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      Trump Pressed Justice Dept. to Declare Election Results Corrupt, Notes Show

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      “Leave the rest to me” and to congressional allies, the former president is said to have told top law enforcement officials.WASHINGTON — President Donald J. Trump pressed top Justice Department officials late last year to declare that the election was corrupt even though they had found no instances of widespread fraud, so that he and his allies in Congress could use the assertion to try to overturn the results, according to new documents provided to lawmakers and obtained by The New York Times.The demands were an extraordinary instance of a president interfering with an agency that is typically more independent from the White House to advance his personal agenda. They are also the latest example of Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging campaign during his final weeks in office to delegitimize the election results.The exchange unfolded during a phone call on Dec. 27 in which Mr. Trump pressed the acting attorney general at the time, Jeffrey A. Rosen, and his deputy, Richard P. Donoghue, on voter fraud claims that the department had disproved. Mr. Donoghue warned that the department had no power to change the outcome of the election. Mr. Trump replied that he did not expect that, according to notes taken by Mr. Donoghue.“Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me” and to congressional allies, Mr. Donoghue wrote in summarizing Mr. Trump’s response in notes he took memorializing the call.Mr. Trump did not name the lawmakers, but at other points during the conversation he mentioned Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, whom he called a “fighter”; Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who at the time promoted the idea that the election was stolen from Mr. Trump; and Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, whom Mr. Trump praised for “getting to bottom of things.”The notes connect Mr. Trump’s allies in Congress with his campaign to pressure Justice Department officials to help undermine, or even nullify, the election results.The lawmakers did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Mr. Jordan ultimately voted to overturn the election results in key states, but has downplayed his role in the president’s pressure campaign. Mr. Perry continues to assert Mr. Trump won, but has not been tied directly to the White House effort to keep him in office. And Mr. Johnson, whom Mr. Trump recently endorsed as he weighs whether to seek a third term, maintains that it is reasonable to have questions about the integrity of the election, though he has recognized Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president.The Justice Department provided Mr. Donoghue’s notes to the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which is investigating the Trump administration’s efforts to unlawfully reverse the election results.Typically the Justice Department has fought to keep secret any accounts of private conversations between a president and his cabinet to avoid setting a precedent that would prevent officials in future administrations from candidly advising presidents out of concern that their conversations would later be made public.But handing over the notes to Congress is part of a pattern of allowing scrutiny of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. The Biden Justice Department also told Mr. Rosen, Mr. Donoghue and other former officials this week that they could provide unrestricted testimony to investigators with the House Oversight and Reform and the Senate Judiciary committees.Richard P. Donoghue, the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, pushed back on Mr. Trump’s allegations of election fraud in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Arizona.Demetrius Freeman for The New York TimesThe department reasoned that congressional investigators were examining potential wrongdoing by a sitting president, an extraordinary circumstance, according to letters sent to the former officials. Because executive privilege is meant to benefit the country, rather than the president as an individual, invoking it over Mr. Trump’s efforts to push his personal agenda would be inappropriate, the department concluded.“These handwritten notes show that President Trump directly instructed our nation’s top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency,” Representative Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said in a statement.Mr. Trump’s conversation with Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue reflected his single-minded focus on overturning the election results. At one point, Mr. Trump alleged voter fraud in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Arizona, which he called “corrupted elections.” Mr. Donoghue pushed back.“Much of the info you’re getting is false,” Mr. Donoghue said, adding that the department had conducted “dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews” and not found evidence to support his claims. “We look at allegations but they don’t pan out,” the officials told Mr. Trump, according to the notes.The department found that the error rate of ballot counting in Michigan was 0.0063 percent, not the 68 percent that the president asserted; it did not find evidence of a conspiracy theory that an employee in Pennsylvania had tampered with ballots; and after examining video and interviewing witnesses, it did not find evidence of ballot fraud in Fulton County, Ga., according to the notes.Mr. Trump, undeterred, brushed off the department’s findings. “Ok fine — but what about the others?” Mr. Donoghue wrote in his notes describing the president’s remarks. Mr. Trump asked Mr. Donoghue to travel to Fulton County to verify signatures on ballots.The people “saying that the election isn’t corrupt are corrupt,” Mr. Trump told the officials, adding that they needed to act. “Not much time left.”At another point, Mr. Donoghue said that the department could quickly verify or disprove the assertion that more ballots were cast in Pennsylvania than there are voters.“Should be able to check on that quickly, but understand that the DOJ can’t and won’t snap it’s fingers and change the outcome of the election, doesn’t work that way,” Mr. Donoghue wrote in his notes.The officials also told Mr. Trump that the Justice Department had no evidence to support a lawsuit regarding the election results. “We are not in a position based on the evidence. We can only act on the actual evidence developed,” they said.Mr. Trump castigated the officials, saying that “thousands of people called” their local U.S. attorney’s offices to complain about the election and that “nobody trusts the F.B.I.” He said that “people are angry — blaming D.O.J. for inaction.”“You guys may not be following the internet the way I do,” Mr. Trump said, according to the document.In a moment of foreshadowing, Mr. Trump said, “people tell me Jeff Clark is great, I should put him in,” referring to the acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division, who had also encouraged department officials to intervene in the election. “People want me to replace D.O.J. leadership.”“You should have the leadership you want,” Mr. Donoghue replied. But it “won’t change the dept’s position.”Mr. Donoghue and Mr. Rosen did not know that Mr. Perry had introduced Mr. Clark and Mr. Trump. Exactly one week later, they would be forced to fight Mr. Clark for their jobs in an Oval Office showdown.During the call, Mr. Trump also told the Justice Department officials to “figure out what to do” with Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son. “People will criticize the D.O.J. if he’s not investigated for real,” he told them, violating longstanding guidelines against the White House interfering in criminal investigations or other law enforcement actions.Two days after the phone call with Mr. Trump, Mr. Donoghue took notes of a meeting between Justice Department officials; Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, and White House deputy counsel Patrick Philbin to discuss a conspiracy theory known as Italygate, which asserts without evidence that people in Italy used military technology to remotely tamper with voting machines in the United States.The Justice Department officials told the White House that they had assigned someone to look into the matter, according to the notes and a person briefed on the meeting. They did not mention that the department was looking into the theory in order to debunk it, the person said.Nicholas Fandos More

