A senior Department of Homeland Security official is said to have privately briefed anti-voting attorney Cleta Mitchell’s group, Democracy Docket reported exclusively. Maricopa County’s newly elected Republican recorder is suing the GOP-controlled board of supervisors, claiming they’re trying to seize control of the county’s elections from him. Also in this week’s Eye On The Right: Jeffrey Clark, a key architect of the 2020 election subversion plot, addressed anti-voting activists from the White House complex.

As always, thanks for reading. 

— Matt Cohen, Senior Reporter

Democracy Docket Scoop: DHS Said to Brief Cleta Mitchell’s Group on Citizenship Checks for Voting

Last week, we reported exclusively that a senior official with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was said to brief the Election Integrity Network (EIN), a far-right anti-voting group, according to an email sent by the group. The virtual meeting was to discuss how a database run by the department can be used to verify the citizenship status of registered voters.

The email, sent Thursday to members of EIN — which was founded by the prominent anti-voting lawyer Cleta Mitchell — advertised David Jennings, DHS’s associate chief of U.S. citizenship and immigration services, as the special guest for a Zoom meeting later that morning.

“When Trump issued Executive Order 14248 earlier this year, he included much needed directives to the Department of Homeland Security to ensure (finally!) that state and local election officials have full and free access to the system used by DHS to verify citizenship status of individuals already on voter rolls,” the invite to EIN members read. “But what does that look like? How does it work in real time? And who has access?”

The email said that Jennings would review the abilities of DHS’ Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program — a federal database to help state and local governments confirm the citizenship status of individuals — to “aid in assuring that noncitizens are removed from our voter rolls.”

A spokesperson for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency within DHS where Jennings works, did not respond to my request for comment.

It’s an alarming development for several reasons: The fact that a senior government official was being advertised as a guest on a Zoom meeting for a private group to discuss federal policy; that the meeting was closed to the press (“All EIN calls are off the record. No members of the media are allowed on EIN calls, and no attendee shall transfer call information to the media,” the email I obtained read); and that EIN is a group founded by Mitchell.

Mitchell played a pivotal role in President Donald Trump’s thwarted efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election. Since then, Mitchell and EIN have been one of the leading groups in the anti-voting movement, working behind the scenes to push voter suppression laws in states across the country and to mobilize conservative activists to monitor voting and guard the polls.

Among the numerous provisions outlined in Trump’s sweeping anti-voting order is a charge for DHS and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to use federal databases to review state voter registration lists. 

For years, USCIS has maintained the SAVE database for states to use to check citizenship for voting verification purposes. But GOP state lawmakers complained it was too hard for them to access sensitive citizenship information. 

DHS updated its SAVE program last month to make it easier for states to access citizenship data. And the U.S. Department of Justice recently confirmed to me that it’s working with both DOGE and DHS to investigate state voter rolls to hunt for noncitizen voter fraud.

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Republican Election Officials Are Beefing In Arizona’s Maricopa County

Call it the Alien vs. Predator of Arizona election official feuds: There’s a contentious legal fight brewing in Arizona’s Maricopa County, between the county’s newly minted far-right recorder, Justin Heap, and the Republican-controlled board of supervisors over election administration. (In Arizona, a county’s chief election official is known as a recorder).

In a lawsuit filed last week, Heap accused the board of supervisors of trying to seize control of Maricopa County’s elections. The lawsuit stems from months of dispute between Heap, who was elected to the position in November, and the board, over the delegation of election management responsibilities between their two offices. 

In a press release, Heap said the lawsuit “seeks simply to reclaim the legal authority afforded to the County Recorder under Arizona law and ensure that my office is not further deprived of the resources necessary to perform those duties to the fullest extent possible.”

As Votebeat notes, in Arizona recorders usually run voter registration and early voting, while the board of supervisors are in charge of Election Day voting. But Arizona law allows for counties to divide up these duties between the two offices as they see fit. And that’s where the breakdown happened that led to this situation. 

Heap’s predecessor as recorder, Stephen Richer, ceded to the board certain election management responsibilities and funding in an agreement before leaving office. Heap’s lawsuit claims that the board of supervisors is usurping his statutory authority in violation of Arizona law and is trying to unlawfully seize “near-total control” over the administration of elections by refusing to provide the recorder’s office with necessary funding. 

But the feud escalated late Friday, when Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell sent a cease and desist letter to Heap’s attorneys at the far-right America First Legal (AFL), which was founded by White House adviser Stephen Miller. Mitchell claimed Heap didn’t have the authority to hire outside representation, and threatened to file a complaint against AFL lawyer James Rogers if he doesn’t drop Heap as a client. On Tuesday, the Maricopa supervisors voted to countersue Heap, in order to get clarity on the division of election duties.

The entire ordeal has since devolved into a volley of passive-aggressive press releases. 

“This absurd lawsuit is another example of the Recorder’s irresponsible and juvenile ready-fire-aim approach to governance,” Maricopa Board of Supervisors Vice Chair Kate Brophy McGee said in one release.

“Despite their repeated misinformation and gaslighting of the public on these issues, defending the civil right to free, fair, and honest elections for every Maricopa County voter isn’t simply my job as County Recorder, it’s the right thing to do and a mission I’m fully committed to achieving,” Heap said in his own release.

“Recorder Heap was elected on a campaign platform of restoring transparency and lawfulness to elections because voter confidence in elections in Maricopa County was at an all-time low because of the chaos in election administration experienced by voters for nearly a decade,” Rogers said in another release. “Shockingly, it appears that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors does not agree with those goals.”

I don’t know who will win, but if this feud leads to uncertainty or disruption in the voting process, voters are the ones who will lose. 

Jeffrey Clark, Key Architect of 2020 Election Subversion Plot, Addresses Anti-Voting Activists from White House Complex

Among the many people indicted in the prosecution tied to efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia is Jeffrey Clark, a lawyer who served in the DOJ during Trump’s first term. Trump briefly made Clark acting attorney general after Clark made clear he was willing to do pretty much whatever Trump wanted to further his scheme to steal the contest. 

Clark’s house was raided by agents in June 2022, as part of a federal investigation. And a congressional probe into the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol identified him as one of the central figures in the plot to obstruct certification of the 2020 election. 

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Of course, none of this deterred Trump from finding Clark a new role in his second administration; he’s currently serving as acting Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which is part of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

While at work this week, Clark took time to deliver a Flag Day message for followers of MAGA podcaster and self-proclaimed “election integrity” advocate Steve Stern. 

“I’m coming to you from the White House complex - I’m in the historic Secretary of War suite” — part of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building — Clark told viewers.

The five-minute video is mostly unremarkable — Clark talks about what Flag Day means to him — though near the end he attacks “the globalist forces and the forces of internationalism and of the United Nations, which continues to, I think, bedevil and burden the United States, which President Trump has been pushing back on.” 

Still, there are few starker reminders of the way that the MAGA right has managed to memory-hole — or in some cases outright subvert — recent history than the sight of a crucial architect of Trump’s plot to steal an election confidently addressing the still-strong anti-voting movement, from the heart of the federal government’s executive branch.