Two cases and the grease that breaks democracy

When Texas filed an outlandish lawsuit to throw out the presidential election results in four other states in Dec. 2020, one of the state’s lawyers was Kurt Olsen. Two years later, when election denier Kari Lake sought to contest her defeat in the Arizona governor’s race, her lawyer was Kurt Olsen. And when Mike Lindell set out to assemble a network of election deniers to spew increasingly wild ideas, guess who he thought would be a natural fit for the group? Kurt Olsen.

If Trump were an actual mob boss, Olsen would be considered a made man. He not only spoke with Trump three times on Jan. 6, but he was also sanctioned by Arizona courts in connection with his representation of Lake. So, it came as little surprise that when it was time for Donald Trump to knight an election denier to spearhead his effort to discredit the 2020 election, he turned to Kurt Olsen.

With the affidavit supporting the search warrant for Fulton County’s election offices now unsealed, it makes one thing clear: Olsen is still hard at work. According to the documents, the FBI’s most recent criminal probe into the 2020 vote in Georgia originated with Olsen.

I must admit that when I heard the affidavit would be released to the public, I expected to see a flood of new, unsubstantiated and far-fetched claims. Instead, it was little more than warmed-over election lies and long-debunked conspiracies. Very little was new. Much of it was false.

All of this raises a series of troubling questions.

How did we end up with a MAGA U.S. attorney in Missouri successfully shepherding a ridiculous search warrant past a magistrate judge to seize six-year-old ballots?

Why did a federal magistrate sign off on a search warrant based on an affidavit containing so many easily verifiable falsehoods?

Most importantly, if this can happen once with respect to old ballots, what is preventing a bogus affidavit from serving as the basis for seizing ballots during the 2026 midterms?

At this point, we do not yet have satisfactory answers. Fulton County’s litigation seeking the return of the seized materials will continue, and the unsealed affidavit gives those efforts a real chance of success. At a minimum, it should put to rest the notion that the Trump administration has any real evidence of wrongdoing.

Shortly after news of the Georgia affidavit became public, we learned that the Department of Justice had asked a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., to indict six Democratic members of the House and Senate for reminding members of the military that they are required to refuse illegal orders from the president. The D.C. grand jury refused, sending U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro back to the White House empty-handed.

The obvious lesson many are drawing is that ordinary citizens are more reliable protectors of democracy than judges in black robes. I understand the impulse to frame this as a matter of good versus bad outcomes, but that view misses the mark.

The six members of Congress were still targeted by the DOJ. Their First Amendment speech was still pored over and analyzed as part of a criminal probe. And while this grand jury, this time, may have acted as a check on executive branch abuse of power, that will not always be the case.

For every grand jury that refuses to indict, there are others that will listen to the one-sided presentation of prosecutors and agree to find probable cause that a crime has been committed.

Our criminal justice system is built on federal prosecutors having every advantage in court. It gives government officials the benefit of the doubt — even when the law does not require it. The presumption of good faith judges afford DOJ lawyers and FBI agents is the grease that makes the system run smoothly and efficiently.

The problem for democracy is that it will not survive three more years of such a system. We cannot hold free and fair elections if judges blindly accept the word of Pam Bondi and Kash Patel’s minions.

What happened in Georgia is a tragedy for the future of free and fair elections. It will only encourage more searches and more seizures.

But what happened in Washington, D.C., is no less a threat to the rule of law. Yes, ordinary citizens prevented that episode from becoming a full-blown crisis, but I am not convinced the lesson the DOJ will learn is to retreat from its misuse of federal grand juries. More likely, it will look for ways to present politicized cases to grand juries in more conservative parts of the country.

The events of the last 24 hours must serve as a wake-up call for a federal judiciary that has grown too comfortable deferring to the executive branch and too slow to hold it accountable.

The federal court in Georgia will have an opportunity to review the search warrant affidavit anew. If it is as deficient as it appears, the court must order the return of the seized materials. If the affidavit contains misstatements, the court’s response must go further to vindicate the rule of law.

Meanwhile, judges overseeing grand juries and presiding over the prosecutions of prominent Democrats must recognize what is happening and dismiss politically motivated cases.

These are not dramatic acts by judges attempting to rebalance the scales of justice. They are the minimum steps necessary to prevent the scales from toppling over altogether.

It’s not too late for states and Congress to stop Trump from subverting the midterms

I’ve wanted Marc Elias to be wrong for seven years, or six years, for as long as he’s been coming on my show. I have wanted his warnings to be wrong, but every single one of them has been either affirmed or prescient.

That is how Nicolle Wallace recently began a segment concerning Donald Trump’s latest attacks on free and fair elections. She asked me how I felt now that even moderate Democrats have begun to echo my warnings about the midterm elections.

