Former President Donald Trump has been very clear about his intentions if he returns to power: He will take revenge on everyone who, he believes, stood in his way during the 2024 election. “WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences,” he posted on Truth Social on Saturday. “Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials.” 

Trump’s threats to prosecute perceived enemies are nothing new. His road to the White House in 2016 was paved with chants of “Lock her up!” But in 2024, Trump now has a blueprint for taking control of the Department of Justice and directing politically-motivated prosecutions—particularly of local election officials.

“This is authoritarian fantasy wish fulfillment reduced to paper.”

It’s all there in Project 2025’s agenda. In a little-noticed section of the Mandate for Leadership, the 922-page right-wing policy tome, a close Trump ally has laid out how Trump could do just as his post threatened. This two-page segment explains how the DOJ would go after local election administrators who make decisions Trump and his appointees disagree with.

According to experts, the factual premises of the section are mistaken, outlandish, and contradictory to current law. But the message it sends is crystal clear: if an election administration official makes it easier to vote in a way that the Trump DOJ does not like, it will investigate and possibly prosecute that official for criminal wrongdoing.

In the lead-up to November, lawsuits already abound over voting rules and regulations. What forms of ID are needed to register? Do mail-in ballot envelopes need to have hand-written dates on them? Is a county or state doing enough to keep voter rolls accurate? Such decisions can change the outcome of close elections by either enfranchising or disqualifying thousands of voters. Trump and the Republican Party oppose laws and policies that make it easier to vote, and advocate for additional hurdles that make it harder for people to register and cast a ballot. They do this under the guise of thwarting fraud, but in reality their policies make it harder for Democratic constituencies, including people of color, to vote.

While the GOP and its allies have long taken local officials to court over these debates, Project 2025 imagines a dystopian escalation: that the Department of Justice could mount a raid, an investigation, and even a criminal prosecution if it doesn’t like voting policies put in place by a local official. 

The proposal is tucked into the chapter on overhauling the Department of Justice, authored by Gene Hamilton, a former Trump official in the department who is likely to return in a second administration. In it, Hamilton envisions the criminal section at DOJ investigating “the appropriateness or lawfulness of state election guidance.”

“They want to criminalize election administration and disagreements over election administration,” Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Law School and a former Obama Justice Department official, said after reviewing the section.

To allow the federal government to threaten prosecutions over the minutiae of local election administration, Project 2025 perversely cites 1871’s Ku Klux Klan Act, a law passed in the wake of the Civil War to protect the rights of formerly enslaved citizens—including their right to vote. Today, one of the law’s uses is to protect the right to vote from race-based discrimination. Notably, Trump himself faces charges under the statute for his attempt to nullify millions of votes and overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“It’s an incredibly un-American effort to scare election officials.”

According to Project 2025, a second Trump administration would take this law that was meant to go after conspiracies that deprive people of rights and weaponize it in furtherance of the administration’s own plots to deprive people of their right to vote. “They’re asking for a world in which every disagreement about what is legally authorized is investigated for criminal prosecution under the Klan Act,” says Levitt. “That is, charitably, nuts.”

The one example Hamilton provides of an election administration decision that would warrant such a prosecution is chilling. In 2020, Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvania’s elections chief, authorized counties to give provisional ballots to voters whose mail ballots had been disqualified for minor issues.

“We want eligible voters to be able to cast one ballot,” Boockvar says, explaining the decision. “If the first ballot that they tried to cast can’t be cast because they had the wrong date, then that gets tossed. And then they can vote by provisional ballot. There’s no violation of any laws. This is just another way to protect that an American citizen who’s eligible to vote can cast their ballot.”

Indeed, Boockvar’s move helped eligible voters vote. No one was hurt, no one’s rights were taken away, and no fraudulent votes were cast. There was certainly no conspiracy to deprive anyone of their rights. And yet, this is the scenario that Project 2025 calls out, not only as illegal, but as criminal. “That they’ve chosen this example shows not just ‘We’re coming after you for crimes’,” says Levitt, but “’We’re coming after you for things that are not crimes.'”