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      How Covid Became a Red-State Crisis

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      Less than a month ago President Biden promised a “summer of joy,” a return to normal life made possible by the rapid progress of vaccinations against Covid-19. Since then, however, vaccination has largely stalled — America, which had pulled ahead of many other advanced countries, has fallen behind. And the rise of the Delta variant has caused a surge in cases all too reminiscent of the repeated Covid waves of last year.That said, 2021 isn’t 2020 redux. As Aaron Carroll pointed out Tuesday in The Times, Covid is now a crisis for the unvaccinated. Risks for vaccinated Americans aren’t zero, but they’re vastly lower than for those who haven’t gotten a vaccine.What Carroll didn’t say, but is also true, is that Covid is now a crisis largely for red states. And it’s important to make that point both to understand where we are and as a reminder of the political roots of America’s pandemic failures.Just to be clear, I’m not saying that only Republicans are failing to get vaccinated. It’s true that there are stark differences in attitudes toward the vaccines, with one poll showing 47 percent of Republicans saying they are unlikely to get a shot, compared with only 6 percent of Democrats. It’s also true that if we compare U.S. counties, there’s a strong negative correlation between Donald Trump’s share of the 2020 vote and the current vaccination rate.That said, vaccination rates among Black and Hispanic Americans remain persistently lower than among the non-Hispanic white population, an indication that issues like lack of information and trust are also inhibiting our response.But simply looking at who remains unvaccinated misses what may soon become a crucial point: The danger from Covid’s resurgence depends not just on the number of cases nationwide but also on how concentrated those cases are geographically.To see why, it may help to remember all the talk about “flattening the curve” early in the pandemic.At that point effective vaccines seemed a distant prospect. This in turn made it seem likely that a large fraction of the population would eventually contract the virus whatever we did. Prevaccine, it seemed as if the only way to avoid long-run mass infection was the New Zealand strategy: a severe lockdown to reduce cases to a very low level, followed by a test-trace-isolate regime to quickly put a lid on any flare-ups. And it seemed all too clear that the U.S. lacked the political will to pursue such a strategy.Yet there was still good reason to impose social distancing rules and mask requirements. Even if most people would eventually get the virus, it was important that they not all get sick at once, because that would overload the health care system. This would cause many preventable deaths, not just from Covid-19 but also because other ailments couldn’t be treated if the hospitals, and especially intensive care units, were already full.This logic, by the way, was why claims that mask mandates and distancing guidelines were attacks on “freedom” were always nonsense. Do we think people should be free to drive drunk? No, not just because in so doing they endanger themselves, but even more because they endanger others. The same was true for refusing to wear masks last year — and for refusing to get vaccinated now.As it turned out, masks and social distancing were even better ideas than we realized: They bought time until the arrival of vaccines, so that a great majority of those who managed to avoid Covid in 2020, and have since been vaccinated, may never get it.But there are regions in America where large numbers of people have refused vaccination. Those regions appear to be approaching the point we feared in the early stages of the pandemic, with hospitalizations overwhelming the health care system. And the divide between places that are in crisis and those that aren’t is starkly political. New York has five Covid patients hospitalized per 100,000 people; Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis barred businesses from requiring that their patrons show proof of vaccination, has 34.So, will Covid’s resurgence stop America’s much-awaited return to normalcy? In much of the country, no. Yes, vaccination has stalled far too soon even in blue states, and residents of those states should be a bit more cautious, for example by resuming mask-wearing when indoors (which many people in the Northeast never stopped). But so far it doesn’t look as if the Delta variant will prevent continuing recovery, social and economic.There are, however, places that really should put strong measures into effect — mask mandates for sure, and maybe even partial lockdowns — to buy time while they catch up on vaccinations.Unfortunately, these are precisely the places that will almost surely do no such thing. Missouri is experiencing one of the worst current Covid outbreaks, yet on Tuesday the St. Louis County Council voted to end a mask mandate introduced by the county executive.In any case, it’s crucial to understand that we aren’t facing a national crisis; we’re facing a red-state crisis, with nakedly political roots.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Georgia G.O.P. Edges Toward Election Takeover in Fulton County

