Wednesday, September 10
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Cleta Mitchell thinks President Donald Trump may use emergency powers to take control of elections. Also in this week’s Eye On The Right: Another prominent election conspiracy theorist has a different angle for Trump to wrest control of elections, leadership drama at the anti-voting group Unite4Freedom and more.
As always, thanks for reading.
Matt Cohen, senior reporter |
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Cleta Mitchell: Trump could use emergency powers to take control of elections
- Anti-voting lawyer and Trump ally Cleta Mitchell appeared on a podcast last week hosted by the Christian conservative leader Tony Perkins, where she made a disturbing prediction: The president may declare a national emergency to allow him to take control of elections.
- Mitchell’s comments add to growing concern that Trump is plotting a way to use his power over the military and federal law enforcement agencies to obstruct voting in Democratic strongholds in next year’s midterm elections.
- Mitchell also said in the interview that Trump has the power to issue an executive order requiring voter ID, because some states require it. And she said he could sign an executive order targeting voters living abroad, like deployed military and overseas citizens
- Though Mitchell has worked closely with Trump in the past, it isn’t clear whether her comments were based on knowledge of Trump’s thinking, or whether she was speculating on what she believes the president has the power to do.
Another election conspiracy theorist has a different angle for Trump to wrest control of elections
- Joe Hoft, a prominent anti-voting conspiracy theorist and co-founder of The Gateway Pundit, published his own bonkers take on how Trump could take control of elections: an executive order that makes the federal government regulate elections like corporations.
- Hoft published a draft executive order for Trump, which would require that federal elections use some of the same requirements as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which mandates record-keeping practices for corporations.
- Hoft’s order would essentially strip control of elections from the states and mobilize the National Guard to monitor voting, require election equipment to be inspected and audited by federal officials and require the Director of National Intelligence to provide "an initial assessment of findings."
Tina Peters to Trump: ‘I'm ready to be released because the midterms are close’
- Tina Peters, the former GOP Colorado election clerk and conspiracy theorist who was sentenced to nine years in prison for her role in a voting system data breach, recently wrote to Trump asking the president to “please set me free.”
- Peters’ release from prison has become a cause célèbre within anti-voting activist and election conspiracy theorist circles. But because Peters was convicted on state charges, there’s little Trump or the DOJ can do — despite what the president has said.
- In her letter to Trump, Peters said she’s “ready to be released because the midterms are close.” She also wrote that, “I cannot allow Jena Griswold to be the attorney general of Colorado, or crooked Phil Weiser to be the governor, and many more need to be displaced in this state, country, and in many nations across the world because the voice of the people has been stolen.”
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Anti-voting group Unite4Freedom boots its founder and CEO
- Unite4Freedom, the anti-voting group formerly known as United Sovereign Americans, fired its founder and CEO, Marly Hornik. In an email to supporters last week, Unite4Freedom chairman Harry Haury said the group parted ways with Hornik, “due to diverging strategies regarding the organizational priorities and goals, and use of resources to achieve them.”
- But Hornik offered a different narrative on social media. “How is being fired and completely locked out of 3 years of my own UNPAID work, ‘diverging strategies’?,” she wrote. “I'm also confused about how that is extending ‘our best wishes to Marly.’”
- It’s unclear what this means for the anti-voting group moving forward. The group was behind a slew of unsuccessful lawsuits in 2024 challenging states’ voter roll maintenance procedures. And the group claimed to file new lawsuits in Colorado and New York this year, but no such lawsuits have appeared yet on the docket.
Follow Democracy Docket’s on-the-ground reporting of the Tea Party Patriots’ D.C rally
- The right-wing group Tea Party Patriots is holding a rally in D.C. Wednesday to pressure the Senate to pass the SAVE Act. Democracy Docket exclusively reported on the group’s plan to pressure the GOP to attach the sprawling anti-voting bill to a must-pass piece of legislation this fall.
- I’ll be reporting live from the rally and posting on BlueSky. Follow along for updates.
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