Donald Trump is amplifying fraud and cheating claims as voting is about to begin

As the election quickly approaches, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s rhetoric has grown more ominous, promising to prosecute anyone who “cheats” in the election the same way he believes they did in 2020, when he wrongly claimed he won and attacked those who stayed true to their accurate voting numbers.

He also told a gathering of police officers last Friday to “be on the lookout for voter fraud,” an apparent attempt to implicate law enforcement that would be legally questionable.

Trump has claimed, without providing evidence, that he lost the 2020 election only because of cheating by Democrats, election officials and other unspecified forces. On Saturday, Trump promised it that this year those who cheat “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” if he wins in November. He said he was referring to everyone from election officials to lawyers, political staffers and donors.

“Those engaged in unconscionable conduct will be identified, apprehended and prosecuted at a level unfortunately never seen before in our country,” Trump wrote in the post on his social media network Truth Social that he later also posted on the site . once known as Twitter.

The former president’s warning — he prefaced it with the words “CEASE & DESIST” — is the latest increase in rhetoric that mimics that of authoritarian leaders.

Election experts and several state and local election officials were quick to condemn the former president’s comment, which they saw in part as an attempt at intimidation as offices prepare for the start of the election.

Barb Byrum, clerk of Ingham County, Michigan, said she thinks Trump’s post is an attack on democracy designed to drive election officials from the profession.

“But I know we won’t be bullied,” said Byrum, a Democrat. “We are public servants who have signed on to ensure that every qualified registered voter has the opportunity to exercise their right to vote, and we will do so.”

To be clear: Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden in both the Electoral College and in the popular vote, where Biden received another 7 million votes. Trump’s attorney general said there was no evidence of widespread fraud, Trump lost dozens lawsuits challenging the results and a Associated Press investigation showed that there was no fraud that could have tipped the election. Moreover, several reviews, tells And audits in the states on the battlefield where Trump contested his loss all confirmed Biden’s victory.

Trump, who did that spoke warmly about authoritarians and recently mused that “sometimes you need a strong man,” having already committed to prosecute his political opponents when he returns to power. His allies have plans to make federal prosecutors are better able to target the president’s opponents.

In a possible conservative outline for a new Trump administration known as Project 2025a former Trump Justice Department official writes that Pennsylvania’s top elections official should have been prosecuted over a policy dispute — ruling that voters there have a chance to fix signature errors on their ballots.

Trump has disavowed Project 2025, but his rhetoric is consistent with that example, said Justin Levitt, a former Justice Department official and Biden White House aide who now teaches law at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles.

“He is increasingly showing us the kind of president he hopes to be, and that includes using the Justice Department to punish people he disagrees with — whether they have committed crimes or not,” he said. Levitt.

Levitt said he was skeptical that Trump’s Justice Department could simply bring charges against people who contradicted his election lies, but he and others said the suggestion was dangerous nonetheless.

“Threatening people with punishment for cheating is deeply troubling when ‘cheating’ simply means you don’t like the outcome of the election,” Steve Simon, a Democrat who is Minnesota secretary of state and president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, said in a message on X.

Trump’s campaign said the former president was simply talking about the importance of clean elections.

“President Trump believes that anyone who breaks the law should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, including criminals engaged in election fraud. Without free and fair elections you cannot have a country,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

Trump has already made threats against people who did not engage in apparently illegal activities during the 2020 election. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan Zuckerberg donated more than $400 million to local election offices in 2020 to help them cope with the pandemic. In a book released earlier this month, Trump threatened that Zuckerberg “ spend the rest of his life in prison ‘If he makes even more contributions.

Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state, said in an interview Monday that Trump’s comments prompted election officials, who are already reeling from years of threats resulting from Trump’s false claims of corruption in 2020, to reduce their level of vigilance and safety planning.

“That is a level of vitriol and threats that we have not seen before, and it is very alarming and concerning,” Benson said. “We fear that individuals will read that rhetoric and exact the revenge prior to the election – or immediately afterwards, if their candidate does not win – that their candidate has called for.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that Trump’s rhetoric was dangerous: “This is not who we are as a country. This is a democracy.”

Stephen Richer, the Republican Recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has been repeatedly attacked by Trump and his supporters for insisting on the accuracy of that county’s 2020 vote count, pointed to X and pointed to an election official who has been indicted for her actions year – Tine Peters. The former clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, was convicted in August of helping activists access her county’s voting machines to try to prove Trump’s lies.

“She was on your side on this,” Richer wrote in his post to Trump. Earlier this summer, Richer was defeated in his bid for re-election during the Republican primaries.

Trump’s call for police officers to monitor polling places in case of fraud in November came Friday as he addressed a gathering of poll workers Fraternal Order of Policean organization that has supported him.

“I hope you can look and you’re everywhere. Watch out for voter fraud. Because we win. Without voter fraud, we will win so easily,” he told the officers. “You can keep it in just by looking. Because believe it or not, they are afraid of that badge. They’re afraid of you.’

What he suggests may contradict several federal And stands voter intimidation laws – some of which specifically ban uniformed officers According to Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships at the Campaign Legal Center, they should not go to the polls unless they are responding to an emergency or casting a ballot themselves.

Diaz said these laws stemmed from the country’s fraught history of law enforcement abusing their power to keep Black people from voting.

“We need to keep that history in mind when we think about the presence of law enforcement at the ballot box,” he said. “Even the best-intentioned officers who are really just there to protect people without ill will can have their presence perceived by voters in a different way than they intended.”

Riccardi reported from Denver. Associated Press writers Christina A. Cassidy in Detroit and Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.