FBI agents expressed fear about becoming pawns in President Donald Trump’s efforts to interfere in the midterm elections, MS NOW reported Wednesday.
The news channel, citing seven unnamed sources in the know, wrote that agents said they were specifically concerned about being ordered to seize voting machines and ballots.
“I’m worried about that situation for sure,” a current FBI official told the channel. “We have all the evidence we need to expect at least one U.S. attorney and one FBI agent to be willing to sign on to such actions, such as Georgia and Arizona.”
Current and former FBI officials said recent efforts to sow doubt in the elections have raised worries.
MS NOW cited ex-law enforcement officials who revealed that fair-election advocates will be at the ready to advise agents who receive sketchy or possibly illegal orders to carry out at polling sites.
The administration took issue with the report.
“Democrats are the only ones causing Americans to have ‘fears’ about election security,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis wrote back to HuffPost on Thursday. “Their corrupt secret scheme to stack Alaska’s ballot has been exposed, and they refused to enact commonsense election security measures like voter ID and citizenship verification. President Trump is right: we have to have honest elections.”
Justice Department spokeswoman Kiersten Pels referred HuffPost to a comment she made previously: “There is no scenario where ‘seizing ballots’ would be an authorized or legally justifiable action for a DOJ election monitor. Those suggesting this might be a possibility are fearmongering, pure and simple. This will not happen.”
The administration has appeared to accelerate efforts to exert control over the midterms as the possibility looms of the Democrats retaking the House and Senate.
An appeals court this week refused the administration’s request to leave uncounted the votes from 20,000 alleged noncitizens in California.
The Justice Department has sued dozens of states for voting roster access to ensure noncitizens don’t vote, the department claimed. Many of the suits were tossed.
Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican who oversees elections in the deep-red state, said recently on “60 Minutes”:
“In the past two elections that I oversaw as lieutenant governor, the threats were all external. Non-state actors, cybersecurity threats and other things. But now we also have threats coming from within our own government.”
As the days tick down to Tuesday’s election, Trump and Co. have also sued to have the results of Alaska’s U.S. Senate election decertified if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses. The DOJ claims the presence of another Dan Sullivan on the ballot will confuse voters, even though the ballot clearly differentiates the two.