Homeland Security Secretary Mullin reiterates Trump threats about elections
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has doubled down on threats United States President Donald Trump made against states that defy his demands for election reform
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has doubled down on threats United States President Donald Trump made against states that defy his demands for election reform. Mullin’s latest speech on Friday largely reiterated what Trump said the night before: that the administration would pursue a hardline agenda to reshape US elections. Borrowing a term from Trump’s foreign policy platform, Mullin pledged to pursue a campaign of “maximum pressure” to ensure compliance. He also hinted at repercussions for those Trump accused of misleading the US public during the 2020 election, which Trump falsely claims he won. “This isn’t about rehashing the 2020 election. This is just exposing what took place and to make sure it never happens again,” Mullin said. He added that his department is looking at individuals within the intelligence community and the administration of former President Joe Biden as possible targets. “Everybody that purposely misled the American people, abused their power and their authority and decided not to continue doing their job will be held accountable,” Mullin explained. Intensifying pressure on states But while Trump repeatedly alleged a “deep state” cover-up about election vulnerabilities in Thursday’s primetime speech, the declassified documents his White House released failed to substantiate his sweeping claims. Like Trump before him, Mullin zeroed in on four states as the target for the administration’s immediate efforts: California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada. All four are considered either critical swing states or left-wing strongholds. They are also fairly populous states, each endowed with an above-average number of votes in the Electoral College, the system that decides US presidential elections. Those four states combined have 250,000 non-citizens on their voting rolls, according to Mullin, who offered no basis for the statistic.
Mullin also reiterated Trump’s claim that the government had uncovered nearly 278,000 foreign nationals in total who are registered to vote. There is no indication of how the Trump administration arrived at that figure, and experts warn that just because someone registered does not mean they were actually able to successfully cast a ballot. Funds to be withheld States screen voters for eligibility requirements like citizenship, and instances of non-citizen voting are exceedingly rare. An analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice, for instance, studied 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 elections, when Trump made his first successful bid for public office. It found that non-citizen voting accounted for.0001 percent of the ballots. Trump has a long history of election denial. Even in 2016, Trump won the Electoral College system but lost the popular vote — a fact that he tried to explain away by falsely claiming millions of people “voted illegally”. Election experts have widely dismissed claims that non-citizen voting is a threat to the outcome of the US elections. Still, Mullin threatened to withhold federal funds from states that fail to comply with Trump’s demands about election security. “We are going to make our security enhancements mandatory, meaning that if these states want a grant and they want to be reimbursed to work or to run federal elections, they’re going to have to implement security issues,” Mullin said. “Just security issues. We’re not trying to get into anything else, but we’re saying that the machines have to be secured and that your voter registration list needs to be scrubbed.” Raising doubts about electronic voting Trump has long voiced unsubstantiated concerns about the security of electronic voting, pushing instead for a return to paper ballots.
The BriefWire