Democrats have reacted angrily to reports that a group of MAGA activists has been circulating a 17-page draft executive order laying out accusations that China interfered in the 2020 election as grounds for President Donald Trump to seize control of this year’s midterms.
If Trump were to sign an order declaring such an emergency, he would be empowered to ban mail-in ballots and the use of voting machines as unsafe, effectively bypassing Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, which assigns all authority over elections to state legislatures and Congress.
After The Washington Post reported the existence of the draft, Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, denied that any national emergency involving China existed.
“We’ve been raising the alarm for weeks about President Trump’s attacks on our elections and now we’re seeing reports that outline how they may be planning to do it,” Warner said.
“This is a plot to interfere with the will of voters and undermine both the rule of law and public confidence in our elections.”
The lawyers involved in the draft say they have worked in coordination with the White House.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and New York Rep. Joe Morelle, the ranking Democratic on the House Administration Committee, said in a statement of their own: “Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to nationalize our elections, because he intends to steal them.
“We reject the legality of any executive order based on debunked claims of Chinese interference in the 2020 election. Democrats will not allow Donald Trump to take over this election and neither will the American people.”
California Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu said on X: “There’s no national emergency exception to Art 1, Sec 4 of the Constitution. States regulate elections unless Congress passes law. That’s why trump [sic] desperately wants to pass the save act to suppress voting. Courts will slap trump [sic] down just like they did with his illegal tariffs.”
A White House official told The Independent that Trump’s staff is regularly in communication with “a variety of outside advocates who want to share their policy ideas with the president.
“Any speculation about policies the President may or may not announce is just that – speculation.”
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson added, “President Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered non-citizen voters.
“The president has urged Congress to pass the SAVE Act and other legislative proposals that would establish a uniform standard of photo ID for voting, prohibit no-excuse mail-in voting, and end the practice of ballot harvesting.”
Speaking to the Post about the draft, conservative lawyer Peter Ticktin, who represents the jailed former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters, acknowledged that the Constitution finds no role for the president in administering elections, for the good reason that he has a vested interest in their outcome.
“But here we have a situation where the president is aware that there are foreign interests that are interfering in our election processes,” Ticktin continued. “That causes a national emergency where the president has to be able to deal with it.”
Also speaking to ABC News, Ticktin insisted “we really do have an election emergency right now” and urged Trump to act decisively.
“At this point, it’s got to be ASAP, because we got primaries… The most important provision, if you ask me, is the hand counting. Get rid of the machines. That’s what we need to do right away.”
While Trump still refuses to accept his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, mentioning it again in his State of the Union address Tuesday, a U.S. intelligence community assessment found no evidence that any foreign actor meddled in the vote.
The 2021 review concluded that China considered attempting to influence the election but ultimately decided against proceeding.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley also moved last June to release FBI records concerning a tip-off about alleged Chinese efforts to produce fraudulent driver’s licenses for use with mail ballots, but the evidence of a pending threat is otherwise scant.
That has not deterred the likes of Steve Bannon from declaring confidently on his War Room podcast last week: “There is no doubt the [Chinese Communist Party] took an active role in removing President Trump from office.”
The president himself hinted at a forthcoming executive order in a Truth Social post on February 13, in which he expressed frustration over the aforementioned SAVE Act, which has passed the House of Representatives but faces obstacles in the Senate.
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