The Justice Department official leading Trump’s push for states’ voter rolls couldn’t rule out a challenge to midterm results on Sunday’s “60 Minutes,” two weeks before Election Day.
“Well, I don’t know what is going to happen, but I can tell you that absent some shocking contingency that is unexpected, there should be no interruption in the usual course of counting and certifying the results in the states,” Harmeet Dhillon told correspondent Lesley Stahl.
Dhillon also said there was “no plan” to send ICE agents to polling places. According to a CBS transcript, she dismissed the idea that President Donald Trump might contest the midterms as " paranoia."
The segment opened in Fulton County, Georgia, where FBI agents seized 2020 election records from a warehouse near Atlanta in January. Commissioner Dana Barrett, a Democrat, said agents were already inside when she arrived.
“They had vests. They had guns. They had all of the equipment on their belts as if they were raiding a drug house,” Barrett said.
Agents spent the day boxing up records and filling more than 600 boxes. The boxes were loaded onto trucks after nightfall, once Tulsi Gabbard, then the director of national intelligence, had arrived. Barrett said the county still doesn’t know where the ballots went. An internal FBI email obtained by “60 Minutes” shows the bureau shifted 260 analysts onto the Georgia case three months ago, but the outlet noted the effort hasn’t produced anything yet. A separate review of ballots and voting machines that Gabbard coordinated appears to have fizzled since she left, a congressional official told Foreign Policy.
Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican, refused DOJ demands for voter data she said included Social Security numbers, full birth dates and driver’s license numbers. The department sued her and later informed her in writing that she was under investigation.
Henderson said her office found just 52 questionable registrations out of more than 2 million voters. She called the prospect of prison “silly.” When Stahl asked if she was sure, Henderson answered, “Well.”
The broadcast aired six days after Oliver Darcy’s Status newsletter reported that Stahl had privately raised the idea of leaving the show after clashing with CBS News chief Bari Weiss over a report on Israeli settler violence in the West Bank. One source told Status that Weiss became “very, very hands-on.” CBS has dismissed the account as “ludicrous.” The episode carrying the settler segment drew the lowest ratings of the season so far, according to Nielsen data.