Homeland Security Chief Threatens Election Officials

“Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened local election officials on Friday with prison time if they did not comply with the Trump administration’s efforts to change election policies, while reiterating many of President Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about the security of American elections,” the New York Times reports.

“Mr. Mullin pledged to ‘dig in just a little bit deeper’ than a prime-time speech that Mr. Trump gave on Thursday, when the president claimed without concrete evidence that American elections were rife with ‘hacking, manipulation and corruption.’ The secretary largely stuck to similar talking points, repeating the president’s unverified claim that the government had found hundreds of thousands of noncitizens on voter rolls in at least four states. Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Mullin offered any specifics on how they derived those numbers, and officials in at least two of the states said their voter rolls were properly maintained.”

“Mr. Mullin also repeated claims that foreign actors could exploit vulnerabilities identified in election systems to change votes, despite offering no evidence that such a breach has ever occurred.”

The Guardian: DHS secretary doubles down on Trump’s baseless 2020 election claims.