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      Republicans in Georgia’s General Assembly have requested a performance review of the top election official in Fulton County, the first step in a possible takeover of the county’s electoral process that could give the Republican-led legislature more control over an area with the largest concentration of Democratic voters in the state.The request, submitted in a letter on Tuesday by State Senator Butch Miller and signed by about two dozen other Republican state senators, calls for a panel review of Richard Barron, the county election director, over what the lawmakers described as a failure to properly perform risk-limiting audits, a process that helps ensure the correct results and security, after the 2020 election.“We do so as a measure of last resort, having failed to adequately assuage the concern that we, as elected officials, have regarding the integrity of the Fulton County elections process,” Mr. Miller wrote in the letter.Fulton County, which includes much of Atlanta, has a record of problems with its elections. Most recently, its June 2020 primary contest was marred by voting machine difficulties that were exacerbated by the small size and poor training of its staff, causing lines to stretch for hours across the county.But the November general election and the January runoff elections in the county ran relatively smoothly on each Election Day, with few reports of lengthy waits or other complications. There were no legitimate questions about the accuracy of the results in any of the three recent elections. In the presidential race, President Biden carried the county with more than 72 percent of the vote and more than 380,000 votes.The review process for local election officials is a newly critical element to Georgia elections after state Republicans passed a sweeping new voting law in April. It includes several provisions that lay the groundwork for an extraordinary takeover of election administration by partisan lawmakers.Under the new law, the State Elections Board is permitted to replace county election board members after a performance review or investigation. But the new law also restructures the state board, stripping the secretary of state of his authority and giving the legislature the ability to appoint members, including the chair.The letter, which was earlier reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was signed by three Republican members of the Fulton County delegation in the State Senate. The letter’s authors said they expected members of Fulton County’s House delegation to join them, which would automatically begin the review.State Representative Chuck Martin, a Republican member of the Fulton County House delegation, said he supported the request for the performance review. Jan Jones, the speaker pro tempore and another member of the delegation, said that she would send a letter on Friday to the State Elections Board requesting a performance review of Fulton County elections officials, and that it would be signed by four members of the Fulton delegation.“Mine is not with an eye on taking over elections,” Mr. Martin said in an interview on Thursday. “This just seems to be the only way we can get data to get answers for the people we represent.”Mr. Barron, the Fulton County election director, did not respond to requests for comment.Democrats quickly denounced the move, warning that it undermined the sanctity of future elections.“After giving themselves unprecedented power under Senate Bill 202, Republicans wasted no time in waging an anti-democratic, partisan power grab, attempting to seize control of elections in Georgia’s largest county, home to the greatest number of voters of color in the state,” said Lauren Groh-Wargo, the chief executive of Fair Fight Action, a Democratic voting rights group based in Georgia. “Their partisan efforts risk election subversion.”Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state, supported the review.“I have called repeatedly for change in Fulton’s elections leadership, so I’m glad Republican legislators are joining me in this effort,” he said in a statement. “After Fulton’s failures last June, I required Fulton to accept a monitor during the general election and runoffs, and forced the county into a consent agreement to start fixing their management problems.” More

