Pam Bondi’s New Man on the Bogus Election Fraud Beat

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

Dan Bishop Is on the Case

New reporting out this morning from the WSJ adds to the emerging picture of how the revisionist history of Trump’s 2020 election loss is merging with the effort to exert more federal control over the midterm elections.

Let me dive right into what is new and then unpack this a bit:

That effort is now unfolding on multiple fronts. Attorney General Pam Bondi last week quietly authorized Dan Bishop, a U.S. attorney in North Carolina, to pursue election-related probes across the country, according to a copy of the order reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Bishop, a former congressman who voted against certifying Biden’s 2020 win, will also examine voter-roll data the Justice Department has been collecting from states in an effort to determine whether noncitizens have illegally registered or cast ballots, a department official said.

The WSJ story situates the news on Bishop, the former congressman tapped as interim U.S attorney, next to the FBI seizure of 2020 ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s seizure of voting machines in Puerto Rico, and the subpoena of 2020 Maricopa county voting materials from the Arizona Senate. (All of this is by way of introducing the story’s main characters: the “unlikely duo” of former CIA agent Gary Berntsen and Venezuelan fixer Martín Rodil who beat the drum early and often on the cockamamie conspiracy theory that Venezuela altered the U.S. vote count in 2020.)

At first I was a little perplexed by how the WSJ piece blurs the story of ongoing 2020 election revisionism with the newer Trump DOJ scheme to obtain voting rolls nationwide in what can only be interpreted as an effort to monkey with the 2026 midterms. But that seems to be the point: They are connected, both in spirit and intent.

As we set here at the end of Q1, the two most likely paths for this scheme are:

(1) It continues at a low burn for the rest of Trump term, serving all sorts of useful functions without really ever leading to anything: It provides anti-immigrant and voter fraud rhetorical fodder for campaign season; it’s a MAGA currency that administration officials and GOP electeds can traffic in; it’s an opportunity for up-and-comers to show their Trump loyalty ostentatiously; and it keeps election administrators on their heels.

(2) It quickly metastasizes into a deeper, darker threat to the midterm elections and democracy itself, ginning up unjust prosecutions, serving as a justification for throwing monkeywrenches into the gears of 2026 election machinery, and laying the conceptual foundation for why the 2026 election was stolen just like in 2020.

We’re only seven months from Election Day, so we’re going to know in fairly short order whether the Trump administration is going to take the second path. The clock is ticking.

For More Background on the Scheme…

Eric Columbus in Lawfare: The Trump Administration Comes for State Voter Rolls

Another MAGA Raid on the Treasury?

Politico’s Kyle Cheney has more details on the new class action lawsuit by members of the Jan. 6 mob, which is clearly seeking to take advantage of a friendly Justice Department, which just settled Mike Flynn’s bogus wrongful prosecution claims for a cool $1.2 million.

Speaking of Mike Flynn …

Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman rolls out the first installment of his two-part series on DOJ’s settlement with Flynn, examining the history of the Flynn prosecution and why it was 100% legit.

DOJ IG Goes AWOL

Fired DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni, who turned into a major whistleblower when he pulled back the curtain on the Alien Enemies Act and Kilmar Abrego Garcia cases that he was involved in, is now turning his considerable fire against the DOJ inspector general for not doing its job.

In a new letter, Reuveni’s attorneys allege that they provided 20 instances of possible wrongdoing by the Trump administration that were ignored by the inspector general. The IG’s office twice rejected Reuveni’s own complaints, first on the day after he submitted a complaint last summer and then in January after he had asked the IG to take another look at his complaint.

Swalwell to Patel: Cease-and-Desist

Sean Hecker and Norman L. Eisen, attorneys for Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), sent FBI Director Kash Patel a cease-and-desist letter not to release a decade-old investigative file involving the congressman and a suspected Chinese agent. The letter threatening legal action came after the WaPo reported over the weekend that Patel was pressing for the release of the file and that FBI agents in San Francisco had been tasked with making redactions in preparation for the file’s release.

John Eastman and Birthright Citizenship

With the Supreme Court scheduled to hear arguments Wednesday on President Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order, Politico revisits the prominent role of 2020 coup plotter John Eastman in advancing the radical theory that the Constitution doesn’t automatically confer citizenship on those born in the U.S. 

Ironically, there are some indications that the California Supreme Court will consider Eastman’s appeal of his disbarment on Wednesday, too.

Mass Deportation Watch

• An unlawfully deported DACA recipient was returned to the United States from Mexico on Monday after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” her return.
• ICE agents will be stationed outside basic training graduation events for new Marines at Parris Island to identify whether any of their family members are undocumented, but the Marine Corps denies that ICE will be making any arrests.
• Parker Molloy offers a case study in how anti-immigrant right-wing propaganda is developed and weaponized against Democrats.

The Latest on the Middle East …

• WSJ: Trump Tells Aides He’s Willing to End War Without Reopening Hormuz
• New York Mag: All of the Iran Attack Plans Are Bad. This One Is the Worst.
• WSJ: UAE Suffers One of Its Most Intense Barrages in Weeks
• WaPo: Gas hits $4 a gallon for first time since 2022.

Hmmm …

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is demanding “an immediate retraction” of a Financial Times report that his broker “attempted to make a big investment in major defence companies in the weeks leading up to the US-Israeli attack on Iran.”

FT reported:

Hegseth’s broker at Morgan Stanley contacted BlackRock in February about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the asset manager’s Defense Industrials Active ETF, the people said, shortly before the US launched military action against Tehran.

The inquiry on behalf of the high-profile potential client was flagged internally at BlackRock, according to the people familiar with the matter.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell called the allegation “entirely false and fabricated” while demanding a retraction: “Neither Secretary Hegseth nor any of his representatives approached BlackRock about any such investment.”

Notable

Washington state, which doesn’t have a traditional personal income tax, has enacted a new 9.9% tax on income over $1 million to fund child care programs, free school meals, tax credits for working families, and tax breaks for small businesses.

Behold the 1980s Tackiness

A video partially generated by AI shows the predictably ostentatious plan for a Trump Presidential Library tower in downtown Miami, replete with two gold statues of himself:

Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.