Trump Purged About 75 People Charged With Safeguarding Elections and Replaced Some With 2020 Deniers: Report

(AP Photo/ Evan Vucci, File)

President Donald Trump’s administration forced out at least 75 career federal officials involved in protecting U.S. elections and replaced nearly a dozen of them with appointees tied to efforts to overturn the 2020 result, according to a sweeping new ProPublica investigation.

The report says the departures have hollowed out long-standing safeguards at the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, and other parts of government ahead of this year’s midterm elections, placing key election-related powers in the hands of Trump loyalists and figures from the 2020 election denial movement.

ProPublica found that nearly all of the officials it identified as having resisted attempts to undo Trump’s 2020 loss are now gone, having resigned, been fired, or reassigned. In their place, the administration has installed roughly two dozen people in roles that could affect elections.

Ten of them, the outlet reported, “actively worked to reverse the 2020 vote,” while others are linked to those efforts or to activist groups central to the movement denying Trump’s defeat.

The investigation describes a far-reaching effort to remake federal election machinery, including the dismantling of election security work inside the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), cuts to Justice Department units that previously reviewed politically sensitive cases, and the installation of new officials who have echoed or promoted false claims about voter fraud.

“Election integrity has always been a top priority for President Trump,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement to the outlet. “The President will do everything in his power to defend the safety and security of American elections and to ensure that only American citizens are voting in them.”

Spokespeople for the DOJ and DHS also told ProPublica their departments are working to ensure elections are free and fair, rejecting claims of partisan interference.

But current and former officials quoted throughout the report said the changes have stripped away nonpartisan expertise that proved critical in 2020, when senior figures inside the government pushed back on Trump’s false claims of a stolen election.

ProPublica also reported that some of the new appointees have already been involved in aggressive election-related actions, including efforts to search voter rolls for noncitizens and an FBI raid in Georgia tied to 2020 election materials.

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