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      Arizona Vote Review Being Financed by Trump Supporters

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      A review of 2020 election ballots cast in Arizona’s largest county, billed as strictly nonpartisan when Republicans in the Arizona State Senate ordered it late last year, has been financed almost entirely by supporters of former President Donald J. Trump, according to a statement released late Wednesday by the private firm overseeing the review.The firm, Cyber Ninjas, said that it had collected more than $5.7 million from five pro-Trump organizations for the widely disparaged review, in addition to $150,000 that the State Senate had allotted for the project. An Arizona county court had ordered the sources of the audit’s funding released after Republicans in the Senate resisted making them public.The review of 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and roughly 80 percent of the state’s population, has covered only votes last November for president and for the state’s two seats in the United States Senate, all of which were won by Democrats. The president of the State Senate, Karen Fann, said this week that results of the audit should be released next month.Ms. Fann and other senators said the recount, whose findings have no authority to change the winners of any race, was needed to reassure supporters of Mr. Trump that the vote was fairly conducted. But the effort has come under growing attack in the wake of disclosures that the chief executive of Cyber Ninjas and other purported experts involved in the review had ties to the “stop the steal” movement spawned by Mr. Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud.Election experts have called the recount amateurish and error-ridden, and ridiculed its efforts to verify allegations by conspiracy theorists that fake ballots could be identified by traces of bamboo fibers or invisible watermarks. One Republican senator withdrew his backing of the effort in May, calling it an embarrassment, and a second senator accused Ms. Fann last week of mismanaging the process, and said its results could not be trusted.It had been apparent since the review began in April that supporters of Mr. Trump were both donating money to the effort and recruiting volunteers to work on it. But the sources and size of the donations had not been disclosed until Wednesday.According to the Cyber Ninjas statement, the largest donation, $3.25 million, was made by a newly created group, America Project, led by Patrick M. Byrne, the former chief executive of the Overstock.com website and a prominent proponent of false claims that the November election was rigged.Mr. Byrne resigned his post at Overstock in 2019 after it was disclosed that he had an intimate relationship with Maria Butina, a gun-rights activist who was jailed in 2018 as an unregistered foreign agent for Russia and later deported. He later said he had contributed $500,000 to the Arizona review, and produced a film featuring the Cyber Ninjas chief executive, Doug Logan, that alleged that the November election was fraudulent.The statement said that another pro-Trump group, America’s Future, contributed $976,514 to the review. An additional $605,000 came from Voices and Votes, a group organized by Christina Bobb, an anchor for the pro-Trump television network One America News, who solicited donations for the review while covering it. More

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      There Is No Good Reason You Should Have to Be a Citizen to Vote

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      This essay is part of a series exploring bold ideas to revitalize and renew the American experiment. Read more about this project in a note from Ezekiel Kweku, Opinion’s politics editor.

