Why is Trump sending federal officers to polling stations in November?

0:00You're the best field operative I've ever had. you were born for it in 81 the embassy went down we go 25 million in the wall where hotel tehran this is bad like run for the hills band do it now i don't have the money but i've got something more valuable you shall know the truth the truth they don't make it free the fix now playing in theaters This is a global production. Donald Trump will somehow, some way, try to interfere in these elections in November. Oh yeah, we're right to be worried. Is it normal to have armed federal officers at your polling stations? It is a federal crime in the United States.

0:52It is so dehumanising to have to go through that at the polling station. It's already created chaos. It's already created confusion. You don't need to have the barrel of a gun. You've just got those law enforcement officers there. And people think, oh, I'm not bothering. I'm not going to vote today. Do you pledge that you will not in any way interfere in the will of the American people when they go to the polls in November? I pledge unequivocally that I will not participate in your charade of lies. That was the director of the FBI, Kash Patel, unable to confirm that his government would not in any way interfere in the voting system when Americans go to the polls in November.

1:36It's a pretty simple question and the answer should be pretty simple too. Yeah, there is a possibility that federal agents will be deployed to polling stations. How can that possibly be part of a democratic process? Welcome to the News Agents USA. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. It's John. It's Maitlis. It's Miles. And this was quite a kind of hearing that took place with Kash Patel, who has had a chequered history, as I think it's fair to say, as director of the FBI. But he did seem to hold open the possibility that come November, come the midterm elections, in certain select polling districts, FBI agents will be deployed to check that the voting is going according, well, according to plan.

2:34And if according to plan, according to whose plan? Donald Trump's plan. and you just see the questions piling up in front of you. There has been a widespread anxiety that Donald Trump will somehow, some way, try to interfere in these elections in November so they're not as bad as people predict. And hearing Kash Patel makes you think, oh yeah, we're right to be worried. Shall we check in with Miles on that one? Miles, are we just getting our knickers in a twist? Is it normal to have armed federal officers or military personnel at your polling stations? Not only is it not normal, friends, I can tell you, you, in asking the question, are doing a favor to the United States Constitution and the law.

3:24Because with narrow exceptions, it is a federal crime in the United States to do exactly that, to send armed federal agents to the polls. I can cite you chapter and verse in the United States code. It's 18 U.S.C. section 592. This is a big one. It makes it. Well, you got to these days. You got to know the law in the United States because evidently the FBI director doesn't. This is a crime punishable by up to five years of prison in the United States to deploy federal troops or armed men to any location where voting is taking place unless and this is the crucial thing, unless such force is necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.

4:14That's the law. And that's why members of Congress have been grilling the Trump administration is to say you are going to comply with the law. Correct. You're not going to send armed agents to the polls. Correct. And whether it's FBI or the Department of Homeland Security, they have gotten very vague answers. I will tell you, though, the one place that they have gotten a straight answer is from the military. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his subordinates have said we do not intend to deploy troops to the polls. So it is clear that there is a bureaucracy within the executive branch that will not do the White House's bidding here.

4:52And it just so happens to be the one that isn't run by political appointees of the president. Let's just hear a bit more of that exchange with Kash Patel, because it's quite useful to hear it from, as it were, the horse's mouth. Last month, Congressman and Michigan gubernatorial candidate John James said to podcaster Benny Johnson, quote, I've already had a good conversation with my friend, Kash Patel, who has said already that the FBI will have a presence leading up to Election Day in Michigan in both West Michigan and Southeast Michigan. Is that true? We have an election crimes community coordinator in all 56 field offices, so you bet we're going to have them there and manning the post for election interference matters.

5:37Wait, I thought you weren't going to be sending people to the polls. When did you hear that? It's just another lie. When you answered Mr. Blumenthal. Nope. So you are sending, you are sending the polls. We have election crisis coordinators manned at all 56 field offices. All right. election integrity is of paramount importance. This FBI is not going to shy away from that effort. And if you want to continue lying about the men and women of the FBI so you can have your four-second campaign ad, go ahead. But the historic results, the 20 % reduction in murder rate, the 1 ,100 terrorist attacks stopped, the 11 ,000 children found, the 54 ,000 violent offenders are what this FBI is driving towards, the top 10 most captured, six of the most wanted fraudsters captured.

