They tried to overturn the 2020 US election. Now, they hold power in Trump’s Washington – US elections 2020 – The Guardian
‘The federal government is no longer a trusted partner in democracy,’ the Colorado secretary of state, Jena Griswold, says. Composite: Rita Liu / The Guardian / Getty ImagesThey tried to overturn the 2020 US election. Now, they hold power in Trump’s Washington
Those who tried to overturn the 2020 election now occupy key federal roles, shaping rules and sowing doubt for 2026
Published Sat 29 Nov 2025 07.00 EST
The people who tried to overturn the 2020 election have more power than ever – and they plan to use it.
Bolstered by the president, they have prominent roles in key parts of the federal government. Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer who helped advance Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election in 2020, now leads the civil rights division of the justice department. An election denier, Heather Honey, now serves as the deputy assistant secretary for election integrity in the department of homeland security. Kurt Olsen, an attorney involved in the “stop the steal” movement, is now a special government employee investigating the 2020 election.
A movement that once pressured elected officials to bend to its whims is now part of the government.
“The call is literally coming from inside the house,” said Joanna Lydgate, co-founder and chief executive officer of the States United Democracy Center. “Now it has its tentacles in the White House, in Congress and federal agencies, and with outside groups really feeding into that infrastructure.”
The Trump administration is going after states with dubious requests for voter data that could ensnare qualified voters and will serve as an underpinning for future claims of fraud. They are working to install rules that limit voter access or sow seeds of distrust in who can vote and how. Trump has put federal agents in cities around the country, raising fears that officers could be tapped for election purposes.
“All of this, while focused on past elections, is misdirection about what the actual intention likely is, which is to interfere with the 2026 elections and attempt to delegitimize them if the president’s party doesn’t do well,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research. The results of the 2025 off-year elections, in which Democrats saw big wins, likely “strengthen the administration’s resolve to interfere in state elections and to further spread doubt about outcomes”, he said.
Some state and local elections officials say they no longer have working relationships with the federal government and do not trust the expertise they used to tap into on election security.
“The federal government is no longer a trusted partner in democracy,” Jena Griswold, the Democratic secretary of state in Colorado, told the Guardian.
Arizona secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, said: “There would have to be a significant shift in the rhetoric and the attitude coming out of senior leadership in the administration before I open my door and say, ‘Yeah, you guys, come on in.’ It’d be foolish of me to let the fox into the hen house.”
Asked for comment, the White House did not address questions about what authority Trump believes he has over elections or whether he would use emergency powers to take control of elections, as election experts fear he may.
What have they done with their power?
Trump’s 2024 win ignited the promotion of election denialism, both in the ranks of the president known to reward loyalty and in outside groups that had long been lobbying for new laws and policies that fit with their false claims of rampant election fraud.
On the first day of Trump’s term, he granted clemency to all those who stormed the Capitol in the January 6 insurrection. By November, he issued dozens of preemptive pardons for those involved in a fake electors scheme and other attempts to subvert the 2020 elections results. Ed Martin, a stop the steal activist, has assisted with pardons.
Lydgate, of States United, said the administration’s strategy on elections is “death by 1,000 cuts, with the goal of making sure that this group of election deniers can get the results that they want”.
The three key pillars of the strategy, she said, are taking power away from nonpartisan elections officials, overwhelming election administrators with frivolous work and threats, and attempting to shape the electorate in their favor by removing them from the rolls.
“There have always been political leaders who complain about the results of elections, but not in this way where you are trying to discredit the entire system and that you’re channeling the resources of the federal government in furtherance of that measure,” said Derek Tisler, counsel and manager in the Brennan Center’s elections and government program.
Election activists helped draft a bill that would require people to prove their citizenship in order to vote. When the US House passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) Act, Cleta Mitchell, the leader of an influential “election integrity” group, was presented with the vote count card.
When Trump issued an executive order in March about “preserving and protecting the integrity of American elections”, it appeared similar to a “US Citizens Elections Bill of Rights” that Mitchell had promoted, with both calling for documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. Much of the executive order has been stalled by the courts.
The quest for widespread citizenship verification among election activists convinced that high numbers of non-citizens are voting led to an expanded, controversial use of a system intended to screen for citizenship for public benefits, not voting. The Trump administration has said it expanded the service to search more databases and allow election officials to search for people in large batches instead of individually. Officials reportedly briefed Mitchell’s group to explain the new uses. Voting rights groups have sued over this expansion.
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