In fact, in just the past few days, two courts in Pennsylvania came to the conclusion that voters should have access to provisional ballots in such situations. If upheld, the decisions will likely help Democrats in the critical swing state, where the party’s voters are significantly more likely to vote by mail than Republicans.

It’s “part of a trend to make voting more confusing… trying to have a chilling effect.”

If the political motivation for a criminal probe such as the one that Hamilton suggests is clear, the legal one is pure fiction. “This is beyond the pale for any prosecutor,” says Levitt. “It’s difficult to convey how extreme this particular example that they’ve chosen is. And that’s the scariest part of the vibe. This is authoritarian fantasy wish fulfillment reduced to paper.”

“It’s an incredibly un-American effort to scare election officials,” adds Boockvar.

The proposal to investigate and prosecute election officials over administrative disputes—and to do it, no less, under a law meant to protect people’s rights—is almost ludicrous. And yet, with the right personnel under the direction of a Trump White House, such legal action is not inconceivable. 

In Texas, Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, recently authorized raids on the homes of Democrats and civil rights advocates in the Latino community. He has also used the power of his office to sue Democratic counties working to make it easier to vote. Last week, he sued Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, for sending registration forms to residents. A few days later, Paxton sued Travis County, where Austin is located, for hiring a contractor to encourage people to register to vote. This wasn’t a nefarious crime but, as one county commissioner put it, a “nice thing to do.” Paxton’s moves come on the heels of legislation passed last year that allows the Texas secretary of state to take over local election administration in Harris County, which is home to Houston and is the state’s largest Democratic stronghold. Trump has floated Paxton as a contender for attorney general if he wins in November.

“Look at what’s happening on the ground in terms of civic activists being harassed in Texas, or voter rolls being purged in loosey-goosey ways,” warns Alex Ault, policy counsel at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

To Ault, its all “part of a trend to make voting more confusing, make people afraid to be active in promoting and defending their right to vote, and trying to have a chilling effect.”

Project 2025 lays out an authoritarian plan to wield the law in order to intimidate election officials and stop people from voting. That is surely not lost on Hamilton, who may get a chance to help implement the proposal if Trump returns to power—nor on the former president calling for prosecutions of anyone who stands in his way.

Former President Donald Trump has been very clear about his intentions if he returns to power: He will take revenge on everyone who, he believes, stood in his way during the 2024 election. “WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences,” he posted on Truth Social on Saturday. “Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials.” 

Trump’s threats to prosecute perceived enemies are nothing new. His road to the White House in 2016 was paved with chants of “Lock her up!” But in 2024, Trump now has a blueprint for taking control of the Department of Justice and directing politically-motivated prosecutions—particularly of local election officials.

“This is authoritarian fantasy wish fulfillment reduced to paper.”

It’s all there in Project 2025’s agenda. In a little-noticed section of the Mandate for Leadership, the 922-page right-wing policy tome, a close Trump ally has laid out how Trump could do just as his post threatened. This two-page segment explains how the DOJ would go after local election administrators who make decisions Trump and his appointees disagree with.

According to experts, the factual premises of the section are mistaken, outlandish, and contradictory to current law. But the message it sends is crystal clear: if an election administration official makes it easier to vote in a way that the Trump DOJ does not like, it will investigate and possibly prosecute that official for criminal wrongdoing.

In the lead-up to November, lawsuits already abound over voting rules and regulations. What forms of ID are needed to register? Do mail-in ballot envelopes need to have hand-written dates on them? Is a county or state doing enough to keep voter rolls accurate? Such decisions can change the outcome of close elections by either enfranchising or disqualifying thousands of voters. Trump and the Republican Party oppose laws and policies that make it easier to vote, and advocate for additional hurdles that make it harder for people to register and cast a ballot. They do this under the guise of thwarting fraud, but in reality their policies make it harder for Democratic constituencies, including people of color, to vote.