6:23You asked where we're spending our resources. We are spending the resources in delivering the most prolific reduction in crime in U.S. history. Wow, wow. He is not a happy bunny. No, but he does not resile from the idea that there are election integrity officers, crisis coordinators on standby. And in 2016, when there was clear attempts at election interference, Donald Trump said it was a hoax. In 2020, when it was a fair election, he said there was massive corruption on an epic scale. And it just seems that, you know, Trump has learned the lessons of 16 and 20 and 24. You pre-grieve your losses.

7:07Yeah. Right. You get ready to reject whatever you think is not going to work in your favour and call it illegitimate and unfair. And I think that has such a chill effect on a democracy. Leave aside whether there's, you know, to say that you have no confidence in electoral integrity makes people think, why am I going to bother to vote if the whole system is... Well, exactly. And that's exactly the whole point. How can we suppress and drive down turnout? We make people think it's all rigged, it's all unfair, it's all rotten and there's no point in taking part. And I just think it's really extraordinary that you've got the head of the FBI in that position just trying to score cheap partisan points at a Senate hearing.

7:55Well, one of the other things to note about the whole exchange is that Kash Patel, in the most Kash Patel fashion, effectively confirmed he's going to do this. And so within the last few hours here in the United States, the debate has shifted from whether the administration will have the gall to send federal agents to the polls to exactly how they're going to try to get around that statute that I cited earlier. Yesterday, I was sitting down with one of the organizations that has sued the Trump administration more than almost any other independent watchdog group in Washington. And the top lawyers there were going back and forth on speculating whether or not it was that Kash Patel would try to get around the statute by sending FBI agents simply without their sidearms, that they wouldn't be armed men at the polls.

8:44But you would see their FBI jackets, and that might intimidate voters or whether the president might go further and invoke the Insurrection Act because that would give him the ability to deploy these individuals and U.S. troops and get around that statute. Now, I think it was the consensus that Trump is probably not going to use the elections for the invocation of the Insurrection Act, but that there was a very good chance after Kash Patel's testimony that what they would try to do is flood the polls with the visual of FBI agents, whether or not they had a weapon on them. You've just made something really clear actually in my head, Miles, and I kept on failing to understand why all those around Trump would insist for years after it happened that the 2020 election was stolen.

9:33And I now understand it's because you are building on that, that if you are around Trump, it's not about 2020. It's about having that consistency of message so that you can carry on saying 2020 was stolen. You can carry on saying that the Georgia ballot was wrongly counted and it takes you into the next election, even if it's the midterms, to say there is total illegitimacy in the system. And to your point, of course, why would he be doing that? Because it is more likely at this point, according to the polls, that people who once voted for Trump might not be as kind of invigorated or energized to go out to the polls.

10:16So they will be the ones staying at home. And he wants the Democrats who are invigorated to think that, well, maybe there's no point. Maybe he's going to. I don't know. I mean, look, Emily, you were in Minneapolis at the beginning of the year, and I think the memory lives long in the mind of Americans of the sites of the ICE officers on the street, stopping people on suspicion of being brown or Latino. No. If you are in an area, a district which has got a high Latino population with a propensity to vote Democrat and you have got a whole bunch of FBI field officers, even if you have your passport, even if you have every means of identity.

10:57Do you want to go through the hassle, the pain of being stopped, ask questions about whether you're a right and proper person so that you can go and vote in an election? Or do you just think, oh, geez, honestly, this is so miserable. It is so degrading. It is so dehumanizing to have to go through that at the polling station. I'd rather stay away. And I think that that is the calculus of putting and deploying people with their big FBI jackets. It's intimidation. And you don't need to have the barrel of a gun. You've just got you could have those law enforcement officers there. And people think, oh, I'm not bothering.

