NEW from me: I spent 5 months investigating how Trump and Republicans are sowing disinformation and creating panic about supposedly widespread voter fraud. Reporting included 100+ interviews with key players, review of 1000s of pages of records 4 @NYTmag nytimes.com/2020/09/30/mag…
The investigation tracks Trump's 4-year effort to challenge a losing 2020 result as illegitimate, tracing how the federal government joined a larger effort using the specter of exceedingly rare “voter fraud” as a pretext for partisan advantage. Among the findings:
The president’s voter fraud effort has included a commission and several agencies, including DHS, which at one point considered a national ID policy for voting…
…among those at DHS who contributed to discussion was policy aide who later resigned as a report in @TheAtlantic highlighted his friendly email interactions with white nationalists.
Among those fending off congressional inquiry into DeJoy’s hiring at the USPS is an official who had previously resigned under pressure from the W. Bush DOJ, for his part in a scandal over the firing of several US Attorneys, some pressured over voter fraud cases
As Trump increased his attacks on mail balloting, falsely portraying it as too hobbled by fraud to be reliable, the CDC dropped from Covid-19 voting guidance what had been an outright endorsement of mail balloting
Read here for more on how the false notion that fraud is a present danger to democracy became a present danger to democracy, and how Trump embraced it with one goal above all others: Holding power. nytimes.com/2020/09/30/mag…
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