With days left in the presidential race, former President Trump has once again questioned U.S. election integrity — pairing long debunked lies about the 2020 election being stolen from him with equally baseless claims of fresh cheating.
In a Friday post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump wrote that there was “rampant Cheating and Skulduggery” in 2020; that he and his allies are watching closely for similar problems in the current race; and that, if he wins, those involved in such “unscrupulous behavior” will be “sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”
Trump’s remarks echoed previous claims he has made without proof that U.S. elections have been corrupted, and drew renewed condemnation from election experts.
“Sadly we have seen this playbook before,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, which is fighting legal challenges to voter access initiatives and protections nationwide.
“Trump is doubling down on setting the groundwork to question and try to overturn the election if it doesn’t go his way,” Lakin said. “His threats of prosecution sound in authoritarianism and should concern all who care about preserving our democratic institutions.”
Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Voting Rights Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, said it was important not to repeat Trump’s claims but refute them — because they are not grounded in fact, and they undermine the very system he is criticizing by driving down trust and participation among voters.
“Not only are these lies, but there is every reason to have confidence in the system, and the only way to make the system work is participating in it,” Morales-Doyle said.
He said that while the election system has been tested heavily in recent years — including by Trump and his followers, who have faced criminal charges for trying to subvert the last election — it has shown itself to be “actually quite strong and resilient.”
“Voters should know they can trust our elections, their votes are safe, and we will have results we can trust after Nov. 5,” he said.
Neither the Trump campaign nor the Harris campaign responded to requests for comment Friday. Harris has previously said Trump’s 2020 election denial is disqualifying — proof he is unfit for office.
Some experts said Trump’s remarks were particularly brazen given it is Trump and his supporters who have been credibly accused of trying to overturn an election, including by storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Special prosecutor Jack Smith is still pursuing a case against Trump for allegedly taking part in a sweeping criminal conspiracy to not just deny the 2020 election of President Biden, but also subvert it.
Trump and his allies went to great lengths to find proof of substantive election fraud or irregularities in 2020 but failed, and state elections officials, independent elections experts and most Americans agree today that Biden’s victory was legitimate.
Trump then “resorted to crimes to try to stay in office,” Smith alleged in a filing last month.
The filing detailed how Trump allegedly conducted a “pressure campaign” targeting Republican leaders, election officials and election workers in states he had lost to change the outcomes there; personally set into motion and monitored a plan to send fake slates of electors to Washington to cast state electoral votes for him instead of Biden, who had won them; and continued his “stream of disinformation” on Jan. 6 by falsely suggesting then-Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally halt the certification of Biden’s victory.
In addition to the federal case, Trump also was charged by Georgia prosecutors with trying to subvert the election there.
Trump has called the cases against him bogus, and Smith’s case in particular a “SCAM.”
In his post Friday, Trump advised people to be “aware” that those facing “legal exposure” in his supposed crackdown would include lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters and “corrupt election officials.”
Morales-Doyle said Trump’s warnings were particularly alarming given they were paired with his meritless claims about 2020.
“It is very troubling to hear someone suggest that they would use prosecutorial power that way and go after people for what I have to assume would be political purposes — because we know that all of the statements about fraud in our elections that he is making are false,” he said.
Morales-Doyle has raised similar concerns about the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, saying it also promotes conservative candidates using the Justice Department to go after political rivals — including those who support voter access measures in liberal jurisdictions.
He called such ideas “appalling.”