{"id":4616,"date":"2026-08-12T10:39:33","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T10:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=4616"},"modified":"2026-08-12T10:39:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T10:39:33","slug":"trumps-scheme-to-steal-the-midterms-will-lose-in-court-thats-by-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=4616","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s scheme to steal the midterms will lose in court. That\u2019s ‘by design’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Faced with the prospect of a major midterm defeat, President Donald Trump is \u201claying the groundwork to seize ballots\u201d and contest the outcomes of elections across the country. This is according to Miles Taylor<\/u> \u2014 deputy chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security during Trump\u2019s first term \u2014 who on Tuesday detailed \u201chow Trump might try to send the FBI to seize ballots & steal the midterms,\u201d and warned that while the scheme will \u201clikely lose in court, losing is actually part of the plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Former prosecutor tears into Trump over his \u2018worst appointment\u2019 yet<\/a><\/p>\n

As Taylor explains, \u201cEarlier this year, the president\u2019s agents did an obvious dry run for how to steal future elections. On January 28, the FBI raided the election hub in one of the most contested 2020 battlegrounds \u2014 Fulton County, Georgia, where Trump was previously indicted for pressuring officials to \u2018find 11,780 votes\u2019 that didn\u2019t exist. The president himself said the raid would help him find out who \u2018really won\u2019 the 2020 election, despite the fact that those ballots had been counted three times, each time confirming that Trump lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what should worry states this time around, warns Taylor, is that the plan worked. \u201cAfter Trump\u2019s DOJ sued Fulton County for its 2020 records and failed, it decided just to go seize them. The FBI quietly went to a magistrate judge earlier this year and sought a warrant to raid the county\u2019s election offices. Their filing rested largely on fraud claims debunked years ago and identified no concrete evidence of a crime. But the judge signed it anyway. Then FBI agents barged in and carted off 656 boxes, including the county\u2019s only copy of its 2020 ballots. And Georgia wasn\u2019t a one-off: the administration has gone after 2020 ballots in Arizona\u2019s biggest battleground county, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration, says Taylor, is preparing to do it again. He notes that over the course of his second term, Trump has demanded that states hand over voter lists supposedly to search for registered noncitizens. \u201cBut the databases are notoriously faulty,\u201d Taylor warns, \u201cand there is limited oversight over who might get purged, raising fears that legitimate U.S. citizens in key battlegrounds would be dropped from the voter rolls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more The myth of Trump\u2019s \u2018Teflon Don\u2019 is crumbling around him<\/a><\/p>\n

While several red states have complied, 30 states and D.C. refused and were sued by the administration. So far Trump has lost every case, but Taylor asserts that the intention was never to win. \u201cThey\u2019re creating a pretext,\u201d he writes. \u201cIn my opinion, the Trump administration is preparing the rationale for its future warrant affidavits to go seize ballots in these \u2018non-compliant\u2019 states. This will be their logic: We asked X state to let us verify its rolls to weed out fraud; it refused; the courts blocked us; therefore, no one can say whether noncitizens decided this election. So to investigate any fraud claims, we need to go get the ballots themselves<\/em><\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe result would be chaos-by-design,\u201d warns Taylor. \u201cPicture FBI agents carting boxes out of election offices in two or three states with razor-thin margins, races that decide control of the House and Senate. While the ballots sit in federal custody, certification of a victor will be difficult if not impossible. In the meantime, voters will rightfully fret that Trump\u2019s agents are meddling with the results. MAGA candidates on the losing end will refuse to concede, citing the \u2018ongoing investigations.\u2019 And the White House will make sure the fog stays thick enough to hand GOP leaders in Congress a pretext to delay seating new members, which will be the final step in preventing a peaceful transfer of power if Democrats win either chamber.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the matter will end up in court, once Trump has the ballots, retrieving them could take months of litigation, and \u201cwith the ballots in the custody of the feds, they\u2019ll have the upper hand to claim possible \u2018fraud\u2019 because they\u2019ll control the evidence,\u201d says Taylor. \u201cIn the end, Trump\u2019s team doesn\u2019t care about losing in court. All they care about is fighting the battle in the court of public opinion for two months \u2014 between the election on November 3, 2026, and January 3, 2027, when the next Congress is supposed to be seated. That\u2019s long enough to diminish confidence in the results and to create enough justification for Speaker Mike Johnson to secure support from his caucus not to hand over power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more New twist emerges in Trump\u2019s \u2018Jazz Jam\u2019 fiasco<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Faced with the prospect of a major midterm defeat, President Donald Trump is \u201claying the groundwork to seize ballots\u201d and contest the outcomes of elections across the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump\u2019s scheme to steal the midterms will lose in court. 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