‘BIG cheating’: This is Trump’s team on election claims and what they could do in November

The Trump administration is pushing federal agencies deeper into state-run elections than any before it, chasing voter fraud and, in CNN's telling, helping the president keep alive his unsupported belief that he was robbed in 2020. Election officials and Democratic lawmakers worry the effort could produce intimidation at polling sites and supply a pretext for questioning midterm results if Republicans fare poorly.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has been central. In July he said his department found more than 250,000 noncitizens on rolls in four states and about 25,000 more in Republican-led states that shared their data, yet those tallies have faced heavy criticism, including from some Republicans who call them inflated. He has also stressed that voting machines are exposed to hacking, while conceding last month that he could not say whether problems with certain machines involved fraud. He has threatened officials who fall short with fines or prison, and his department is trying to hold back grants from states that decline Trump-backed changes. DHS says it would send immigration agents to polls only in response to a threat.

Summarized by PolitiKool from CNN’s reporting. Read the full story at CNN →