The truth is that I take no joy in having correctly predicted that Trump would attack our democracy in 2020. I gain no satisfaction from being right about Republican attacks on election certification. I wish I had been wrong about Donald Trump weaponizing the Department of Justice to go after his political opponents.

But here we are.

Now, with only nine months before the midterm elections, Trump is plotting to prevent Democrats from taking control of Congress. He started by trying to rig congressional maps through midcycle partisan gerrymandering. When that failed, his Department of Justice sought access to state voter files and seized ballots in Fulton County, Georgia. Now he is advocating for a Republican-led federal takeover of elections in blue states.

Most importantly, no Republican has stepped up to stand in his way. His White House is stocked with sycophants and enablers. His Cabinet executes his every wish. Vladimir Putin wishes the Russian Duma were as deferential to him as Republicans in Congress are to Trump.

As Nicolle Wallace pointed out, all Democrats are increasingly being forced to confront this stark reality. The sober-minded traditionalists who typically seek bipartisan agreement have reluctantly come to accept that Trump is torching our democracy — and that there can be no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Contrary to many doomsayers, it is not too late to protect the midterm elections. There are steps Democrats can take now — at both the state and federal levels — to safeguard our elections.

Shortly after the 2025 elections, I published a list of seven voting laws every blue state should enact. While I stand by all seven, I want to highlight three:

1. Ban third-party voter challenges and other forms of vigilantism.

States must prohibit anyone — including the federal government — from challenging a person’s voter registration or right to vote. For years, Republicans have compiled private voter databases to challenge voters they want removed from the rolls. Now, the federal government is attempting to do the same. This practice of allowing voter challenges should be banned outright by every blue state.

2. Provide criminal and civil remedies for voter intimidation.

States must enact new laws that provide stronger protections against voter harassment and intimidation. These laws must allow for both civil and criminal remedies and cover a broad range of threats. Federal laws are not broad enough to address current threats. Existing state laws often fail to account for newer intimidation tactics. States need to adopt the broadest measures possible.

3. Revise and strengthen election-certification laws.

We must recognize that the weakest point in our election process is often the post-election counting and certification phase. Blue-state certification laws must be updated with modern language that unambiguously defines certification as a ministerial duty. These laws should allow private parties and state officials to sue to compel certification and impose criminal penalties on election deniers. State courts should also be empowered to certify elections when election officials fail to meet their obligations.

With Congress now negotiating funding priorities for the coming year, I offer the following four suggestions for new federal laws:

1. Prohibit federal law enforcement or the Department of Justice from operating within 500 feet of any polling place, counting location or election office.

Federal law enforcement must be barred from engaging in any legal or law enforcement activity near anyone casting a ballot, administering an election, or counting or certifying votes.

2. Prohibit federal officials from taking investigative steps involving elections from 30 days before Election Day until one week after the last member of the new Congress is seated.

For years, the DOJ has maintained a policy against making public criminal investigations involving candidates or voting in the run-up to Election Day. That policy is insufficient. Congress should codify a ban on any investigative steps — public or private — during this period.

3. Require that any criminal grand jury subpoena, arrest or search warrant involving elections be sought by the Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney for the district where the activity occurs.

Donald Trump has attempted to circumvent U.S. attorney offices to pursue political investigations and prosecutions. For example, the search warrant in Fulton County was sought by the U.S. attorney in Missouri, not by federal prosecutors in Georgia. Congress should prohibit this. Only the Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney for the relevant district should be authorized to seek such actions. If no U.S. attorney has been confirmed, approval should be required from the longest-serving federal prosecutor in that office.

4. Remove immunity from federal, state and local election officials for any action that interferes with or denies a qualified voter the right to vote or have their ballot counted.

Officials who disenfranchise voters should not be able to hide behind official immunity. Allowing lawsuits against election deniers for voter suppression or vote denial would create a powerful deterrent against such conduct.

None of these steps alone will guarantee a free and fair election in 2026. Taken together, however, they weaken the hand of those seeking to undermine the will of the voters while empowering those committed to protecting democracy.

Trump wants to take over voting. Mike Johnson is willing to help

Donald Trump has made it clear that he would like to cancel the midterm elections. He wished he had seized ballot boxes after he lost the 2020 presidential election. He has made clear that he would like the Department of Justice to operate as an extension of his political will. He said we should cancel the midterms.

Recently, Trump raised the threat to the 2026 midterm elections to an entirely new level. Speaking to former FBI deputy director Dan Bongino on his podcast, Trump revealed a new wrinkle in his plan: He wants Republicans to take over voting in Democratic-run states and cities.

“These people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally. And you know, it’s amazing that the Republicans aren’t tougher on it. The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over.’ We should take over the voting — the voting in at least many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

We need to listen carefully and listen closely. Trump is telegraphing his playbook to steal the 2026 elections. Here’s how he will do it: 

First, he will falsely claim that there is widespread illegal voting. He will merge his demonization of immigrants with his long-standing election denialism.