While the GOP and its allies have long taken local officials to court over these debates, Project 2025 imagines a dystopian escalation: that the Department of Justice could mount a raid, an investigation, and even a criminal prosecution if it doesn’t like voting policies put in place by a local official. 

The proposal is tucked into the chapter on overhauling the Department of Justice, authored by Gene Hamilton, a former Trump official in the department who is likely to return in a second administration. In it, Hamilton envisions the criminal section at DOJ investigating “the appropriateness or lawfulness of state election guidance.”

“They want to criminalize election administration and disagreements over election administration,” Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Law School and a former Obama Justice Department official, said after reviewing the section.

To allow the federal government to threaten prosecutions over the minutiae of local election administration, Project 2025 perversely cites 1871’s Ku Klux Klan Act, a law passed in the wake of the Civil War to protect the rights of formerly enslaved citizens—including their right to vote. Today, one of the law’s uses is to protect the right to vote from race-based discrimination. Notably, Trump himself faces charges under the statute for his attempt to nullify millions of votes and overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“It’s an incredibly un-American effort to scare election officials.”

According to Project 2025, a second Trump administration would take this law that was meant to go after conspiracies that deprive people of rights and weaponize it in furtherance of the administration’s own plots to deprive people of their right to vote. “They’re asking for a world in which every disagreement about what is legally authorized is investigated for criminal prosecution under the Klan Act,” says Levitt. “That is, charitably, nuts.”

The one example Hamilton provides of an election administration decision that would warrant such a prosecution is chilling. In 2020, Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvania’s elections chief, authorized counties to give provisional ballots to voters whose mail ballots had been disqualified for minor issues.

“We want eligible voters to be able to cast one ballot,” Boockvar says, explaining the decision. “If the first ballot that they tried to cast can’t be cast because they had the wrong date, then that gets tossed. And then they can vote by provisional ballot. There’s no violation of any laws. This is just another way to protect that an American citizen who’s eligible to vote can cast their ballot.”

Indeed, Boockvar’s move helped eligible voters vote. No one was hurt, no one’s rights were taken away, and no fraudulent votes were cast. There was certainly no conspiracy to deprive anyone of their rights. And yet, this is the scenario that Project 2025 calls out, not only as illegal, but as criminal. “That they’ve chosen this example shows not just ‘We’re coming after you for crimes’,” says Levitt, but “’We’re coming after you for things that are not crimes.'”

In fact, in just the past few days, two courts in Pennsylvania came to the conclusion that voters should have access to provisional ballots in such situations. If upheld, the decisions will likely help Democrats in the critical swing state, where the party’s voters are significantly more likely to vote by mail than Republicans.

It’s “part of a trend to make voting more confusing… trying to have a chilling effect.”

If the political motivation for a criminal probe such as the one that Hamilton suggests is clear, the legal one is pure fiction. “This is beyond the pale for any prosecutor,” says Levitt. “It’s difficult to convey how extreme this particular example that they’ve chosen is. And that’s the scariest part of the vibe. This is authoritarian fantasy wish fulfillment reduced to paper.”

“It’s an incredibly un-American effort to scare election officials,” adds Boockvar.

The proposal to investigate and prosecute election officials over administrative disputes—and to do it, no less, under a law meant to protect people’s rights—is almost ludicrous. And yet, with the right personnel under the direction of a Trump White House, such legal action is not inconceivable. 

In Texas, Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, recently authorized raids on the homes of Democrats and civil rights advocates in the Latino community. He has also used the power of his office to sue Democratic counties working to make it easier to vote. Last week, he sued Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, for sending registration forms to residents. A few days later, Paxton sued Travis County, where Austin is located, for hiring a contractor to encourage people to register to vote. This wasn’t a nefarious crime but, as one county commissioner put it, a “nice thing to do.” Paxton’s moves come on the heels of legislation passed last year that allows the Texas secretary of state to take over local election administration in Harris County, which is home to Houston and is the state’s largest Democratic stronghold. Trump has floated Paxton as a contender for attorney general if he wins in November.

