Leubsdorf: Institutionalizing ‘big lie’

In addition, prospective administration officials have been questioned whether they believe Trump’s false characterization of the 2020 election and his defense of the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a failed effort to keep Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory.

Recently, one nomination was withdrawn upon disclosure that the prospective nominee — chosen to head the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management — had criticized the Jan. 6 demonstrators, many of whom Trump pardoned on his first day in office.

In a new low even for him, Trump directed his Justice Department to investigate possible treason charges against two former government officials whose primary offense seems to be having vouched for the honesty of the 2020 count.

An underlying irony is that the Trump administration is trying to infringe on the power of states to set election requirements at a time it is demolishing federal agencies like the Department of Education and the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the name of returning power to the states.

In his executive order, Trump declared, without evidence, that “the United States now fails to enforce basic and necessary election protections.” He said new steps are needed “to prohibit States from counting ballots received after Election Day or prohibit non-citizens from registering to vote.”

His order would require prospective voters to show a passport, driver’s license or other government-issued identification, something millions of younger and poorer Americans don’t have. Though noncitizens are already forbidden to vote, federal courts have blocked state efforts to add explicit citizenship requirements for voting.

Trump also called for increased cooperation between state and federal agencies to prosecute instances of election fraud, though past studies by Republican attorneys general in Texas and Kansas and in the U. S. Justice Department failed to show more than minimal examples of fraud.

He also would give Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” unprecedented access to voter files as part of the effort to eliminate alleged voter fraud.

At least four lawsuits have already been filed to challenge Trump’s executive order, including one by a coalition of voting groups and another by 19 Democratic state attorneys general that termed it “an unconstitutional attempt to seize control of elections” that could disenfranchise millions.

In separate orders, Trump called on the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to probe possible prosecution of Christopher Krebs, who was DHS’s top cybersecurity official during the 2020 election, and Miles Taylor, its former chief of staff and author of a 2018 article about resistance to Trump’s policies among government officials.

Meanwhile, Edward Martin, Trump’s choice as acting U.S. attorney in Washington, has been accused by critics of dismissing charges against a Jan. 6 defendant he represented as a lawyer and firing the prosecutors who brought many of the charges stemming from the Capitol insurrection.

Together, these steps constitute Trump’s institutionalization of the “big lie,” the false contention he really won the presidential election he lost. It seems a long way from those days after the 2020 election when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saw “no reason for alarm” when Trump delayed acknowledging his defeat — and most other top Republicans agreed.