Next, he will use the pretext of noncitizen voting to execute a partisan takeover of voting rules and election administration in swing districts with high concentrations of Democratic voters. He may even use federal paramilitary forces already at his disposal to block voting access. Finally, he will use the Department of Justice to seize ballots and take over vote counting.

As I previously wrote, the recent raid to seize ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, was in part a dry run to work out the logistics of how this could happen in the future. With a handpicked prosecutor in place and the public now accustomed to ballot seizures, Trump has set the stage for 2026.

If this targeted approach does not guarantee a Republican majority in Congress, he will go even further toward a complete federal takeover, or what Trump calls “Republicans … nationalizing the voting.”

Some have focused only on that last phrase to suggest that Trump is simply restating his desire for federal legislation. Such an interpretation is either hopelessly naïve or made in bad faith. Congressional legislation does not constitute a “takeover” of voting. It would not be purely partisan. Most importantly, it would not apply only to “15 places.”

If there was any doubt about what Trump meant, it was put to rest earlier today when avowed election denier and House Speaker Mike Johnson added fuel to the fire. He told a reporter, “We had three House Republican candidates who were ahead on Election Day in the last election cycle, and every time a new tranche of ballots came in they just magically whittled away until their leads were lost… It looks on its face to be fraudulent. Can I prove that? No.”

Recall that as a backbencher in 2020, Johnson was Trump’s loyal foot soldier in trying to rally Republicans to overturn the results of the presidential election. And on the night of Jan. 6, 2021, he voted to oppose certifying the election for President Joe Biden.

 Now, with the power and influence of the speaker’s podium behind him, Johnson is backing Trump’s attacks on “blue states.” Even worse, he is peddling conspiracies about “magically” appearing ballots in House races and vote counting that “looks on its face fraudulent.”

It is time we wake up and take Trump’s threats seriously and literally. Based on past behavior, if anything, what he said is almost certainly an understatement of how far he is actually willing to go.

After the 2020 election, we were assured that Trump would accept the outcome. After he and his allies lost more than 60 cases in court, we were told he just needed time to grieve. Then came the violence of Jan. 6, 2021.

Since then, his rhetoric has grown increasingly strident and his behavior more extreme and erratic. As his popularity drops and the reality sets in that Republicans may be swept from power this fall, he is likely to become even more dangerous.

His effort to rig elections may have started with extreme mid-cycle redistricting, but when those efforts largely failed to deliver the advantage he hoped for, he shifted toward taking over voting itself.

In August, he explained his theory in stark detail. He said he would ban mail-in voting and decertify voting equipment he did not like. With fewer ways to vote, he expects the electorate to skew more Republican.

If that fails, he laid out a backup plan: taking over vote counting and ballot tabulation from the states. “The States,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, “are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them … to do.”

As a matter of constitutional law, this is flat-out wrong. But Trump is not interested in following the Constitution. As we have seen before, he prefers to act by force. 

So, when Trump tells Dan Bongino that he wants Republicans to take over voting in selected states or cities, we shouldn’t assume he’s bluffing. We need to believe him. And when the speaker of the House goes along with Trump’s lies, we need to realize that it’s up to us to defend free and fair elections and the rule of law. 

That means states and localities must harden their election processes and reform their laws to resist illegal federal takeovers. Lawyers must be aggressive in protecting voters’ rights to cast ballots, have them accurately counted, and included in certified results. 

Most importantly, all of us — as citizens who care about our democracy — must organize in our communities. We must educate friends, family and neighbors about the challenges we face. We must ensure that they are informed and invested in their right to vote so they can go to the polls in 2026 with the power and knowledge to confidently use their voice. 

DOJ’s legal machinery to subvert the 2026 election is already in place

As shocking as it was that the Department of Justice raided Fulton County to seize ballots from the 2020 election, it was not a surprise. Earlier this month, Donald Trump lamented that he had not seized the Georgia ballot boxes back in 2020. He told the World Economic Forum that “the 2020 U.S. presidential election was rigged” and that “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did.”

What was surprising was that the warrant did not originate from federal prosecutors in Georgia or Washington, D.C. Instead, it was sought by Thomas Albus, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri.

My initial assumption was that the DOJ had found some tenuous connection between Fulton County and Missouri. Perhaps, I thought, the ballots had been printed or mailed from St. Louis, or voting equipment had come from a company with ties to Missouri. 

Unfortunately, according to Bloomberg News, the reason is far more straightforward — and far more dangerous for free and fair elections.

According to the report, prior to the search, Albus was designated as a special assistant to the attorney general. Federal law permits special assistants to operate with nationwide jurisdiction and the ability to practice in any federal courthouse in the country.