“Look at what’s happening on the ground in terms of civic activists being harassed in Texas, or voter rolls being purged in loosey-goosey ways,” warns Alex Ault, policy counsel at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

To Ault, its all “part of a trend to make voting more confusing, make people afraid to be active in promoting and defending their right to vote, and trying to have a chilling effect.”

Project 2025 lays out an authoritarian plan to wield the law in order to intimidate election officials and stop people from voting. That is surely not lost on Hamilton, who may get a chance to help implement the proposal if Trump returns to power—nor on the former president calling for prosecutions of anyone who stands in his way.

The Justice Department on Thursday charged Dimitri Simes, pro-Russian pundit and former head of a Washington think tank, along with his wife, Anastasia Simes, with violating US sanctions by accepting millions of dollars from a Russian state television network and laundering the proceeds.

Reached by phone in Moscow, where he has a home, Dimitri Simes, who was an adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign, declined to comment on the allegations against him. But he denounced the charges against his wife as “lies and half-truths” and argued that the Biden administration is targeting the couple to punish him for expressing pro-Russian views.

“If you think this is a law abiding administration [it] would be shocking, but no, I am not terribly surprised,” Simes said, of the charges against his wife.

“I think that Mr. Garland would have to be ashamed of producing something like that,” Simes added. “It is beneath the dignity of the Department of Justice.”

Simes indicated that he does not plan to return the US to face the charges. He said he believes the Justice Department charged him “to stop me from coming to the US.”

“They want to punish me” for criticizing US support for Ukraine, he claimed.

Simes said he “would most certainly welcome an opportunity to come to a trial in Washington as a witness” to testify against Biden administration officials “who betrayed the US…and are trying to start World War III.”

The indictment against the couple alleges that they received $1 million, a personal car and driver, and a stipend for an apartment in Moscow, in exchange for work they did for Russia’s state-owned Channel One after the US sanctioned the network over Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“These defendants allegedly violated sanctions that were put in place in response to Russia’s illegal aggression in Ukraine,” Matthew Graves, the US Attorney for Washington DC, said in a statement announcing the indictments. “Such violations harm our national security interests—a fact that Dimitri Simes, with the deep experience he gained in national affairs after fleeing the Soviet Union and becoming a US citizen, should have uniquely appreciated.”

Simes is the former longtime head of the Center for National Interest, which was founded by Richard Nixon in 1994 and advocates for “strategic realism” in US foreign policy. Simes’ efforts in 2016 to arrange contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia drew scrutiny from special counsel Robert Mueller, but Simes was not accused of wrongdoing.

The charges against the Simes couple are part of a Justice Department crackdown on Russian influence efforts. Federal prosecutors yesterday indicted two employees of Russian state-controlled network Russia Today with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act by secretly running a right-leaning media company they used to push pro-Kremlin messaging.

The site featured content from pro-Trump pundits including Benny Johnson and Tim Pool. Both Johnson and Pool said they are victims of the scheme.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, said the defendants in the Tenet case “used American-based individuals and entities to exploit, frankly, our free society to try to undermine our election,” including by deploying “unwitting influencers to push Russian propaganda and pro-Russian messaging.” 

DOJ alleges that Anastasia Simes received funds from a Russian businessman named Alexander Udodov, whom the Treasury Department sanctioned last year for his support for the Russian government. Prosecutors allege that Anastasia Simes helped Udodov evade sanctions by “purchasing art and antiques for the benefit of Udodov from galleries and auction houses in the United States and Europe, and having the items shipped to her residence in Huntly, Virginia, where they were stored for onward shipment to Russia.”

Anastasia Simes could not be reached, but Dimitri Simes said his those charges against his wife are false. “She started working with [Udodov] before the sanctions and was never aware of any sanctions” against the oligarch, Simes said.

He also said his wife took no steps, such as contacting a shipping company, “to ship goods to Russia.”

“There was no conspiracy, nothing,” Simes said. “She has a legitimate business. I am proud of my wife. I am very supportive of what she is doing.”