11:33I'm not going to vote today. And this isn't conspiracy theory. This is something that groups tied to the president have tried to do in previous elections. Remember, in 2020 and 2024, there were cases of militia groups that supported Donald Trump in the United States who made plans to go to safety patrols in key voting locations that Democrats voted in in swing states. They showed up with Kevlar vests and rifles and walked around those polling locations and had to be told by federal judges that they needed to leave, that they could not be there. I mean, there was a clear sense then that voter suppression would work if you had guys with guns or guys that looked like federal agents near a polling place.

12:17Donald Trump and his team are very much aware of that. And that's something that, of course, is being considered with these wide deployments. Do they think they're going to stop fraud in the elections? They don't, because statistically, there's almost no fraud from non-citizen voters in elections. They know what they're doing, and apparently they're intending to do it in 56 field offices around the United States of America. And of course, this ties in to something else that happened, a major defeat for Trump at the beginning of the week. If you listened to our episode last week, you'll have heard us talking about the mail-in ballots and what Trump was trying to do.

12:52And on Monday, the Supreme Court essentially blocked Trump's administration from going forward with these new restrictions on mail ballots for the midterms, which would have seen the postal delivery service, in essence, trying to judge who was a fit and proper voter and who wasn't. It was an enormous pressure to put on a postal service whereby it had to do ID checks on people who were going to vote through whether they delivered the ballot or not. Now, the ruling has the whole thing has now been thrown out massively bad for Trump because he doesn't get to say, well, the law's on my side in this one.

13:28But essentially what this has done has already created chaos. It's already created confusion. And I think critically, people have already had to hand in huge long lists with voter registration on so that everybody knows and your data is out there already. And this is you have actually handed over this this voting data to federal government already to start deciding what it wants to do. Look, Donald Trump is absolutely seething about the Supreme Court judgment. And he put he posted this long screen on Truth Social and he goes, the court's inability and unwillingness to do the right thing for our country will go down in a very negative way in the annals of history.

14:15This Supreme Court is bullied and conjoled by the radical left into making decisions that have set America back at least 100 years. Hang on. Hang on a minute, Mr Trump. The three Supreme Court justices that you handpicked to be on the Supreme Court in your first term all voted against the measure that you wanted to ram through as unconstitutional. And it was Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas who really shouldn't be wearing the cap of a Supreme Court justice, but MAGA hats, given the way they have behaved and given some of the ethical questions, ethics questions that have been raised about their behaviour and their conduct and where they've taken money from.

15:01I mean, it was an absolute slam dunk of a defeat for Donald Trump in trying to interfere with the mail-in ballots. Yeah, it's about 30%, isn't it, Miles? 30 % of people choose mail-in balloting for their vote. Including Donald Trump. Including Donald Trump. But here's the thing that they know. They know that Democrats are statistically more likely to engage in mail-in voting. It's around 35, 37 percent of Democrats and around 24 percent of Republicans. And so that's enough of a statistical edge in the minds of the president and his lieutenants that if they put this order in place, it could depress the vote in such a way as to influence the outcome of the election.

15:47Now, as you've noted, the Supreme Court has blocked this in its entirety for this election. One of the things that analysts are alarmed by in the future is that at least three justices, the two dissenting justices and a concurring justice, Kavanaugh, left the door open that this might be lawful in the future. So make no mistake and mark my words here in twenty twenty eight, this will come roaring back and well before twenty twenty eight, because the administration will try to find justices that are willing to accept another version of it. But for now, this won't go into place this election cycle.

16:23However, what the Trump administration is likely to now do is a replication of what they did earlier this year in Georgia, where Donald Trump sent Kash Patel and his agents down to Georgia to seize physical ballots from the 2020 election, which Kash Patel noted they're still doing investigations into the 2020 election because Donald Trump wants to claim he won that year. I think the fear now is that the administration will say, well, we weren't able to screen the mail-in ballots for fraudulent voters, and we weren't able to get all the lists from all the states. So the only way we can make sure that there were not non-citizen voters in this election is to go get the ballots themselves.

