WATCH: PA State Rep. Venkat, VA State Del. McPike Expose How Trump’s DHS is Fabricating “Noncitizen Voter” Crisis

WASHINGTON, DC — Today, Try And Stop Us convened a press call with with Pennsylvania State Representative Arvind Venkat, MD, Virginia State Delegate R. Kirk McPike, former U.S. Election Assistance Commission Chairman Ben Hovland, and independent journalist Natalie Bencivenga to break down Trump’s fabricated “noncitizen voter” crises across the country.

“This is about President Trump spouting the big lie: the idea that he lost the 2020 election through fraud, despite massive amounts of scrutiny of that election. We’re left being held hostage to this lie because it very much looks like President Trump and his party are going to lose this midterm election, and that’s appropriate because his policies have been disastrous,” said Pennsylvania State Representative Arvind Venkat, MD. “My message to the press and to my community and all Americans is that your vote is safe, it’s secure, it’s accurately counted.”

“Here in Virginia, our Attorney General has raised the alarm that DHS employees are illegally accessing voter records that are only supposed to be accessed by the people they belong to, in order to conduct this sham of an investigation,” said Virginia State Delegate R. Kirk McPike. “The administration is misdirecting resources, endangering our safety, and undermining our democracy, all in an attempt to soothe the president’s ego and give him a justification for claiming he didn’t lose an election that he and his party are about to lose.”

“What we’re seeing here is essentially a new federal twist on an old playbook that we’ve seen in various states for years, where you have bad list matching that results in inflated numbers that are then sensationalized to intimidate voters, to scare voters, sometimes to push voter suppression legislation,” said Center for American Progress Action Fund Senior Fellow Ben Hovland. “Every local election official that I’ve seen who’s looked into these lists, when they’ve gotten them, find huge numbers of false positives, and that’s because doing this right is hard. But DHS is not trying to do it right.”

“As a journalist, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the intersection of immigration, government power, and election administration,” said independent journalist Natalie Bencivenga. “What’s concerning to me about everything that we’re seeing here in Pennsylvania and around the country is this questionable data becoming the basis for government action before that data has been independently verified. These questions aren’t just coming from Democrats. Al Schmidt, a Republican and Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth, is also raising major concerns about the reliability of this information that DHS is presenting.”

A recording of the press call is available here.

Background

• In Pennsylvania, Trump’s DHS was caught lying about noncitizen voter figures. According to Votebeat and Spotlight PA, DHS sent a letter to Pennsylvania earlier this month admitting its alleged 14,576 noncitizen voters figure came out of matching simple identifiers like names and phone numbers against immigration files — blowing up the administration’s prior claim that it used Social Security numbers in some matches to determine the totals.
• In Virginia, Trump’s DHS likely broke state election law by posing as voters to obtain records. Virginia’s Attorney General has pressed Trump’s DHS Secretary on agents pulling voter records through the state’s public portal who may have violated three Virginia criminal statutes. Every search requires the user to certify that the registration belongs to them or that the voter authorized the search, and the portal warns that “it is unlawful to access the record of any other voter.” Agents used birth dates and partial Social Security numbers compiled by DHS to clear those checks, and the agenda even assured officers would not be “personally liable for conducting these searches,” suggesting DHS leadership knew the searches broke state law. He demanded that the hunt stop immediately, and told DHS to hand over every Virginia record because state law protects voter registration and voting history from disclosure without a court order (which federal agents did not obtain).
• DHS whistleblower: federal agents were told to misrepresent themselves on state voter websites to access voter records. According to a DHS whistleblower, federal agents were directed to attest falsely on state voter websites that they were the voter or had the voter’s permission, and that when they questioned the legality of it, leadership told them to proceed and assured them they would not be “personally liable.” Officers were also told to create federal law enforcement records against people tagged as unlawful voters even when they believed the data was wrong.