Donald Trump’s team is already making moves to upend the 2026 midterm elections. Perhaps they’ve forgotten: they could go to prison for it.
Last Thursday, the Attorney General of the United States was asked whether he could “rule out” using the Justice Department to stop states from certifying the midterms, and the answer was “no.” Three days later, he was on Sunday television defending a lawsuit his boss admits he ordered, to keep a Democrat from being seated in the U.S. Senate.
The brazenness is remarkable. On October 22, DOJ sued Alaska to bar the state from certifying its Senate race if Republican Senator Dan Sullivan loses to Mary Peltola, on the theory that a second man named Dan Sullivan on the ballot might confuse voters. The election hasn’t even happened. Yet Trump told reporters he personally directed it, and even Senator Sullivan’s campaign said it never asked for DOJ’s intervention.
A week earlier, the department sued California to set aside the ballots of roughly 20,000 voters labeled “likely” noncitizens. Then it sent letters to county registrars giving them 48 hours to sequester ballots. When the AP sampled the list, 70 percent of the names had never voted and nearly four in ten were born in the United States. One registrar said his family is worried about what happens to him next. That, of course, is the point.
The Trump administration has built an election intimidation machine. DOJ has fired off letters to all 50 states threatening election officials with prosecution. The Department has already brought thirty lawsuits seeking the voter rolls of various states. They’re deploying a thousand federal “monitors” to the polls, and armed agents were literally knocking on voters’ doors in nine states until a judge blocked it last week as voter intimidation. A DOJ official tells NBC that more states could be sued before or after Election Day, leaving open the possibility of ballots being frozen right through certification. And Todd Blanche says that blocking certification is a “doomsday scenario” he won’t rule out.
You see where this is going, right? The president’s team appears prepared to upend the vote anywhere they don’t like the results.
But I have a few questions for the president’s aides, which they’d be wise to reflect on:
Do you remember the aftermath of January 6?
Do you remember how many of the president’s aides were investigated and prosecuted?
Did you know that the Supreme Court’s “immunity” ruling protected only one person, and it wasn’t you?
Do you recall that the Constitution hands elections to the states?
Do you realize that states have prisons, too, and that Trump can’t keep you from them?
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who ostensibly runs Trump’s midterm operation, told Vanity Fair last winter that the president operates with “a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.” Wiles and her lieutenants would be fools to adopt that view. The last time the theory got tested, it went poorly for Trump and everyone who went along with his 2020 election scheme. Indeed, state prosecutors in Georgia indicted Trump, and Georgia and Arizona indicted his chief of staff and his personal lawyers. No one in the federal government could stop them. Trump himself was only saved because he won back the presidency, which he cannot do again.
So here’s a refresher for any of the Trump appointees who weren’t there during the last go-around.
The pardon power applies only to “offences against the United States,” meaning federal crimes and nothing else. Trump pardoned 77 people from the 2020 scheme last November, and it did not result in the dismissal of a single state case. For instance, former Trump advisor Kenneth Chesebro is being prosecuted in Wisconsin along with two others for allegedly forging elector documents; that case is ongoing. Meanwhile, the concept of “presidential immunity” only covers the president’s own federal exposure for official acts and does not wrap around each of his lawyers, appointees, junior staffers, and outside advisors. Remember that Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, tried to hide behind his official role while being prosecuted after 2020, and he got denied all the way up to the Supreme Court.
The 2020 conspirators learned the hard way that if you try to illegally pressure state officials to change election results, it doesn’t exactly fall under “official duties.” State governments have their own statutes against forgery, false filings, conspiracy, soliciting officials to violate their oaths, interfering with a canvass, intimidating election officers, racketeering, and more. So a DOJ prosecutor who instructs a county clerk to set aside the ballots of likely U.S. citizens, or face prosecution, may not be seen as protected by their “official duties” at DOJ. In fact, that prosecutor may be seen as making a threat, and I suspect states will be taking a hard look at that.
Trump’s lieutenants might take false comfort in the fact that many of the president’s 2020-era aides didn’t go to jail. The cases in Georgia fell apart because of a prosecutor’s alleged misconduct, and the ones in Michigan and Nevada were dismissed because judges didn’t find evidence that the electors knew they were breaking the law. But Trump’s current henchmen shouldn’t take that as reassurance. This time, the president himself says on camera that he ordered a suit to stop a certification, and the attorney general says on camera he won’t rule out blocking one. I don’t think a jury will struggle to figure out their intent in 2026.
What’s more, the last Trump team who went along with his election theft also suffered severe reputational and professional consequences, even if they didn’t face jail time. After 2020, four of the Georgia defendants pleaded guilty rather than face trial… Rudy Giuliani was disbarred in New York and Washington… John Eastman was permanently disbarred by the California Supreme Court… Chesebro lost his license in New York… and Jenna Ellis lost hers with a suspension in Colorado.
That’s why Trump’s current officials are walking a tightrope. If they ramp up their efforts to interfere in vote tallies or certification, the people with the power to decide what will happen to them aren’t all in Washington. They might face the wrath of a district attorney in Philadelphia, an attorney general in Phoenix or Carson City, or a prosecutor in Anchorage — many of whom will have a long statutes of limitations, long memories, and the ability to say: presidential pardons don’t work out here.
So to Trump’s henchmen, let me offer a friendly reminder before you move to decertify election results or prevent the peaceful transfer of power: the man you’re doing this for is putting you at risk… he doesn’t care about you… and even if he did, he cannot save you from accountability.
Your friend, in defiance,
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