Simes’ attorney David Rivkin declined to comment.

The Justice Department on Thursday charged Dimitri Simes, pro-Russian pundit and and former head of a Washington think tank, along with his wife, Anastasia Simes, with violating US sanctions by accepting millions of dollars from a Russian state television network and laundering the proceeds.

Reached by phone in Moscow, where he has a home, Dimitri Simes, who was an adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign, declined to comment on the allegations against him. But he denounced the charges against his wife as “lies and half-truths” and argued that the Biden administration is targeting the couple to punish him for expressing pro-Russian views.

“If you think this is a law abiding administration [it] would be shocking, but no, I am not terribly surprised,” Simes said, of the charges against his wife.

“I think that Mr. Garland would have to be ashamed of producing something like that,” Simes added. “It is beneath the dignity of the Department of Justice.”

Simes indicated that he does not plan to return the US to face the charges. He said he believes the Justice Department charged him “to stop me from coming to the US.”

“They want to punish me” for criticizing US support for Ukraine, he claimed.

Simes said he “would most certainly welcome an opportunity to come to a trial in Washington as a witness to testify against Biden administration officials “who betrayed the US…and are trying to start World War III.”

The indictment against the couple alleges that they received $1 million, a personal car and driver, and a stipend for an apartment in Moscow, in exchange for work they did for Russia’s state-owned Channel One after the US sanctioned the network over Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“These defendants allegedly violated sanctions that were put in place in response to Russia’s illegal aggression in Ukraine,” US Attorney Matthew M. Graves said in a statement announcing the indictments. “Such violations harm our national security interests—a fact that Dimitri Simes, with the deep experience he gained in national affairs after fleeing the Soviet Union and becoming a US citizen, should have uniquely appreciated.”

Simes is the former longtime head of the Center for National Interest, which was founded by Richard Nixon in 1994 and advocates for “strategic realism” in US foreign policy. Simes’ efforts in 2016 to arrange contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia drew scrutiny from special counsel Robert Mueller, but Simes was not accused of wrongdoing.

The charges against the Simes couple are part of a Justice Department crackdown on Russian influence efforts. Federal prosecutors yesterday indicted two employees of Russian state-controlled network Russia Today with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act by secretly running a right-leaning media company they used to push pro-Kremlin messaging.

The site featured content from pro-Trump pundits including Benny Johnson and Tim Pool. Both Johnson and Pool said they are victims of the scheme.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, said the defendants in the Tenet case “used American-based individuals and entities to exploit, frankly, our free society to try to undermine our election,” including by deploying “unwitting influencers to push Russian propaganda and pro-Russian messaging.” 

DOJ alleges that Anastasia Simes received funds from a Russian businessman named Alexander Udodov, whom the Treasury Department sanctioned last year for his support for the Russian government. Prosecutors allege that Anastasia Simes helped Udodov evade sanctions by “purchasing art and antiques for the benefit of Udodov from galleries and auction houses in the United States and Europe, and having the items shipped to her residence in Huntly, Virginia, where they were stored for onward shipment to Russia.”

Anastasia Simes could not be reached, but Dimitri Simes said his those charges against his wife are false. “She started working with [Udodov] before the sanctions and was never aware of any sanctions” against the oligarch, Simes said.

He also said his wife took no steps, such as contacting a shipping company, “to ship goods to Russia.”

“There was no conspiracy, nothing,” Simes said. “She has a legitimate business. I am proud of my wife. I am very supportive of what she is doing.”

Simes’ attorney David Rivkin declined to comment.

A jury found New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez guilty on all counts on Tuesday afternoon, marking the end of the powerful lawmaker’s two-month corruption trial.

