Trump administration trying to intimidate election officials

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Election officials from across the country pushed back on Thursday against the Trump administration’s increasingly combative tactics, following an FBI raid in Fulton County, Georgia, and a growing number of Justice Department demands for voter rolls.

When election officials convene in Washington, D.C., every winter, as they did Thursday, it typically results in congenial and bipartisan discussions with experts and federal officials on the voting process.

But this year’s meeting kicked off in a much tenser manner. The day before, the FBI conducted a search of an elections hub in Fulton County seizing ballots and records related to the 2020 election. The county has long been a focal point of unfounded fraud claims from President Donald Trump and his allies.

And it also came as dozens of states have been sued by the Department of Justice over their demands for unredacted voter rolls, with Attorney General Pam Bondi most recently tying that request to the federal immigration enforcement operation that’s rocked Minnesota.

Some of the state officials said these moves only served to undermine Americans’ faith in elections heading into the 2026 midterm and 2028 presidential campaigns.

“All those folks in Fulton County — whose work has been proven to be good, whose work has been proven to be solid over and over and over again — have to suffer the humiliation. How in the world is that going to change anything? How in the world is that going to make anything better? It’s just not,” said Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat.

“Here we go again,” added Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, also a Democrat. “The bottom line is the 2020 election was secure, it was accessible, and it was an accurate reflection of the will of the people. If there was any evidence to the contrary, we would have found it by now.”

Still, after years of defending American elections from attacks by Trump and his supporters, Benson said it’s steeled the resolve of state officials.

“State officials are really all we have left in terms of guardrails over these processes,” she said.

While several Trump officials were scheduled to speak on a panel Thursday morning titled “Federal Assistance with 2026 Elections — Ask the Feds,” just one aide, Jared Burg, appeared on the podium. He talked up White House meetings and collaboration with states on election administration.

The reception was icy. Dozens of state officials have refused to provide their voter rolls to the Justice Department, noting that state laws prohibit it and that federal officials have not said how the information would be used.

Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican who oversees her state’s elections, condemned statements made by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon that the administration’s pursuit of voter rolls was due to states not maintaining them as “quite appalling.”

“She’s pretty much slandered all of us. To me, that’s problematic to publicly claim that secretaries of state are not doing our jobs and that the federal government has to do it — not OK,” she said.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, said she wasn’t invited to the White House for the discussions Burg had touted.

“The Constitution places the states, not the federal government, in charge of our elections, and places Congress, not the president, in charge of making laws. How do you square the executive order with the Constitution and legislative arm?” Bellows said.

She referred to an executive order signed by Trump last March that attempted a major overhaul of American elections, requiring people to prove their citizenship when they register to vote, among other sweeping changes. A federal court blocked implementation of the order late last year.

In interviews, several state election chiefs expressed concern about their degrading relationship with the federal government.

Nevada Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said the Trump administration was working to intimidate state election officials into compliance.

“They just used American lives to try and intimidate a state into providing certain information,” Aguilar said. “That is horrendous.”

Others said they were worried about the lack of federal support, particularly following spending cuts that decimated the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) that had helped states defend against threats.

“Secretaries have reached out last year to say, how will we get this type of information? We’re still waiting for an answer,” said Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas, a Democrat. “We have not had any cyber, foreign interference briefing since last January.”

State election officials will have the chance to hear more from the Trump administration on Friday, as Attorney General Pam Bondi and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are set to address the gathering.
Several of the Republican officials present said they wanted more information about the FBI’s search of a Fulton County elections facility — resulting in the seizure of 700 boxes, according to County Commissioner Rob Pitts — before weighing in.

“I want to learn a little bit more about what’s going on before I comment on that,” said New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan. “We have our own issue in New Hampshire where we’re being sued” for voter roll data.

When President Donald Trump watched a live feed of the U.S. military operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was not in the room. Just two days earlier, she had posted photos of herself on a beach in Hawaii at sunset practicing yoga, sending out a new year’s greeting for “peace.”

That she appeared to be on vacation in the run-up to such a high-stakes, ultra-sensitive military operation seemed to underscore the extent to which she has been sidelined by the administration.

But there she was on Wednesday, at an election center in Fulton County, Georgia, as FBI agents conducted a raid seeking ballots from the 2020 presidential election, which Trump has falsely claimed he won.

