U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin attends U.S. President Donald Trump's address to the nation about election security, at the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 16, 2026. SAUL LOEB/Pool via REUTERS
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened during a Friday press conference to jail state election officials who refuse to cooperate with the Trump administration's midterm election security "program."
“If the states that choose not to participate with the program and they choose not to participate in securing the elections, we will make sure that we make those states a priority to look at who voted in their states and hold them, the election officials, accountable,” Mullin explained to a reporter from the Daily Caller.
The threat came one day after President Donald Trump's national address on election security and amid administration efforts to seize state voter registration data by threatening to withhold federal disaster preparedness funds.
“If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections and they chose not to, then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even, depending on how far it goes, prison time,” Mullin said.
Tommy Christopher, a liberal journalist who writes for The Jim Acosta Show, called Mullin's remarks "naked intimidation" and questioned who decides which officials to penalize and what constitutes actionable fraud.
Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan reacted on X, "Fascistic."
NYU law professor Michael Kasdan said, "That's not the way elections work."
Political scientist John O'Brennan suggested on social media, “They are deadly serious about stealing the November elections.”
“Last night was about further weakening the trust of Americans in their electoral system. But they have many other cards to play as they seek to turn the US into a dictatorship.”
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