When used appropriately, the special assistant designation allows lawyers with particular expertise to assist federal prosecutors in U.S. attorney’s offices. This White House, however, appears to be using it to empower specific Trump loyalists to circumvent and sideline career lawyers in local U.S. attorney’s offices.

Essentially, the White House and Attorney General Pam Bondi are creating the equivalent of special counsels — but without insulation from political influence. In this instance, Albus has reportedly been empowered to investigate election-integrity cases nationwide.

While he may have begun by seizing ballots related to the 2020 election — likely to please the boss — that search, troubling as it was, concerned an election that was certified years ago. Joe Biden served his full term, and the statute of limitations has run out on any potential, made-up charges.

Far more dangerous is what Albus may do moving forward. There is no reason to believe he will limit his work to the 2020 presidential election. Republican candidates lodged bogus fraud claims in several high-profile races in 2022 and 2024.

Most worrisome, Albus may be pressured by the White House to use his prosecutorial power to interfere with the upcoming 2026 elections. It is one thing to seize old ballots; it is quite another to imagine federal agents seizing ballots from county offices on election night or the day after.

And that’s only the beginning of the chaos he could unleash. States and counties have limited supplies of voting machines and tabulators, and Trump has already threatened to unilaterally decertify certain machines.

A federal prosecutor willing to abuse his power would be a potent tool in achieving Trump’s stated goals. The same is true of mail-in ballots and other forms of voting that Trump seeks to outlaw or disrupt.

While this is obviously concerning, all hope is not lost. Trump and his sycophants face significant obstacles in their efforts to subvert the midterms. First, Albus would need to compromise his professional integrity to participate in a scheme to steal elections. He would also need to enlist other federal prosecutors and FBI agents willing to carry out such plans. 

Over the last 10 years, we have become accustomed to people in Trump’s orbit sacrificing their integrity for him. But we have also witnessed some surprising exceptions — leaders standing up to defend democracy. We should not concede that Trump will always be able to depend on his foot soldiers falling in line. 

Perhaps most importantly, the courts would have to fail to stop them. Search warrants — including the one used in Fulton County — are required to be reviewed and signed by a federal judicial officer. While that did not prevent the Fulton County search, a judge reviewing a similar application next November should be far more skeptical.

There is also an important role for lawyers and states in pushing back against abuses of power. At present, the most significant voting rights battle centers on the Department of Justice’s demand for unredacted copies of states’ complete voter files.

The department has demanded this highly sensitive data from all 50 states and has already sued 23 states, including the District of Columbia, for refusing to comply. Pam Bondi even attempted to leverage the tragic killing of Alex Pretti to obtain this data from Minnesota.

Without access to this information, the DOJ would lack a critical tool for effective voter suppression and election subversion. That is why my law firm and I are fighting alongside these states in every one of these cases.

There will be further legal challenges initiated by the DOJ between now and next November. Some can be addressed by outside lawyers like me. Others must be defended by the states alone. Those states must begin preparing now for sustained resistance against federal overreach in the conduct of their elections.

The appointment of Thomas Albus — and Donald Trump’s authoritarianism — makes clear that this threat is not hypothetical, but already underway.

Lies, violence and the American state

In early 1974, as he awaited his fate for writing about the horrors of the Soviet penal system, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn decided to take on the authoritarian regime’s most potent tool: lies. “In our country,” he wrote to Western journalists, “the lie has become not just a moral category, but a pillar of the state. In breaking with the lie, we are performing a moral act, not a political one.”

Several weeks later, on the day he was exiled from his country, he explained the connection between government lies and state-sponsored violence against citizens:

When violence bursts onto the peaceful human condition, its face is flush with self-assurance. It displays on its banner and proclaims: “I am Violence! Make way, step aside, I will crush you!” But violence ages swiftly. A few years pass — and it is no longer sure of itself. To prop itself up, to appear decent, it will without fail call forth its ally —Lies. For violence has nothing to cover itself with but lies, and lies can only persist through violence.

Fifty-two years later, the Soviet Union is gone, but Solzhenitsyn’s words have taken on new power in our own country. Over the last year, we have seen this administration use violence against its citizens with self-assurance. They have, in effect, conveyed the message: “I will crush you.”

But as Solzhenitsyn predicted, the violence we are witnessing every day in Minneapolis and elsewhere has proven deeply unpopular. It is indecent, arbitrary and cruel. Its tactics violate our rights as Americans to protest our government. Its purpose violates our moral conscience as human beings.

As a result, that violence has quickly required the support of lies to perpetuate itself.

Donald Trump is an infamous liar. He has lied his way through business, law and politics. The movement he built is based on lies — lies about the economy, immigration and crime. But its most important lie — the Big Lie — is about democracy itself.

Trump abhors democracy because it allows ordinary Americans to reject his lies. Even worse for Trump, it allows us to reject him.