17:09And that is what, especially in Democratic blue states, attorneys general, legal groups, citizens groups are preparing to happen in November. They are preparing for federal agents to try to come into their voting facilities to take their ballots in contested races. I will say, though, there is one bright point and full disclosure here. Me and my organization have helped foment this, a training program for local prosecutors around America to help those local prosecutors know the law and sue federal agents if they break the law and come in to illegally get ballots. This is something that major cities across the country from Dallas to Philadelphia, their local prosecutors are now trained to be able to undertake those arrests if federal agents break the law and illegally attempt to seize Americans ballots.

18:00I mean, we should say that this is all because Trump has created the chimera of the fraudulent voter. And the attorney general, Todd Blanche, was asked what evidence there was of ballot fraud in the mail-in vote. And this is quite an interesting exchange because he doesn't have anything to point to. Just have a listen. What evidence does the Department of Justice have that the new mail ballot rules, which are obviously in legal contention right now, prevent fraud? Well, there's a lot of evidence. By the way, it almost answers the question. By definition, if you're using mail-in voting, the potential for fraud is greater than in-person voting with ID.

18:45So there can be no dispute. What is the evidence for that? Well, it's common sense. I mean, first of all, there's documented proof of, in multiple places, red and blue states, of envelopes coming in that clearly were not from somebody who should be, who was authorized to use mail-in voting. Different states have different rules on when mail-in voting is allowed. So every state, every auditor in every single state has uncovered evidence of mail-in voting where there was potential fraud. What is the evidence? It's common sense. That is not an answer. If you were doing your science exam paper and you get what is the evidence for such and such?

19:25Well, it's just common sense. I'm going to suggest you're not going to get very high marks. We'll be back in just a moment with Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding, the Russian oligarch. And Miles has some breaking news for us.

19:45You're the best field operative I've ever had. you were born for it in 81 the embassy went down we put 25 million in the wall where? hotel Tehran this is bad like run for the hills do it now I don't have the money but I've got something more valuable you shall know the truth the truth don't make you free The Fix now playing in theaters

20:21The News Agents USA. You know what it's like when you're coming up to your big day, about to tie the knot and funds are tight. It's really hard. You probably can't afford the honeymoon that you wanted. You're trying to rent out the village hall. And then, you know, somebody, some lovely uncle, some lovely friend says, there you go, 200 quid, put it behind the bar. Yeah, except that's not quite what happened. with Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding, his latest wedding, I should probably add. Donald Trump Jr., as we have discussed previously on this podcast, is frigging loaded. And since his dad returned to the White House, has become even more loaded than before.

21:06He is awash with money. But for some bizarre reason, his wedding, which took place in an island, I think in the Bahamas. Two islands? Two islands. Why would you have one if you could have two, you silly? Was paid for by a Russian oligarch who is close to Vladimir Putin. I don't like to use expletives on this podcast, but what the actual fuck? And it seems that some Russian oligarch is paying for Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding, which, as you might imagine, is raising just the odd eyebrow. And Miles, I'm intrigued to hear what you've learned because it seems that the sound that we've most got from Washington the past week is crickets of, oh no, nothing to do with me.

21:58Well, actually, we heard from the bride who said, no, no, no, no, no. He didn't at all pay for the wedding. We were going to go to the island anyway and he just paid for the luxury accommodation for two nights after the wedding. It was just a lovely gift because the wedding was actually very private and very small. It was just family. But he paid for, I don't know what accommodation looks like. Is it an entire island? I think he rented the island. Okay. And the fireworks. Just two nights. Yeah, exactly. So she said, isn't it awful how people have come at us just for wanting to have a lovely day and what's so wrong with accepting a gracious bribe, I mean, gift from a friend of the family, I mean, Putin.

22:35Well, I'll tell you this. Republicans are having a hard time wiggling out of this one. And there was one person in particular I wanted to pin down on this yesterday in Washington, D.C. And I made my way to Capitol Hill around the time members of Congress were going to vote in hopes that I could intercept him. And this is a man named James Comer. He is the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. This is supposed to be the committee that is the anti-corruption committee in Congress. And to the frustration of Democrats, this committee has failed to look into most of the alleged instances of corruption in the Trump administration, from the billion-dollar ballroom to the expensive reflecting pool to the monument Donald Trump wants to build for himself next to the Lincoln Memorial.

