For those who followed Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, Cleta Mitchell’s name probably rings a bell. Few Republican lawyers went further than Mitchell in targeting the will of American voters.
As The New York Times summarized a few years ago, Mitchell was a leading figure in a cadre of conspiracy theorists who “frantically compiled unsubstantiated accusations, debunked claims and an array of confusing and inconclusive eyewitness reports to build the case that the election was marred by fraud. Courts rejected the cases and election officials were unconvinced, thwarting a stunning assault on the transfer of power.”
Years later, a Mitchell protégé has been tapped for an election integrity role in Trump’s second term. The Associated Press reported:
A conservative election researcher whose faulty findings on voter data were cited by President Donald Trump as he tried to overturn his 2020 election loss has been appointed to an election integrity role at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Pennsylvania activist Heather Honey is now serving as the deputy assistant secretary for election integrity in the department’s Office of Strategy, Policy and Plans, an organizational chart on its website shows.
Honey, who’ll be serving in a role that did not previously exist, “shows how self-styled election investigators who have thrown themselves into election conspiracy theories since 2020 are now being celebrated by a presidential administration that indulges their false claims,” the AP’s report added.
A related report from ProPublica noted that Honey “had played a key role in Mitchell’s behind-the-scenes effort to change Georgia’s election rules to allow Republican officials to contest a potential Trump loss in that year’s presidential race. Honey also promoted election conspiracy theories, including one Trump cited in a speech to his followers before they stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.”
ProPublica added, “Experts on voting and state election officials warned that Honey’s appointment as DHS’ deputy assistant secretary of election integrity could erode trust between state and federal officials, prompting states not to share information with the agency.” I occasionally see concerns about the Trump administration potentially canceling future elections as part of an authoritarian agenda, and while I can appreciate the reasoning behind those fears, it’s worth recognizing that the president and his team might not see the need to go that far. Indeed, why cancel elections when the White House can instead target mail-in ballots and voting machines, attack the census, brazenly redraw district maps and impose the president’s version of “honesty” on the elections process, all while hiring conspiracy theorists to influential election-related positions in the federal government?
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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