When voters did exactly that in 2020, he responded with more lies — lies in court, lies in the media, and lies to his supporters. On Jan. 6, 2021, those lies turned into violence.

Yet, as Solzhenitsyn suggests, that was not the end of the story. The violence itself then required more lies — about the Capitol Police, the Department of Justice, election workers, judges and his political enemies.

But something has changed in recent weeks. The lies are no longer about shadowy figures wielding great power and influence. They are now targeting everyday citizens — people standing in their own communities, in front of their homes, protecting their neighbors. 

In their most grotesque form, these lies have smeared a mother who was shot in the face while turning her car. They have labeled an ICU nurse who was beaten and shot dead in the street a domestic terrorist.

Shortly after the killing on Saturday, Attorney General Pam Bondi — whose job is to protect the rights of U.S. citizens — sent a letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. In it, she tied restoring the rule of law to Minnesota’s compliance with the Trump administration’s demand for the state’s unredacted voter rolls.

The implicit message is clear: The violence aimed at Minnesota citizens could stop if the state gives the administration the tools to subvert the next election — effectively trading one set of lies for another.

News of this letter spread rapidly online last night. Anyone who has followed Trump closely knows that he does not care about the killing of U.S. citizens protesting his government. He will enable it and lie about it if it suits his needs. But Trump cares enormously about rigging elections — and lying about it.

In that sense, Solzhenitsyn’s formulation is not entirely correct. In America today, the lie is both a moral category and a pillar of the state. And in breaking with the lie, we are performing both a moral act and a political one.

Nevertheless, his prescription for resisting authoritarianism remains sound. We must combat lies in every way we can. It is not enough to condemn the violence and protest it; we must also condemn the lying and resist it.

Regardless of the risk or the sense of futility, we must commit ourselves to bearing witness to the truth and proclaiming it to anyone who will listen:

• Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.
• Renée Good was shot in the face while trying to turn her car and leave.
• Alex Pretti was beaten by six federal agents and then shot and killed.
• The federal government is violating the constitutional rights of its citizens.
• Trump and the DOJ are violating federal law by refusing to release the Epstein files.
• Trump and the GOP are preparing to subvert the 2026 election.

Solzhenitsyn lived the next two decades in exile until the lies of the Soviet Union led to its collapse. His campaign against the lies in his country proved prophetic. He taught us that authoritarianism prevails not because people stop believing the truth, but because they stop saying it aloud. If we wish to remain free, we must refuse that silence.

We cannot be nostalgic for the United States

Only a day before Donald Trump stood on a global stage and declared that he was prosecuting political enemies, Prime Minister Mark Carney issued an important warning: “We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.”

In his observation, Carney touched on America’s Achilles’ heel and the challenge for the pro-democracy movement. Though the United States is a young country, we celebrate it as the world’s oldest democracy. Though Jim Crow ended only a generation ago, we recite how this country guarantees liberty and justice for all.

The United States’ identity is entangled in nostalgia. We tell ourselves that the Statue of Liberty’s torch guided immigrants towards a beacon of hope. Our presidents paved the path to peace in two world wars. We are not only a world power, but the global light of justice and liberty. 

There is a reason why Donald Trump’s slogan to Make America Great Again resonated with the masses, even though it excluded so many.

Like many families, mine came to America to flee persecution. Under the Russian czars, they lived in the Pale of Settlement — the only area in the empire where Jews were allowed to legally reside. Life in the Pale was difficult. Jewish families were subject to pogroms, where they would be beaten, killed and expelled from their villages. 

America wasn’t the only safe haven, but it was certainly a safe haven for many — including my family. As Holocaust survivor Benjamin Meed was told when his boat docked at New York Harbor after the long journey from Warsaw, “Everything is open to you. What you do is up to you.”

That America doesn’t exist anymore. And we cannot afford to be nostalgic for it. Yet, we still are.

During his testimony on Thursday, former Special Counsel Jack Smith warned: “If we do not hold the most powerful people in our society to the same standards, the rule of law, it can be catastrophic. It can endanger our election process, it can endanger election workers and ultimately, our democracy.” 

While I agree with the threat posed by Trump, I worry about Smith’s use of the word “if.” We do not hold the most powerful people in our society to the same standards. The rule of law is not applied fairly or to all. 

Our election process is already endangered. Election officials are regularly doxed and attacked by Trump and his supporters. Our democracy is already on life support. It is already catastrophic. 

Worse still, it’s not coming back. Those who are looking in the rearview mirror and expecting the rule of law to crawl back to us are fooling themselves. Those who expect the old norms and institutions to protect us are endangering our democracy.

For over a year now, Trump has targeted and threatened his political opponents. His administration has ignored court orders. His party is actively trying to manipulate and rig the next election for his political party. 

