I’ve got some information you won’t find anywhere else today a DOJ lawyer fresh out of law school who is fighting for Trump on election interference efforts. Also, many signs are pointing to ballot seizures and arrests of election officials as a major part of the Trump administration’s game plan to interfere in the November elections, which I also reported today at Zeteo. More on that below. Finally, we’re fighting states to release information about their contact with the Justice Department and Homeland Security regarding Trump’s election interference. We’ll have to pay for those records, so I’m asking for your help to cover the costs. Get a 40 percent discount on Doom subscriptions — $3.60 a month — or drop a few dollars in our Coffee Fund to help out. Now, on to the news… -jg
It is becoming increasingly clear that Donald Trump and his underlings at the departments of Justice and Homeland Security plan to seize ballots in November.
Both the DOJ and DHS are spending an inordinate amount of time and resources to hunt down an insignificant number of noncitizens who have voted in recent elections. Finding these cases won’t fix the problem of the extremely rare occurrences of noncitizen voting, but removing suspected noncitizen voters from voter rolls could alleviate the issue, as conservative groups have argued for years.
But states are prohibited from federal law from removing the many thousands of people who the Trump administration says are improperly registered to vote, or who have allegedly voted illegally. That’s because, since early August, we’ve been in what’s known as the 90-day “quiet period” of the National Voter Registration Act. The law prohibits states from removing voters — even those who are ineligible — from voter rolls within 90 days of an election.
So, if states can’t legally remove these voters, why is the Trump administration pursuing these cases so aggressively, while also threatening to arrest election officials if any noncitizens are found on voter rolls? Because the Justice Department is likely planning to use claims of noncitizens on voter rolls as probable cause in affidavits asking judges for search warrants to seize ballots.
The Democratic National Committee has filed a lawsuit to try to get to the bottom of the Trump administration’s plans to seize ballots. In the DOJ’s response on Monday, a 2024 law school graduate who was hired by the DOJ within the last month completely dismissed every question and allegations regarding plans to seize ballots.
The attorney, Devin Iorio, claimed that guidance that is missing from the DOJ’s website advising attorneys to not actively interfere in ongoing elections, which is part of the DNC’s lawsuit, is not pertinent to the DNC’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act for records related to ballot seizures.
Iorio asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit entirely. The DNC has yet to respond.
American Doom reached out to Iorio and spoke briefly to him. He declined to comment on plans to seize ballots, deferring to this 13 page filing on Monday.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but I do believe I’m going to have to refer you to the response itself because that’s office policy,” Iorio said.
Even if the DOJ doesn’t use claims of noncitizen voting as pretext to seize ballots, the Trump administration, in coordination with groups like the Republican National Committee and America First Legal, will surely file scores of lawsuits challenging election results.
We saw this in 2024 — the RNC and aligned election denial groups like America First and the Public Interest Legal Foundation filed dozens of specious lawsuits over noncitizen voters and other ineligibility claims related to voter rolls. We’ll likely see that again, in addition to the many lawsuits that are likely to result from the RNC’s plans to train poll watchers to grab information from voting machines.
CNN reports that those plans include photographing serial numbers and other information on voting machines — which is illegal in many states — in order to challenge the security of those machines in lawsuits.
The next month will be chaos and include the following:
Much, much more amplification from the DOJ and DHS of the scant number of arrests of noncitizens who have voted in recent elections.
More attempts from election denial officials like those at the Georgia State Election Board to coordinate with the Trump administration in interfering with and challenging the validity of elections.
Lawsuits and fear-mongering over voting machines — on Wednesday DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, made strange and troubling comments about his agency’s apparent monitoring of issues related to voting machines. Reminder: executive branch agencies like DHS have no role in elections that the constitution dictates must be run by the states.
A possible Supreme Court decision that would allow for last-minute voter purges of tens of thousands of (likely Latino) voters.
Further calls for troops or federal law enforcement at the polls as the Trump administration attempts to claim that U.S. elections are beset with widespread fraud.
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With the RNC attempting to deploy thousands of poll monitors to aid in election challenge lawsuits, the Justice Department will also send its own observers.