Gabbard's presence baffled national security experts and raised questions about whether she is seeking new relevancy in the eyes of a president who had soured on her.

“Even if there was some criminal activity in the 2020 election in Georgia — despite repeated investigations that show there was none — it’s still a purely domestic problem — not one involving foreign nations,” a former national security official said. “The director of national intelligence has nothing to do with this.

Accompanying FBI agents on a raid is unprecedented for the chief of U.S. intelligence, whose job is to track threats from foreign adversaries. In her role overseeing the country’s spy agencies, Gabbard is prohibited by law from taking part in domestic law enforcement. Her predecessors took pains to keep their distance from Justice Department cases or partisan politics.

Asked about the rationale for her visit to Georgia, a senior administration official said: “Director Gabbard has a pivotal role in election security and protecting the integrity of our elections against interference, including operations targeting voting systems, databases, and election infrastructure.”

The official added: “She has and will continue to take action on President Trump’s directive to secure our elections and work with our interagency partners to do so.”

Two senior officials with knowledge of the matter said Gabbard’s presence in Fulton County was unnecessary and was not requested by the Justice Department. But they added that Gabbard was merely observing the execution of the FBI search warrant, and there was nothing illegal in her presence.

“It seems to be an attempt to make herself relevant," one official said. "It’s so strange."

Late Thursday, Trump responded to a reporter's question about Gabbard's presence at the raid.

"She’s working very hard on trying to keep the elections safe, and she’s done a very good job," Trump said at the Kennedy Center ahead of the premiere of a documentary about First Lady Melania Trump. "You got a signed judge’s order in Georgia, and you’re going to see some interesting things happening. They’ve been trying to get there for a long time."

At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Thursday, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sharply criticized Gabbard’s decision to travel to Fulton County for the FBI search, saying it was part of a pattern of senior officials blurring the line between intelligence work and domestic politics.

Warner said there were only two explanations for national intelligence director’s trip: either Gabbard believed the case had a link to foreign intelligence, and she failed to abide by her legal obligation to inform congressional committees about it, or she was tarnishing the nonpartisan reputation of the intelligence agencies with a “domestic political stunt designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy.”

"Either scenario," Warner added, "represents a serious breach of trust and a dereliction of duty to the solemn office which she holds."

In a letter to Gabbard, Warner and the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, demanded the national intelligence director brief lawmakers as part of her legal obligation to keep the committees fully informed about relevant intelligence matters.

“It is also deeply concerning that you participated in this domestic law enforcement action,” the two lawmakers said in a letter to Gabbard. “The Intelligence Community should be focused on foreign threats and, as you yourself have testified, when those intelligence authorities are turned inwards the results can be devastating for Americans privacy and civil liberties.”

During Trump’s first term in office, his administration set up an effort across the government to identify and counter foreign adversaries trying to undermine U.S. elections. But Gabbard last year dismantled a center designed to track foreign actors seeking to interfere in American elections or institutions, and the Justice Department and State Department also shut down similar offices.

Over the past year, Gabbard has clashed with two of her counterparts in the administration, FBI Director Kash Patel and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, in what officials described as a struggle for influence inside the administration.

In October, the FBI strongly objected to a proposal by some House lawmakers to strip the bureau of its authority over counterintelligence operations and hand them over to Gabbard’s office, warning that the plan would sow confusion and undercut national security. In the end, the FBI retained its primary authority over counterintelligence.

The search of the Fulton County election center follows Trump’s repeated baseless claims that the 2020 election result was fraudulent and that he was the legitimate winner, not Joe Biden.

During his remarks this month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump raised the issue with foreign leaders and corporate chiefs in the audience, saying, “People will soon be prosecuted for what they did.”

“It is unclear what the foreign intelligence nexus is to the service of an FBI search warrant on a board of elections in Atlanta,” said Kevin Carroll, a former CIA officer and now a lawyer handling national security cases. “Absent such a nexus, ODNI’s involvement in the matter is wrong and potentially even illegal" if she took part in the search.

He added: “It is also inappropriate for a Cabinet-level official to take part in a law enforcement operation. Among other things, the director is now potentially a fact witness in any suppression hearing or trial related to the evidence seized by the bureau.”