and personally contacted at least two county clerks earlier this year requesting “permission to access, physically inspect and perhaps take physical custody” of Dominion voting machines.
Warner also used his position as a member of the board of advisers for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to pressure the federal voting panel to implement provisions of Trump’s anti-voting order. A district court last month blocked the EAC from implementing the provision of Trump’s anti-voting order demanding a proof-of-citizenship requirement on the federal voter registration form.