One of those observers may be David Michael Levin, a Florida lawyer who was arrested and pleaded guilty for hacking into state and county election websites in 2016 as part of a bizarre attempt to “advance” the campaign of a candidate for local election supervisor.
It’s quite the promotion for Levin, who was spotted in Minneapolis in August while the Justice Department monitored primaries there. Prior to joining the DOJ, Levin was apparently making a living as a conservative social media influencer under the persona of “Dave the Lawyer,” where he hawked products like organic beef jerky and cures for low testosterone from a brand called “Barlowe’s Herbal Elixirs.”
“Barlowe’s probably saved my marriage…” Levin posted in July 2025, apparently referencing his issues with low testosterone.
“And let’s just say, Mrs. Dave the Lawyer noticed,” Levin said in a video for the elixirs. “You know what they say, ‘Happy wife, happy life.’”
It’s not clear what experience Levin has that would be applicable to being a DOJ election observer. He does not appear to hold an active law license in Florida, American Doom found.
Levin is a near-perfect example of what has happened to federal law enforcement during the second Trump administration. Agencies like the Justice Department and Homeland Security have become official government arms of the extremist right-wing groups who have pushed harsher policies in the areas of election administration and voting rights, and immigration.
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has been especially hard hit, and is now a de facto government arm of the election denial movement. Some 300 attorneys have left under the leadership of Harmeet Dhillon, who has perverted the division’s mission to focus on white grievance claims of reverse racism, especially in higher education, and hunting for noncitizen voters. That’s in contrast with the office’s mission since its founding: protect the rights of minorities at the polls, in education, and in the workforce.
Homeland Security, now a de facto paramilitary force for right-wing anti-immigrant groups, has also been dragged into the Trump administration’s growing hunt for noncitizen voters and proof of nonexistent widespread election fraud. Hundreds of DHS agents have been reassigned to work on election fraud cases, as ProPublica has reported.
Whether at the Civil Rights Division or other DOJ offices, or DHS, everyone working on election fraud investigations is being directed from the top — Trump, Susie Wiles and Stephen Miller at the White House, Reuters reports.
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The DOJ and DHS are touting recent arrests of noncitizens who have allegedly voted in recent elections, but the numbers are scant. Since the start of the second Trump administration’s this whole-of-government effort to stamp out the supposed scourge of noncitizen voting has resulted in less than 200 arrests.
The arrests have comes as the DOJ and DHS have made spectacular claims in virtually every state about the number of noncitizens registered to vote, which are often completely incorrect.
It’s possible that the growing clamor over noncitizen voting is not meant to actually solve the problem by removing ineligible voters from rolls, but instead to lay the groundwork to seize ballots, arrest election officials, and challenge election results based on these cases.
Meanwhile, Latino groups remain on alert about the prospect of ICE agents at polling locations in November. Mullin and others have refused to rule out the possibility of deploying ICE or the National Guard to the polls.
Here in Georgia, two candidates have expressed their support for the completely unprecedented move to deploy federal law enforcement or active duty military to polling locations — such a development would mark a first in American history.
U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, the Republican running to replace Sen. Jon Ossoff, and Rick Jackson, the GOP gubernatorial candidate, are not just unconcerned by the remarkable federal overreach that the Trump administration refuses to rule out, but are supportive of it.
In August, Jackson responded to a town hall question by assuring voters that “we’ll get the National Guard,” saying that current Gov. Brian Kemp “is going to watch it for us.” Jackson never fully clarified what he meant by tying Kemp to the possible presence of the Guard at polls in November.
Last week, Collins responded to concerns over the issue of troops at the polls by saying he was in support.
“I’ve always been a firm believer in local… elections are state, and local level. The last thing we want is for people not to have confidence in their elections and not show up,” Collins said. “So, you know, if that’s something that they decide they need to look at, then that’s fine with me.”
Translation: As a lifelong Republican I abhor the thought of the federal government sending armed troops to tell us what to do here in Georgia. But since Donald Trump is currently in charge of the federal government, I love the idea.
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