The Department of Justice under Attorney General Pam Bondi is looking into potentially filing criminal charges against election officials pegged by the Trump administration for allegedly failing to keep a close eye on their electronic voting systems, according to The New York Times.
The report comes as Donald Trump continues to claim the 2020 presidential election was "a total fraud" that was rigged against him. The president wrote on social media last month, "The evidence is MASSIVE and OVERWHELMING. A Special Prosecutor must be appointed. This cannot be allowed to happen again in the United States of America! Let the work begin!"
However, the Times reported that far from "overwhelming," the evidence of alleged electronic voter fraud being considered by the DOJ isn't new or groundbreaking.
"Instead," the effort "is driven by the unsubstantiated argument made by many in the Trump administration that American elections are easy prey to voter fraud and foreign manipulation," wrote reporters Devlin Barrett and Nick Corasaniti.
"Such a path could significantly raise the stakes for federal investigations of state or county officials, thrusting the Justice Department and the threat of criminalization into the election system in a way that has never been done before," they added.
The report quoted Dax Goldstein with the nonprofit States United Democracy Center, saying, “The tactics we’re seeing out of D.O.J. right now are building on what we’ve seen from anti-democracy groups for years. They’re rooted in the same lies about elections, and they’re all meant to create noise and fear and concerns about issues with our elections that just don’t exist. Our elections are safe and secure, and election officials are working to keep them that way.”
Election experts also expressed concern that "under the guise of election integrity," the DOJ "could end up using their unique tools to introduce new vulnerabilities to the system.”