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      Washingtonians love to complain about taxation without representation. But for me and my fellow noncitizens, it is a fact of political life that we submit to unquestioningly year after year, primary after primary, presidential election after presidential election. Nearly 15 million people living legally in the United States, most of whom contribute as much as any natural-born American to this country’s civic, cultural and economic life, don’t have a say in matters of politics and policy because we — resident foreign nationals, or “aliens” as we are sometimes called — cannot vote.Considering the Supreme Court’s recent decision undermining voting rights, and Republicans’ efforts to suppress, redistrict and manipulate their way to electoral security, it’s time for Democrats to radically expand the electorate. Proposing federal legislation to give millions of young people and essential workers a clear road to citizenship is a good start. But there’s another measure that lawmakers both in Washington and state capitals should put in place: lifting voting restrictions on legal residents who aren’t citizens — people with green cards, people here on work visas, and those who arrived in the country as children and are still waiting for permanent papers.Expanding the franchise in this way would give American democracy new life, restore immigrants’ trust in government and send a powerful message of inclusion to the rest of the world.It’s easy to assume that restricting the franchise to citizens is an age-old, nonnegotiable fact. But it’s actually a relatively recent convention and a political choice. Early in the United States’ history, voting was a function not of national citizenship but of gender, race and class. As a result, white male landowners of all nationalities were encouraged to play an active role in shaping American democracy, while women and poor, Indigenous and enslaved people could not. That wholesale discrimination is unquestionably worse than excluding resident foreigners from the polls, but the point is that history shows how readily voting laws can be altered — and that restrictive ones tend not to age well.Another misconception is that citizen voting rights have always been the prerogative of the federal government. In fact, states have largely decided who had a say in local, state and national elections. Arkansas was the last state to eliminate noncitizen voting in 1926, and it wasn’t until 1996 that Congress doubled down with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which made voting in federal elections while foreign — already not permitted because of state-level rules — a criminal, and deportable, offense. (This means that congressional Democrats working on immigration and election reform can reverse the 1996 sanctions the same way they voted them in.)The strongest case for noncitizen voting today is representation: The more voters show up to the polls, the more accurately elections reflect peoples’ desires. The United States already has plenty of institutions that account for noncitizens: The census aims to reach all residents because it believes everyone, even aliens, matters. Corporations enjoy free speech and legal personhood — and they’re not even people. Would it be such a stretch to give a noncitizen resident a say in who gets elected to their state legislature, Congress or the White House?What’s more, allowing noncitizens to vote in federal, state and municipal elections would help revitalize American democracy at a time when enthusiasm and trust are lacking. While 2020 was considered a “high turnout” election, only about 65 percent of eligible voters cast ballots. Compare that to Germany, where turnout was 76 percent in the last general election.Democrats are likely to be the biggest beneficiaries of this change — at least at first. But it could have interesting ripple effects: Elected Republicans might be induced to appeal to a more diverse constituency, or perhaps to enthuse their constituents so deeply that they too start to vote in greater numbers.It’s also just good civics: Allowing people to vote gives them even more of a sense of investment in their towns, cities, communities and country. There’s a detachment that comes with not being able to vote in the place where you live. Concerns about mixed loyalties, meanwhile, are misplaced. The United States not only allows dual citizenship but also allows dual citizens to vote — and from abroad. Is there any reason to think resident foreigners should be less represented?Voting is, in a sense, a reward for becoming an American. But in truth, it’s often much harder to get a visa or green card than to then become a naturalized citizen. It took me 15 years and over $10,000 in legal fees (not to mention the cost of college) to obtain permanent residency. The citizenship test and oath feel comparatively like a piece of cake.It shouldn’t be this onerous to emigrate. But given that it is, it would make much more sense to make residents provide proof of voter registration as a requirement for naturalization, rather than the other way around. We will have more than “earned” it. And what better way to learn about American life than to play an active role in deciding its elections?In the absence of federal- or state-level action, local lawmakers are already free let noncitizens decide on things like garbage pickup, parking rules and potholes. Some do. Since 1992, Takoma Park, Md., has allowed all residents to vote, regardless of their citizenship. Nine additional Maryland towns, as well as districts in Vermont and Massachusetts, have voted to re-enfranchise noncitizens. The cities of Chicago, Washington and Portland are also considering the idea, and a bill that would give New York City’s authorized immigrants voting rights has a new supermajority in the City Council.I’ve lived in New York since 2004, but haven’t once had a chance to cast a ballot here. Last fall, I grew so frustrated that I started mailing ballots to my hometown in Switzerland. But voting in a place I haven’t lived in since I was a minor makes about as little sense as not voting in the city where I’ve lived my entire adult life.I’m looking forward to City Council giving me, and the other million or so friendly aliens living here, the right to vote for New York’s officials. But we should be able to vote for our representatives in Washington, too. I hope that Democrats seize their chance, and realize the power and the enthusiasm of their potential constituents. They — and we — will not regret it.Atossa Araxia Abrahamian (@atossaaraxia) is the author of “The Cosmopolites: The Coming Global Citizen.” She is working on a second book about weird jurisdictions.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.hed More

