Inside Trump’s Plan to Nationalize Elections

On Monday, Trump told podcaster Dan Bongino that Republicans should nationalize the elections. And now we know that Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard is the point person for this assault on democracy.

Her new gig includes a pop-up appearance at an FBI search warrant in Georgia, hanging with agents at the Bureau’s Atlanta field office, and hitting up President Trump on her cell phone so he could thank what must have been a bewildered squad of agents for doing his bidding. Now, with Trump’s declaration to Bongino, it’s clearer than ever that this is all part of a corrupt plan by an authoritarian president to take over our elections.

Gabbard’s been serving as President Trump’s DNI, leading the entire U.S. intelligence community by coordinating foreign intel collection, analysis and counterintelligence across 18 different agencies. As DNI, she’s supposed to ensure the White House receives the most accurate and useful analysis of global developments so policy makers, especially the president, can make smart decisions in the national interest. Yet Gabbard was apparently, in government parlance, under assigned. Now the conspiracy queen with a penchant for dictators seems awfully busy trying to enable a wannabe dictator.

Last week, we learned that the DNI, who has no criminal investigative authority, spent the last several months looking for election fraud in the 2020 presidential election. We’re told that is why she showed up at a Fulton County, Georgia, election facility with the FBI as they executed a court-authorized search to seize all voting ballots and records related to the 2020 presidential election. Understandably, Gabbard’s new gig, and the discovery that Trump ordered her to Atlanta, drew instant concerns and ominous warnings about what this means for the future of free and fair elections America.

Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.), Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, stated: “The involvement of the director of national intelligence in a domestic criminal matter — far outside her statutory role — only deepens those concerns and demands immediate scrutiny.”

The concerns are valid, and not just because the DNI is involved. In his recent trip to Davos, Trump pronounced to world leaders there that “people will soon be prosecuted” for their role in the 2020 election. How does he know that unless the fix is in, despite any known grand jury indictments or arrests? Outrageously, the president is directing Gabbard by her own admission and even personally addressing FBI field agents as part of a delusional doubling down on a fantastical quest to overturn his election loss.

The DNI must know that in the Georgia election every ballot was cast on paper, those paper ballots were counted three times, three different ways, including once entirely by hand, and with observers from both candidates and their parties. The vote tally never changed. The election was certified by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican. The courts rejected every attempt by Trump to challenge the results. So, we must ask, now that Trump has admitted he wants to nationalize the elections in at least 15 places, how might he go about it?

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In December 2025, Fulton County officials conceded that they found 315,000 unsigned tabulator tapes in the 2020 election. Those are the paper receipts generated when someone votes – and each of them is supposed to be signed by poll workers. But a lot weren’t. That doesn’t indicate fraud; it doesn’t mean 315,000 people didn’t vote or didn’t vote for the candidates they intended. Likely, it means poll workers were sloppy, overworked or untrained. In fact, Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger characterized this as a clerical error that would not have impacted the election outcome. Nevertheless, expect Trump and his DNI to pick up this snafu and run with it by alleging that Georgia is incapable of overseeing its elections. That’s what I fear the Fulton County FBI spectacle is really about – not the 2020 election, but the next one. Not just in Georgia, but nationwide.

America’s elections are – by design, administered by the states, not the federal government. For many people, here and abroad, that might sound unwieldy and even chaotic. Why would we have 50 different entities administering an election, particularly when it involves national office? But there is method to the madness. Constitutionally, Congress is empowered with setting basic standards for elections, while the states are authorized to carry out those elections. This check and balance prevents a single point of failure, or corruption, if the federal government were to run the whole show. Remarkably, despite so many cooks in the proverbial kitchen, the broth doesn’t get spoiled. Fraud is surprisingly rare.

Fulton County is just the start of a likely Trump strategy to declare that states can no longer be trusted to carry out national elections. He’ll use DNI Gabbard and other henchmen to “find” fraud where it doesn’t exist and cast doubt in the minds of American voters about whether they should even bother voting, That could lead to voting machines being seized by the military or by US Marshals, particularly in places where Trump can find a willing Republican governor, U.S. Attorney, or district court judge. It would also lead to chaos at polling places.

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Yes, such attempts will face withering court challenges all the way to the Supreme Court. Fulton County has already stated it is suing over the FBI’s seizure of all of the county’s ballots. But by the time each attempt by Trump to turn our democracy into a dictatorship is challenged in court and makes its way to the highest court in the land, what will be left of an election process that has long been the envy of the world?

Do I believe the judicial branch will hold strong under this assault? I think so. But, would you want to bet on this Supreme Court doing the right thing?

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