On Monday afternoon, an “election integrity” call organized by conservative podcaster Steve Stern featured a who’s who of election deniers rehashing years-old conspiracy theories about rigged elections and hijacked voting machines.
These kinds of calls have happened for years. But unlike similar calls I listened to in 2021 and 2022, which were filled with then-unknown activists mostly shouting into the void, this call was stacked with people who are alleged to have been part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. They claim to still have the ear of the president when it comes to trying to undermine democratic elections in the US.
And as Trump prepares to pick his next attorney general following his decision last week to fire Pam Bondi, some of these figures claim to have already weighed in.
A number of the speakers complained that for all the benefit of having Trump in office, the Department of Justice was dropping the ball when it comes to making real changes as to how elections are run in the country—a matter reserved, under the Constitution, for the states and Congress.
“The fact that this stuff isn’t being investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent possible”—the “stuff” he was referencing were claims that voting machines were used to rig elections—“is deeply troubling to me, because it means that some folks on our side or purportedly on our side, are literally doing drop, block and tackle,” said John Eastman, the architect of the effort to overturn the 2020 election, who is now a senior fellow at the influential far-right Claremont Institute think tank, announced on Monday’s call.
Disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn agreed, adding, “We just wasted a year of not getting to what the Department of Justice should have been getting to,” before going on to refer to people in the agency as “Deep State goop.”
The DOJ has, in fact, been working hard to undermine trust in elections, filing dozens of lawsuits against states demanding they share unredacted voter rolls. It has also dismantled the hugely respected voting section within the Civil Rights Division, replacing experienced lawyers with Trump loyalists who have spread election conspiracies. Flynn was not alone in being unimpressed, though.
“Pam Bondi was terrible, no arrests of terrible Deep State and Democrat thieves, and frauds and traitors, no arrests of any kind,” said Wayne Root, a right-wing radio host who previously promoted the false conspiracy about former president Barack Obama’s birth certificate. “We’ve got to change that. I hope he comes up with the right attorney general. I’ve given him some good suggestions.” Root claimed he had urged the president to fire Bondi shortly before she was removed from office.
He also claimed during the call that he sent a text message to Trump last month urging him to sign an executive order on mail-in voting. A few days later, Root says, Trump signed the order. (Root would not tell WIRED if the president responded. “The President is the only one who decides if and when to sign an Executive Order,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson told WIRED.)
Root’s short list includes many of the favorites for the attorney general role, but all of those tipped to replace Bondi on a permanent basis have significant bona fides when it comes to promoting election denial conspiracy theories.
Todd Blanche, the current acting attorney general, is well versed in Trump’s claims about the rigged elections. Blanche, who served as Bondi’s deputy attorney general, was previously Trump’s personal lawyer and worked on teams defending the president from charges related to Stormy Daniels, the retention of classified documents, and federal election obstruction.
