DHS ‘Voter Fraud Surge’ Reportedly Begins Today

DHS Wades Into the Midterms

CNN reported Monday that, starting Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security’s investigative arm, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), will be surging personnel and resources to tracking down the chimerical foe of noncitizen voting.

HSI is the same investigative entity behind many of the abuses I described in yesterday’s newsletter, including shocking, conspiratorial and sometimes buffoonish efforts to spy on activists and journalists in the Twin Cities area following the federal occupation of the city last winter.

CNN’s story was based on federal guidance its reporters reviewed. According to the report, HSI is launching a “coordinated criminal voter fraud surge initiative to pursue investigative leads, conduct field interviews, and support timely prosecutorial review.” It will target states including Washington, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York and Connecticut, and will last through “mid-October,” CNN reported. The California Post, a Golden State offshoot of the New York Post, confirmed aspects of CNN’s reporting.

Because noncitizen voting is so vanishingly rare in modern American history, and has not impacted the outcome of any of the elections on which Republicans fixate, it’s unclear what the end game is here. The claim of widespread noncitizen voting largely serves as a pretextual predicate for Trump-era Republicans to attempt to clamp down on voting in ways that may hurt Democrats.

The new probe may create a steady stream of allegations and investigations in the run-up to the midterms, and that may be its objective, but, as my colleague Josh Kovensky noted, it also gets Immigrations and Customs Enforcement — which houses HSI — one step closer to investigating the midterms as conservative activists agitate for Trump to deploy ICE to polling places, a move that would be an extreme violation of norms and the law.

How It Ended With Bovino

The Department of Homeland Security posted hundreds of pages of emails that were sent and received by now-ousted command-at-large Greg Bovino to a Freedom of Information Act portal in recent days, showing the attention-seeking federal officer was under investigation at the time of his departure. The Chicago Tribune has some of the lowlights.

• On March 2, an official in the Office of Professional Responsibility whose name was redacted emailed Bovino asking him to answer questions, including about a Chicago federal judge’s finding that he gave testimony that was “not credible” and about how that might impact his ability to testify for the agency in front of other federal judges. The case in question was challenging Bovino and his agents’ treatment of protesters and the press.
• The inquiry also asked Bovino to respond to statements he made about Jeffrey Rosen, the top federal prosecutor in Minneapolis, who is an Orthodox Jew. “Did you make a comment to the effect of ‘Do Orthodox criminals also take off Saturday?'” it asks. “What did you mean by this comment?” it further asks; it then asks whether the comment complies with various aspects of the Customs and Border Protection standards of conduct, and asks the same about a comment Bovino allegedly made about “chosen people.”
• His alleged antisemitic comments — and the investigation into them — were immediately reported by the New York Times, with a story appearing on March 3.
• The emails show that on on March 18, Bovino informed colleagues he would retire.

Tabs

• A whistleblower is warning Congress that the new USPS policy on mail-in ballots will inevitably result in many not being delivered.
• The Supreme Court allowed Trump’s ballroom to move forward, finding the challengers lacked standing but not ruling on the legality of the project itself.
• As the Trump administration’s assault on the Census Bureau ramps up, the agency quietly cut language barring political interference from its scientific integrity policy, NPR reports.
• CBS chief Bari Weiss personally directed aspects of a ridiculous story yesterday premised on the idea that the anniversary of 9/11 would be a problem for Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign, Oliver Darcy reports at Status. Specifically, she pushed for the story to be framed around two anodyne tweets El-Sayed posted comparing COVID’s death toll to 9/11’s, and suggesting the U.S.’s mobilization in response to the virus should be comparable to its efforts in the Global War on Terror.
• Kalshi suspended a Republican House candidate running for the House in a North Carolina swing district after finding that she was betting on her own race, the Washington Post reports.

Man of the Hour

It’s Victor Marx, Republicans’, um, colorful nominee for governor in Colorado. He is known for his unique brand of Christian nationalism and telling wild stories about his life that include international rescue operations, demons, and death. But in audio newly unearthed by TPM’s Hunter Walker, Marx goes even further, telling a story about confronting a girl in a prison who identified as “Satan” himself. “If you think I’m joking, I’m not,” he said.

Are We at War?

This section derives its somewhat joking name from the refusal of Congress to acknowledge that we are, in fact, at war, and to check the president — and the White House’s gingerness in calling a war “a war,” not wanting to inspire Congress to reassert its power to declare, or end, a war.

We’re seeing more of that as the administration signals its plans to backburner its war with Iran without ending it until after the midterms, with House Majority Leader Mike Johnson (R-LA) hoping the administration will wrap it up before the midterms, but shrugging that if it doesn’t, it must simply be doing what’s necessary.