Donald Trump May Use Federal Agents To Suppress Voter Turnout, Election Lawyers Say
A Thursday report from Newsweek claims that election lawyers linked to Joe Biden are sounding the alarm on the possibility that Donald Trump will deploy federal agents to voting locations this November in order to suppress turnout.
“I fear it more in Wisconsin and in Michigan, where there are Democratic governors who Trump has criticized and whether or not they would have the ability to stop it,” said Juan Carlos Planas, a member of Republicans for Biden.
The concerns come after Trump used federal agents to make way for a White House photo-op with a Bible and deployed Department of Homeland Security agents to Portland to quell rioting. His willingness to use federal agents for purportedly political purposes has allegedly sparked fears in election lawyers with ties to the Biden campaign.
“What if he deploys ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to polling locations?” asked one lawyer who spoke anonymously.
“If someone is intimidating voters you normally call cops, but what if he’s sending federal law enforcement?”
The real estate mogul has continued to attack Democratic efforts to expand vote-by-mail and suggests that the process is vulnerable to fraud. The anonymous attorney speculated that if Trump believes cheating is taking place and is on track to lose, he may have no reservations about using federal agents for his political goals.
“What’s to stop him if he thinks there’s fraud being done, especially if he thinks he’s going to lose?”
Trump 2020 communications director Tim Murtaugh appeared to brush off suggestions that the president would use federal agents to disrupt the election. According to Murtaugh, Democrats are attempting to undermine the integrity of the voting process via their mail-in efforts.
“They also want to eliminate signature matching and clear the way for ballot harvesting, which are also wide open opportunities for fraud.”
Jason Stanley, a fascism expert and philosophy professor at Yale University, echoed the worries of the previously mentioned Biden-linked lawyers, Business Insider reported. Stanley pointed to research suggesting that law enforcement presence curbs voter turnout and indicated that the Customs and Border Protection and ICE agencies could be used for such a purpose.
Despite the Trump campaign’s attacks on mail-in voting, numerous experts have pushed back on its criticisms and noted that the process has been used by various states for years.
According to Yale professor Timothy Snyder, Trump is using his postmaster general to weaken the United States Postal Service and weaponize this weakness in an attempt to cling to power in November.