23:24However, I pressed Chairman Comer on this question and I said, sir, aren't you concerned that an ally, a close ally of the Russian president, an enemy of the United States, is funding a wedding for one of the president's kids? And in a rare moment of honesty, the chairman said, yeah, I am actually very concerned about that. I'll tell you why this is noteworthy, because as of today, only congressional Democrats on that committee have said they are opening a probe into this issue. They sent a letter to the White House and said we are going to investigate these payments and whether they were intended to influence the Trump family or the Trump administration.

24:09Republicans notably did not sign on to that letter. But again, I'm hearing from the chairman of that committee that it is a worry that he has, too. So the question will be, why isn't his name also on that letter? What I love about this story is it kind of touches every single nerve. It's not just about grift. It's not just about corruption, but it's about what we also understand of the guy at the centre, the billionaire oligarch, Umar Kremlev, who was the one spending the money. Melania Trump, very interestingly, has distanced herself from him because it emerged, we understand, according to reports coming from her office, that he was allegedly involved in an organisation that oversaw the abduction of Ukrainian children.

24:58Melania doesn't seem to have many political bones in her body. She doesn't get involved in causes in a big way. But this one was something that she kind of took on board. And she did actually speak out about the abduction of Ukrainian children since the war with Russia, since the invasion, I should say, by Putin. She has been brokering deals with the Kremlin to try and bring Ukrainian children back to their parents. And it's quite interesting that she was the first one to say, I've nothing to do with the wedding. This is not me. I'm nowhere near it. She has she does not have she has never had a relationship with Mr.

25:35Kremliff, a spokesman has told The Times. Quite interesting that Melania didn't, nor did President Trump attend the wedding. Why not? The other thing I'd say, Emily, is that Melania Trump doesn't issue many statements. She chooses when she's going to kind of raise her head above the parapet very, very carefully. And the fact that she has chosen to make a statement on this, I think, shows much more. It shows her concern about what the actual fuck is going on and why is Don Jr. taking money from this Mr Kremlev guy who's been photographed with Putin. And he does look like someone you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alleyway on a dark night.

26:20I think that she's probably thinking this is her way of signaling her disapproval that money was spent. I mean, it is, you know, look, in the great scheme of things, it's one hundred and sixty thousand dollars, which to anyone is a huge amount of money. Don Jr. is nothing. Therefore, why are you bloody well taking it? You know, what's interesting about this, many things are interesting about this, but in the first Trump administration, we bent over backwards to keep the president and his team from ending up in a position where there were suspicious ties with the Russians. Donald Trump was under investigation while I was working for him by his own FBI into potential Russian interference in his circle.

27:04This was something that Donald Trump was, of course, very rattled by the Russia investigation. He still talks about to this day. We would tell the president not to take certain official actions because it could be perceived as meddling in that investigation. Now, fast forward a few years, this is the type of thing that would have felt like to investigators, if not a smoking gun, a very significant thing to investigate. And I want to emphasize that Umar is not just some casual acquaintance of Vladimir Putin. OK, this is a guy that this year was awarded Russia's order of friendship. Think of that as kind of like the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the highest orders Putin can bestow upon him.

27:45And again, if you might be thinking, well, that's a one off. No, these men are close. He even accompanied Vladimir Putin to China just days before Don Jr.'s wedding. OK, you think about the people who travel with a head of state when they go internationally to meet with foreign leaders. That's not just close friends. That's the type of people who have deep and enduring relations with a government. Umar is a significant figure in Putin's circle. This isn't just a one off. And this is the type of thing were the Russia investigation still open that FBI agents would already started to have poked around over.

28:21Yeah, I mean, Miles, you and I know how good Todd Blanche is at investigating people who need to be investigated. And once again, the question has come at the Attorney General about whether it was OK and appropriate for him to accept such a gift. And this is Todd Blanche's exchange. A gift from Russian oligarch when he decided not to go to Bahamas to his wedding. What was his reaction when he learned about it? and to you as a public official, was it appropriate for the son of the President of the United States to accept such a gift from a foreign businessman, from a friend of Putin? And are you going to investigate if everything was appropriately reported as a gift?