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      Justice Department Warns States on Voting Laws and Election Audits

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      The department said that auditors could face criminal or civil penalties if they flouted elections laws.WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Wednesday sent another warning shot to Republican state legislatures that have initiated private audits of voting tabulations broadly viewed as efforts to cast doubt on the results of the presidential election.The department warned that auditors could face criminal and civil penalties if they destroy any records related to the election or intimidate voters in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and federal laws prohibiting voter intimidation.The admonishment came in election-related guidance documents issued as part of the department’s larger plan to protect access to the polls, announced by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in June. Another document released on Wednesday outlined federal laws on how ballots are cast and said that the department could scrutinize states that revert to prepandemic voting procedures, which may not have allowed as many people to vote early or by mail.The warning was the Justice Department’s latest effort to alert state lawmakers that their audits could run afoul of federal law. Department officials cautioned the Republican-led Arizona State Senate in May that its audit and recount of the November election in Maricopa County, widely seen as a partisan exercise to fuel grievances over Donald J. Trump’s election loss, may be in violation of the Civil Rights Act.Last month, the Justice Department also sued Georgia over its recently passed, sweeping voting law, accusing the state’s Republican-led legislature of intentionally trying to violate the rights of Black voters in crafting the legislation.The lawsuit, particularly its attempt to prove lawmakers’ intent, was the Biden administration’s most aggressive effort yet to expand or preserve voter protections. But it comes as Senate Republicans have stymied efforts to pass federal voter protection laws and the Justice Department has acknowledged that Supreme Court rulings have limited its own ability to prevent discriminatory voting laws from being enacted in states.While the department can sue over state voting laws it deems discriminatory or over audits that violate federal statutes, multiple election cycles will play out before those cases are resolved in the courts.The Arizona audit is led by a private contractor called Cyber Ninjas whose owner, Doug Logan, has shared conspiracy theories that voting machines were rigged and that the election was stolen from Mr. Trump.A county judge in Arizona recently ruled that the state’s Republican senators must make public information about Cyber Ninjas and other private companies hired to conduct the Maricopa County audit, rejecting their request to keep the documents secret.“It is difficult to conceive of a case with a more compelling public interest demanding public disclosure and public scrutiny,” Judge Michael W. Kemp of Maricopa County Superior Court wrote in the ruling.While the Justice Department did not name the Arizona audit in its guidance documents, it said that it was concerned that some jurisdictions conducting audits could imperil the existence of election records.“This risk is exacerbated if the election records are given to private actors who have neither experience nor expertise in handling such records and who are unfamiliar with the obligations imposed by federal law,” the department said in one document.A Justice Department official speaking to reporters declined to say whether any audits had been found to have violated the Civil Rights Act. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity and did not provide a justification for doing so.The department’s guidance also sought to dispel the false notion that the election was marked by rampant fraud, noting that state and federal officials have called it “the most secure in American history.”The guidance mirrored a statement by Mr. Garland last month that states have justified their postelection audits with voter fraud assertions “that have been refuted by the law enforcement and intelligence agencies of both this administration and the previous one, as well as by every court — federal and state — that has considered them.”Mr. Trump and his supporters have falsely claimed that the election was fraudulently stolen from him, ignoring assertions by his own appointed officials that there was no widespread voter fraud.Nevertheless, Arizona, Georgia and other states have used the specter of election fraud to pass legislation that restricts access to the polls and hire private auditing companies to perform recounts that have helped sow doubts about the veracity of the election results.Mr. Garland said in May that the Justice Department would double the enforcement staff that handles voting issues in part to scrutinize these new laws and audits. At the time, the staff numbered around a dozen people, according to people familiar with it.The department official confirmed on Wednesday that the staff size had doubled, but would not specify its total. More

