Former GOP strategist Amanda Carpenter argued in a Bulwark guest column that President Donald Trump is laying the groundwork to dispute a midterm loss, using pre-dawn voter-fraud arrests and eleventh-hour lawsuits.
Carpenter, who now writes for Protect Democracy, began with a Monday raid in Commerce, California. Before sunrise, armed agents surrounded the home of Omar Muñoz, 72, a lawful permanent resident from Belize, and marched him outside in his pajamas as a government film crew and invited press recorded it.
Muñoz, who is accused of illegally registering and voting, denies the allegations. His daughter said, “They’re trying to instill fear in society.”
It's part of a larger plot of voter intimidation, Carpenter argued — but there's even more to it than that.
Only 28 green card holders were charged in the California operation, out of 23 million registered voters. Carpenter said the administration’s claim shrank from 190,000 supposed illegal voters in July to a 20,000-name list and then those 28 cases. She noted a similar Nevada claim of nearly 16,000 noncitizen voters disappeared under scrutiny, and that the Justice Department has charged just 156 people with voting offenses this term.
Carpenter said the administration's suits may be “zombie lawsuits”: weak pre-election suits left pending so they can be revived after Election Day to contest results, as happened in North Carolina’s 2024 Supreme Court race. She added that the administration waited until ballots were mailed and disregarded the National Voter Registration Act’s 90-day quiet period.
“Voters still control our elections — not armed agents pounding on doors,” she concluded.