The paradox of the current moment is that while none of this is normal, it is also not extraordinary. It is the country in which we live, and we are not going back to a previous era. Those who sit around and insist things will revert after Trump is gone have learned nothing from the history of why many of our families once fled to this country.

It’s heartbreaking that this is what the United States has come to. But we are doing ourselves a disservice by thinking otherwise. 

From what I witnessed at Davos, our NATO allies have come to terms with the new world order. The United States is no longer a steady ally and a trusted global power — but an unstable volcano ready to erupt. We cannot be looked to for democracy, nor can we be the torchbearers for peace. They should be wary of us, and they should be prepared for uncertainty. 

Just as nostalgia is not a strategy for them, it cannot be one for those of us who care about democracy and free and fair elections. 

There are no longer huddled masses at the Statue of Liberty. Instead, we see ICE agents terrorizing our cities.

Our government no longer believes that its power comes from the consent of the governed. Instead, Trump believes power comes from threats and force.

Most importantly, we no longer have a country in which we have one system of justice for all, and no one is above the law. 

However, if we allow ourselves to let go of nostalgia and recognize our current reality, we can, as Carney said, “build something better, stronger, more just.”

Donald Trump just announced breaking news. The legacy media ignored it.

A frail, sickly Donald Trump took the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Most of the speech was standard fare — false claims of credit sprinkled between personal grievances and outright lies.

Imitating an aging mob boss, he once again threatened our allies and praised our enemies. When it was over, the legacy media played their familiar roles as stenographers for Trump, while the corporate CEOs in attendance looked relieved to have the speech behind them.

As usual, there was virtually no mention of the most important moment of the speech. After rambling about NATO, Trump said this, as Democracy Docket reported:

The 2020 U.S. presidential election [was] rigged. It was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that. They found out. People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. That’s probably breaking news.

For once, I agree with Trump: This should be breaking news — just obviously not for the reason Trump is implying. Yet it is barely being treated by the legacy media as news at all.

Think about that. Not only is Trump repeating a lie about the conduct of the 2020 election, but he is also announcing — at an international conference — that his administration will soon prosecute his political opponents for having defeated him in an election.

And he has already taken the first steps to do so. In Georgia, the Department of Justice sued Fulton County demanding they turn over 2020 election documents. Many of the 2020 conspiracy theories revolve around Georgia — after all, it’s where Trump asked Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes, enough to reverse his loss in the state. 

Meanwhile, in Florida, Trump ally Mike Davis said that a grand jury has been impaneled to investigate what he called a decades-long conspiracy against Trump. The grand jury will consider charges against Democrats. 

Trump’s revenge tour has already hit the road — and they’re playing the greatest MAGA hits. To win the midterms, Trump needs to sow doubt in free and fair elections and intimidate Democrats from fighting back. That means launching investigations, seeking criminal charges and suing state and local officials who are just doing their jobs. 

In Davos, Trump didn’t hide the ball — he painted a clear picture of his authoritarian power grab for international allies. 

Now, imagine if the leader of another NATO country gave a speech declaring that they intend to prosecute their political opponents for defeating them at the ballot box. Imagine if that leader had recently called for the cancellation of upcoming elections and expressed regret for not seizing ballot boxes in the past.

Finally, imagine if that country’s largest media outlets were ignoring the story as their owners paid millions of dollars to curry favor with the leader.

The largest news outlets in this country would describe that behavior as authoritarianism. The corporate-owned media would smugly report on how much stronger and more principled they are than their counterparts abroad. We would be assured that this could never happen here because our media holds power to account and reports without fear or favor.

For years, we have been lectured on the importance of major news outlets — about how their integrity prevents our democracy from dying in darkness. Yet Donald Trump just stood on a well-lit global stage and declared his intention to abuse the criminal justice system to destroy electoral democracy in the United States. Where are these major outlets now? 

For years, I have warned that we cannot entrust large media corporations with the role of protecting the First Amendment or democracy itself. Their interests are too often compromised by the financial holdings of their owners. Their business model depends on selling advertising to other large corporations — many of which have their own incentives to please Trump.

I started Democracy Docket in 2020 in response to forces that were already in motion, knowing they would only grow worse. From the beginning, it has been committed to filling the void left by an increasingly hollowed-out legacy media. It is not beholden to any corporate board; it has no venture capital or private equity investors. Its only loyalty is to facts, democracy and its subscribers and members.

We are in a democratic crisis that the legacy media refuses to acknowledge. Its near silence today as Trump announced the prosecutions of those who fought his unconstitutional power grab is a symptom of a much deeper disease plaguing our media ecosystem.

If democracy is to endure, it will not be because the corporate media finally found its backbone. It will be because independent journalists, supported by engaged citizens, refused to let authoritarianism advance unchecked. Democracy Docket was created for precisely this moment — and its mission has never been more urgent.

