Mary Trump Warns Donald Trump's Team Is Laying Groundwork to Steal the Midterms

Mary Trump told listeners that Donald Trump's administration is using the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department to set up a challenge to the November 3 midterms. She called the campaign an effort to "steal this election from the American people."

The president's niece and frequent critic made the case in a new episode of The Mary Trump Podcast, days before Election Day. She went through federal investigations of voters, lawsuits seeking state voter rolls and a suit to hold back California ballots, then played Attorney General Todd Blanche declining to rule out federal involvement in certifying results.

"This is all hands on deck. This is a five alarm fire. This is indeed the most important election of our lifetimes, this midterm coming up on November 3rd," she said.

Mary Trump Ties Fraud Claims to Money and Power

Mary Trump argued that Donald Trump's fraud claims protect his family's wealth.

She pointed to a July 17 Roll Call analysis of Factba.se data on the president's statements, which found that Trump has made thousands of assertions about voter fraud.

Whether the administration intends to "steal" the election is her characterization. Blanche has said the federal government has a role in elections, though states administer them.

DHS Voter Investigations Hit Court Injunction

Mary Trump described a DHS operation she called the "Unlawful Voter Initiative." She said a whistleblower revealed that investigators got less than two hours of training and were told to review 40 people a day. She played Senator Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, who said, "This has nothing to do with protecting the integrity of our elections. It's about the potential of using manufactured evidence to intimidate voters."

Last Wednesday, federal judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued a preliminary injunction restricting certain DHS election investigations in nine states. Mary Trump said the judge cited concerns about unreliable voter data and the potential intimidation of citizens subjected to federal investigations. She said federal court records show DHS guidance dated Aug. 31 directed investigators to prioritize field operations in nine states, including Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. (On a February 25 call with state election officials, DHS deputy assistant secretary Heather Honey said there would be no ICE presence at polling locations.)

California Ballot Suit and the Voter-Roll Record

On October 15, the Justice Department sued California over 20,000 registered voters, after giving the state 48 hours to review the list. Mary Trump said the administration wanted those ballots withheld from counting until citizenship could be verified, which "is not how any of this is supposed to work."

Los Angeles County sampled 200 names from the list. Among those whose birthplace was meaningfully reported, 38.9 percent were recorded as born in the United States, according to the county's review. Only 7,035 of the 20,000 names had Los Angeles County addresses.

The broader court record matches her numbers. A Brennan Center for Justice tally published on October 20 counted 34 federal district court rulings against the administration's election actions, issued by 22 Democratic appointees and 12 Republican appointees, eight of them appointed by Trump. The Justice Department was 0-26 in its suits seeking state voter registration lists. In one setback for challengers, the Supreme Court stayed a lower-court ruling on the SAVE citizenship-verification system.

What Todd Blanche Said About Certification

Mary Trump closed on Attorney General Todd Blanche. Asked last Thursday whether the Justice Department might try to stop states from certifying results, Blanche said:

"It is not DOJ's intention to, and it's never our intention, to improperly interfere with elections or the state confirmation process or certification process, but to say that there's no circumstances that we would ever do that, of course I'm not going to say that."

He added: "But am I planning my days around the election to be somewhere to not certify? Of course not. No, not at all."

Mary Trump then spoke as if in Blanche's voice: "My boss is not the American people. My boss is Donald Trump." Blanche did not say this. He said he has no plan to block certification but would not promise that it could never happen.

Democrats have prepared court filings for possible certification fights.