You’re Paying for the World's Most Dangerous Disinformation Operation
The mainstream media refuses to connect the most important dots of our time.
They won’t in any serious way link Russia’s attack on the 2016 elections—what Marcy Wheeler calls “the most successful intelligence operation in recent history”—and the demands made in return for that help to Donald Trump’s sellout of America and our allies to Vladimir Putin. So it makes sense that they’re completely failing to provide context for an even more disgraceful assault on our democracy now, coming from the one federal institution we should most expect to protect our right to vote: the U.S. Department of Justice.
Today, that calumny is coming directly from the DOJ in the form of lawsuits and completely unprecedented interventions in our elections that continue to ramp up even as we are just hours from election day.
In my recent conversation with Marcy, she says, “we have become boiled frogs,” as too many outlets (with the notable exception of Democracy Docket) cover each action as a separate story and shrink from explaining to voters how unprecedented, alarming, and dangerous Todd Blanche’s actions against the integrity of our elections are.
The Assault on the Ballot
Key to the multipronged attack on our elections a decade ago was a disinformation campaign meant to divide us by casting doubt on the integrity of the vote. Today, that playbook has moved inside the federal government.
The attorney general has backed Homeland Security agents raiding the home of House member and candidate Ilhan Omar weeks before the election—after arguing as Trump’s defense attorney that such actions shouldn’t even be allowed in an election year. He’s charged the FBI agents who guarded 2020 against foreign interference. Those agents ran the task force whose job was to stop Russia, China, and Iran from interfering in an election, and Marcy notes that Kash Patel has since dismantled it.
Marcy points to two possible worst-case scenarios designed to keep Republicans in control of Congress:
- California: Blanche seems intent on helping preserve a House majority by threatening to refuse to seat California’s delegation over baseless lies about noncitizens that should have the participating attorneys disbarred.
- Alaska: He straightforwardly tried to steal Alaska’s Senate seat—the one most likely to decide control of the upper house—by criminalizing the sort of legal ballot quirks both parties constantly engage in. And Donald Trump proudly insisted he ordered this first attempt in U.S. history to prevent the DOJ from certifying an election in advance.
Largely, the courts have saved us from the worst of these horrific abuses of power. But think about the sheer absurdity of it: these DOJ interventions only make sense in a world where Joe Biden stole the 2020 election. Yet you’d also have to believe that for some reason after nearly two years in power, Donald Trump’s Department of Justice hasn’t brought a single criminal charge for what would have to be the largest conspiracy in human history.
Federal judges in at least 26 states have rejected the DOJ’s demands for voter rolls, citing the constitutional order that gives states the job of running their own elections. A judge in California took the unusual step of ordering the DOJ to stop threatening election workers over lies and slurs. In Alaska, a federal judge rejected the idea of federal interference in certifying the Senate election, saying it “clearly violates Alaskans’ right to a secret ballot.”
The Enablers: From the Courtroom to the “Improv” Troupe
Pointing to these court wins elides two critical realities.
First, the courts—namely the Supreme Court—made this fuckery possible in the case of Trump v. USA. Marcy provides crucial context:
Todd Blanche got rewarded with the Attorney General position by helping Trump dodge accountability for his past attempts to steal an election.
And in the process, John Roberts rubberstamped such a corrupt use of the DOJ, giving the President absolute immunity for making demands for sham investigations, which the Chief Justice deemed to fit within a President’s official duties.
Second, this isn’t even primarily a legal campaign from Todd Blanche, as he does his best Sidney Powell impression ahead of what looks to be a historic electoral drubbing for the GOP. It is a disinformation campaign.
Kate Starbird, who researches online rumors and disinformation at the University of Washington, calls the DOJ’s intentional spreading of empty and outright false allegations “probably the biggest story of this election cycle”:
The aim is “creating an illusion of widespread voter fraud,” the exact sort of illusion that led to January 6th, fed by the multifarious crimes of Donald Trump that Todd Blanche helped him get away with.
Every action the DOJ takes is echoed by a “chorus of creators, electeds, and government officials,” willing disinformers acting as what Starbird has called an “improv” troupe: They offer a furious “Yes!” and add their own “And!” by alleging this was just “the tip of the iceberg.”
The Stakes
As in 2016, this disinformation campaign is unprecedented in all of American history.
What made that first attack that gave us Trump new was the Republican Party joining a foreign adversary in an attack on the integrity of our elections. That began a process that has led us to today, when the U.S. government itself is leading the attack, with only the courts and the voters left to save us.
We know from Hungary and Serbia that even strongmen can lose, even after successfully establishing competitive authoritarianism. But we also know it takes extraordinary turnout and a wholesale rejection of the chains that the strongman has tied around society.
Those chains are only as strong as the wannabe dictator and his lackeys. And as good as Todd Blanche is at helping Trump get away with crimes, he hasn’t yet reached the courts that will help him steal an election. A federal judge dismissed the Alaska suit in a matter of days, and judges across the country have thrown out the DOJ’s voter-roll demands.
But every dismissed complaint still hands the right’s “improv” troupe another “And!” before the ruling even arrives. That is how a losing DOJ still manages to run the most dangerous disinformation operation in the world.
And you’re paying for it.
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