The DOJ offers only excuses as the Epstein Files remain secret

It has been more than 30 days since the Department of Justice was required by federal law to make all of the Epstein Files public. According to the DOJ’s own estimates, it has released less than 1% so far. Even worse, the last time the Department of Justice released any documents was Dec. 23, 2025 — four days after the statutory deadline for full disclosure.

Why the DOJ failed to meet this deadline, and why even the rolling productions have now stopped, is a matter of intense speculation and debate. The most likely explanation is also the most obvious: Donald Trump does not want the files released, and the DOJ is doing his bidding.

The department would have you believe the delay is due to the sheer volume of records, making the Dec. 19 deadline unrealistic — bordering on impossible. Just last week, Pam Bondi told a federal judge in New York that the DOJ is now employing “over 500 reviewers.”

But if the DOJ is, as she suggests three separate times in her letter to the judge, making “substantial progress,” why has it not released more partial productions of documents that have already been reviewed? She does not say. 

Nor does she acknowledge or explain the Department’s other violations of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, including redacting the names of men and failing to provide Congress with the mandated report.

Bondi also has not explained how the current reviews differ from the prior reviews the DOJ claimed to have completed last spring and summer. For example, last July, the DOJ and FBI issued a joint statement asserting that “the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted an exhaustive review of investigative holdings relating to Jeffrey Epstein.”

According to Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, “the FBI conducted digital searches of its databases, hard drives, and network drives, as well as physical searches of squad areas, locked cabinets, desks, closets, and other areas where responsive material may have been stored. These searches uncovered a significant amount of material, including more than 300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence.”

We were told that all of these materials were “systematically reviewed” by “teams of agents, analysts, attorneys, and privacy and civil liberties experts.” The result, we were told, was that there was “no incriminating ‘client list,’” nor any “evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

When Congress enacted the disclosure law, it reasonably assumed that the 300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence already reviewed in July could be promptly made public, with only victim-identifying information redacted.

That did not happen.

Instead, after several small productions, the DOJ claimed on Christmas Eve that it had recently “uncovered over a million more documents potentially related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.” By New Year’s Eve, according to the Associated Press, the number of documents requiring review had ballooned to 5.2 million.

Three days later, the DOJ dropped another bombshell: more than 2 million documents remained unreviewed, and the Department had released just 0.6 percent of all the materials in its possession.

With each announcement, we were assured that the DOJ was increasing the number of lawyers conducting the review and that they were “working around the clock,” but that the final release “may take a few more weeks.” Those weeks have now turned into a month, and we still do not have the files.

There is one additional fact related to the Epstein Files release that has largely gone unnoticed. In early December, shortly before the full set of Epstein Files was supposed to be made public, Ghislaine Maxwell filed a motion to vacate her conviction. This is a routine motion often filed by federal prisoners after their direct appeals have been rejected.

After she filed the motion, the government successfully sought to place it — along with 148 exhibits — under seal so the materials could be reviewed for victim-identifying information that should remain confidential. The judge ordered prosecutors to complete that review and provide a public version by Jan. 6.

On Jan. 6, government lawyers requested another week, to complete the review. Then, on Jan. 11, they asked for yet another extension — until Feb. 10.

In the meantime, a redacted version of Maxwell’s motion was made public. Among her claims, Maxwell asserts that there may have been “secret settlements with 25 men.” These agreements, she claims, were “hidden” from her before trial. Had she known about them, she says she “would have certainly called the men as witnesses” in her defense.

To be clear, it is entirely possible that Maxwell’s claims lack merit. She is a convicted criminal with a clear motive to lie.

Still, it is difficult to understand why a team of 500 lawyers reviewing the full Epstein Files has sought multiple extensions — totaling nearly two months — to review and release just 148 documents attached to her motion.

Those reviewing the Epstein Files for damaging material are searching for needles in a very large haystack. More than almost anyone else, Maxwell knows where those needles might be hidden. One might reasonably assume that the 148 documents she attached to a motion seeking her freedom would be among the most important.

It is also possible that the delay in reviewing and releasing these documents is purely administrative. Maxwell’s filings may be disorganized, and the government lawyers assigned to the case may be occupied with more pressing matters.

Perhaps all of these questions — the July review, the shifting document counts, the missed deadlines, the halted rolling productions, and the Maxwell petition — have simple explanations. If so, we have not heard them.

Maybe it is all innocent. But nothing about the Epstein Files has ever been innocent. Maybe the DOJ is simply being careful to protect victims. Or maybe the DOJ is once again doing what it believes is best for Trump, and everything else be damned.

Like you, I hope we find out soon.

“60 Minutes” Obeyed in Advance

The “60 Minutes” we have known is dead. The fearless program that many of us grew up with was strangled by corporate titans seeking favor with the Trump White House. I don’t know what is next for the storied franchise, but it will never be the same.

