Congressman pinpoints alarming election comment Trump made 'out loud': 'Becomes a crime'

Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) warned this week that President Donald Trump has openly acknowledged directing federal prosecutors to investigate elections whose results he dislikes — a statement the congressman argued the president made plainly and even boasted about.

"Trump just told the country, out loud, that he picks up the phone and orders federal prosecutors to investigate elections when he does not like how the vote is going," Levin wrote, adding that the president "bragged about it twice this week."

According to Levin, Trump described calling a U.S. attorney in California, telling the prosecutor to "do me a favor" and look into a race his preferred candidate was at risk of losing.

The congressman then laid out why he sees the claim as baseless. There is no evidence of fraud in California's primary, Levin wrote, noting that even Steve Hilton — the Republican candidate Trump claims to have rescued — said he never heard about any such call. Levin added that Los Angeles County's top elections official stated that no one at the Justice Department had touched their process.

Levin attributed the slow count not to fraud but to the thoroughness of California's system, where every registered voter is mailed a ballot, every returned ballot has its signature checked against the voter's file, and late-arriving mail ballots remain valid if postmarked by Election Day.

"Slow is not fraud," he wrote.

Levin said he would support responsible, legal efforts to speed up vote counting through better funding and modernized ballot processing. What he would not accept, he argued, is a president investigating his way to a preferred outcome.

The congressman tied the behavior back to 2020, writing that because Trump still can't admit he lost that year, "every election he dislikes becomes a crime in his mind." The post was amplified by political scientist Norman Ornstein.