Heather Honey’s statements follow president’s aggressive effort to radically reshape elections before 2026
Trump says FBI and Tulsi Gabbard ‘working on’ elections plan as he repeats bogus claims
It was clear from the outset that Donald Trump’s administration would include high-ranking government officials who either endorsed his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, or refused to publicly admit he lost.
The president continues to hammer a baseless narrative that the election was rigged against him, vowing publicly that it must never “happen again” as he deploys officials to prepare for midterm elections with the balance of power in Congress — and his agenda — at stake.
Before she was tapped as Trump’s “election integrity” official at the Department of Homeland Security, Heather Honey reportedly told a group of right-wing activists in March that the president could declare a “national emergency” to effectively take control of local election administration.
She said the move would follow an “actual investigation” of the 2020 election, if it revealed “manipulation” of the results, according to The New York Times, which had a recording of the call.
“We have some additional powers that don’t exist right now,” she said. “[W]e can take these other steps without Congress and we can mandate that states do things and so on.”