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      Texas Special Election: Jake Ellzey Defeats Susan Wright

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      Mr. Ellzey, a state representative, was victorious in a runoff against Susan Wright, whose husband, Ron Wright, represented the Sixth Congressional District before he died of Covid-19.AUSTIN, Texas — The widow of a Texas congressman who died early this year of Covid-19 lost to a freshman state representative on Tuesday in a special runoff election between Republicans seeking to fill the vacant House seat.State Representative Jake Ellzey, who narrowly missed capturing the Republican nomination for the seat in 2018, defeated Susan Wright, whose husband, Ron Wright, died in February about two weeks after testing positive for the coronavirus. The Associated Press called the race after Mr. Ellzey had obtained 52.9 percent of the vote with 90 percent of precincts reporting.“Jake will be a strong and effective leader for the people of North Texas and he will fight tirelessly for their values in Washington,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement.In May, Ms. Wright and Mr. Ellzey had each captured far below the 50 percent majority needed to avoid a runoff in a 23-way contest for the state’s Sixth Congressional District, which represents three counties just south of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan region.In the end, the runoff election, which drew far fewer voters than the primary contest, was less about two ideologically similar candidates and more about how much sway former President Donald J. Trump would have in getting people to cast ballots for Ms. Wright, whom he endorsed before the primary.In a duel of former Republican leaders, Rick Perry, the state’s former governor and a cabinet member of Mr. Trump’s administration, threw his weight behind Mr. Ellzey, who like Mr. Perry is a former military pilot.The contest between Ms. Wright and Mr. Ellzey, who overtook a Democratic candidate by 347 votes to secure a slot in the runoff, disappointed Democrats, who had hoped to tap a reservoir of shifting demographics and Hispanic and African American growth in a district where Mr. Trump won by only three percentage points in November.Susan Wright greeted voters last week outside an early voting site in Arlington, Texas.Elias Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News, via Associated PressMr. Ellzey, 51, a Navy veteran, is in the middle of his first term in the Texas House of Representatives. Ms. Wright, 58, is a longtime Republican activist who pledged to continue her husband’s legacy on a host of conservative priorities, including abortion, guns and immigration.Both candidates supported the Republican-backed voter overhaul legislation in Texas, a measure that prompted Democrats to leave the state to block a vote just days into a special session. Now Mr. Ellzey will join the second-largest congressional delegation — 23 Republicans and 13 Democrats — in the U.S. House behind California.The so-called Trump Factor was the biggest subplot in Tuesday’s contest, with Ms. Wright and her supporters hoping the endorsement would propel her to victory. The former president retains an immense hold on Texas Republicans, and he carried the district by 12 points in 2016 before losing ground in the region to Joseph R. Biden Jr. last year.Ms. Wright, who entered the contest two weeks after her husband’s death, had prominently displayed the former president’s endorsement throughout her campaign and introduced Mr. Trump at a virtual election-eve rally on Monday night.The Club for Growth, a conservative fiscal organization that supported Mr. Trump in 2020, has also aligned with Ms. Wright, spending $1.2 million to fund ads and mailings attacking Mr. Ellzey’s legislative record and his conservative credentials, prompting fierce rebuttals.Although the two candidates share similar views on most of the base issues, the Club for Growth attacks injected a harsh tenor into the race, becoming an issue themselves. Mr. Perry, the former governor, described them as “junk” and “absolute trash” and demanded that Ms. Wright disavow the claims, which she refused to do.Joe Barton, who represented the district in Congress for more than three decades, said the tone of the Club for Growth ads was a factor in his decision to endorse Mr. Ellzey, though he was friends with the Wrights.Heading into Tuesday’s race, Mr. Ellzey had raised $1.7 million, far more than the $740,000 raised by Ms. Wright, according to news media reports. More