Federal prosecutors had accused Menendez of accepting bribes in exchange for using his clout as the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to benefit Qatar, Egypt, and several personal associates. In June 2022, the FBI found evidence of the bribery scheme at his New Jersey home—gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, and home furnishings, as well as more than $480,000 in cash hidden in envelopes, clothing, closets, and a safe. The senator pleaded not guilty and claimed that he wasn’t aware of the money in the bedroom closet because his wife, Nadine, kept the door locked. Nadine was also charged but her trial has been postponed indefinitely as she recovers from breast cancer surgery. One of the couple’s co-defendants, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty in March and testified against Menendez at trial.

According to Politico and the Bergen Record, in a five-hour closing argument starting last Monday, prosecutor Paul Monteleoni went through each charge in the 18-count indictment, connecting the lawmaker and his wife to gifts from three New Jersey businessmen—the co-defendants in the case—via emails, phone records, texts, and witness testimony. The prosecution team also asserted that Menendez made direct efforts to protect his co-defendants from criminal investigations, including attempting to secure the appointment of a particular candidate to lead the New Jersey US Attorney’s Office in the hope of shutting down a probe.

“Friends do not give friends envelopes stuffed with $10,000 in cash, just out of friendship,” Monteleoni stated last Tuesday. “Friends do not give those same friends kilogram bars of gold worth $60,000 each out of the goodness of their hearts.” 

Defense attorney Adam Fee addressed jurors last Tuesday, calling the prosecution’s evidence a “towering Jenga stack of stuff.” He asserted that Menendez kept money in his home because “everyone in his family was basically hoarding cash” due to their experiences of receiving visits from the Cuban police before they fled in 1951. 

In her testimony, Menendez’s sister, Caridad Gonzalez, recalled that their father didn’t trust banks, saying, “It’s a Cuban thing. They were afraid of losing what they worked so hard for.”

According to the New York Times, after Menendez’s guilty verdicts were announced, Judge Stein said, “I think everybody was very well tried. From the standpoint of the court, it was a well-tried case all around. Thank you.”

There is now pressure on the senator to resign before his term ends, but there is nothing in the Constitution that requires him to give up his seat. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called on Menendez to step down, releasing a statement saying, “In light of this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country, and resign.” Schumer has so far refrained from attempting to expel Menendez; it’s unclear if he will now do so if Menendez refuses to leave willingly.

Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), the Democratic nominee to take over Menendez’s seat in the Senate, described the verdict as “a sad and somber day for New Jersey and our country.” He went on to write, “I called on Senator Menendez to step down when these charges were first made public, and now that he has been found guilty, I believe the only course of action for him is to resign his seat immediately. The people of New Jersey deserve better.”

“I’m deeply disappointed by the jury’s decision,” Menendez said outside the courthouse, according to the Times. “I have never violated my public oath. I’ve never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country.” He ignored reporters’ questions about whether he planned to resign.

Menendez technically remains on the November ballot as an independent candidate. 

This wasn’t Menendez’s first legal rodeo. Prior to winning reelection to the Senate in 2018, he faced a separate corruption prosecution that ended in a mistrial. The congressman was accused of helping a wealthy Florida ophthalmologist in a Medicare fraud scheme. In return, Menendez allegedly received various gifts from the doctor, including trips on his private jet, admission into a resort in the Dominican Republic, and campaign contributions. That case was made more challenging for prosecutors in part because of a unanimous 2016 Supreme Court ruling that overturned former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s (R) conviction on fraud, extortion, and conspiracy charges. At the time, Chief Justice John Roberts said the prosecution’s definition of an “official act” under federal bribery laws was overly broad. 

Tuesday’s verdict follows another landmark Roberts opinion that could make some public corruption cases more difficult for the Department of Justice to pursue. Earlier this month, the court’s conservative majority ruled that former presidents—in that case, Donald Trump—enjoy absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for at least some official acts they performed in office and that prosecutors cannot introduce broad categories of evidence related to those acts. Menendez’s attorneys had some success at trial making a similar argument: Judge Stein ruled that the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause barred prosecutors from using some evidence related to Menendez’s work as a member of Congress. 

But those favorable rulings weren’t enough for Menendez to avoid Tuesday’s guilty verdicts. Stein has set the sentencing date for October 29.