Last May, as Donald Trump was targeting lawyers and law firms with sanctions, “60 Minutes” aired a segment that began as follows:

It was nearly impossible to get anyone on camera for this story because of the fear now running through our system of justice. In recent weeks, President Trump has signed orders against several law firms—orders with the power to destroy them. That matters because lawsuits have been a check on the president’s power. Many firms and attorneys have been targeted. Among them is Marc Elias, a longtime opponent of Trump, who is the only lawyer the president has named who was willing to appear on 60 Minutes.

I agreed to speak out publicly because I believed it was the right thing to do. I chose to do so on “60 Minutes” because I trusted it to be the least likely news outlet to bend to pressure from the administration.

I have no regrets about speaking out against Trump. If anything, I am even more willing to do so now than I was in May. However, I no longer believe “60 Minutes” can be trusted to stand up to the Trump administration. 

Only hours before it was set to air an episode about the treatment of migrants shipped to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, “60 Minutes” mysteriously pulled the episode. Approximately an hour before airtime, the highly rated CBS News program posted the following on social media:

EDITOR’S NOTE: The broadcast lineup for tonight’s edition of ‘60 Minutes’ has been updated. Our report on “Inside CECOT” will air in a future broadcast.

It was immediately clear what had happened. CBS’s parent company, Paramount, had preemptively caved to pressure from the White House. In the words of authoritarianism expert Timothy Snyder, CBS News had “obeyed in advance.”

This is nothing new for the former Tiffany Network. To secure its most recent merger deal, Paramount compromised the integrity of “60 Minutes” by paying Trump $16 million to settle a bogus lawsuit involving an interview with Kamala Harris. Earlier this year, it also attempted to appease Trump by airing a softball interview with him.

Yet none of these measures was enough to satisfy Trump. As everyone who capitulates to Trump eventually learns, his memory is short and his list of grievances is long. In Paramount’s case, its backbending wasn’t enough to secure the administration’s support for the company’s newly proposed takeover of Warner Bros.

In fact, Trump recently attacked both “60 Minutes” and Paramount’s new owners on social media:

For those people that think I am close with the new owners of CBS, please understand that 60 Minutes has treated me far worse since the so-called “takeover” than they have ever treated me before. If they are friends, I’d hate to see my enemies!

We now know that CBS was not done compromising “60 Minutes’” integrity in its efforts to curry favor with Trump. The CECOT segment had been fully vetted, cleared by lawyers, and was ready to air — until CBS News’ new conservative editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, reportedly stepped in and insisted the story be held pending further reporting.

Make no mistake: There will be no further reporting. There will only be further compromises to please the White House. 

Sharyn Alfonsi, the “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the story, wrote in an internal email that pulling the story was “a political” decision, not an editorial one. “We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state.” 

For someone like me, who relied on the integrity and good faith of CBS News, this is profoundly disappointing. But whether I appeared on “60 Minutes” or not, my life was going to be the same. Trump hated me before I appeared, and he still hates me today.

I continue to be a thorn in his side. I regularly appear in the media as a Trump critic, and I litigate against his administration and its political allies. The risks I have taken did not materially increase by appearing on this single broadcast.

But there are others — like the former inmates of CECOT — whose risks are vastly greater. Whistleblowers and victims of this administration may face severe personal and professional consequences, including threats to their lives.

Once upon a time, “60 Minutes” was an honorable institution where people in vulnerable positions could trust that their interests would be protected and their stories would be treated fairly. After last night, that is simply no longer the case. The stakes for many of these individuals are too high to trust a network willing to compromise itself so quickly to please an authoritarian.

As for the rest of us — the viewers and consumers of news — we must align our values with our media support. When you watch CBS News, you are tacitly endorsing what is happening. You are signaling to advertisers that their money is well spent reaching you on the corrupted platform.

The solution is not to switch to ABC, which also capitulated to and paid Trump. Nor is it NBC, whose parent company is reportedly helping Trump fund efforts to undermine the White House.

If we are to survive this era, we must support independent news outlets that share our values and are unafraid to challenge Trump. I started Democracy Docket to be one of those outlets, but there are others, too. Now is the time to show them your support — and signal to the media’s corporate overlords that you will not stand for their weakness and capitulation.

Seven Voting Laws Every Blue State Should Enact Right Now

The fight of our generation is the struggle to protect our democracy. Each day brings more news about how Donald Trump and the GOP are rigging maps, enacting new voter suppression laws, and preparing to subvert honest election results.

Understandably, people focus on what the Trump administration and red states are doing to undermine free and fair elections. While the voting laws and rules in red states can pose serious challenges to voters, we cannot fail to look at the entire picture.

Many states controlled by Democrats also have barriers to voting and insufficient protections against bad actors at the local level. Rather than play defense, these states should embrace reforms that will enfranchise voters and provide strong safeguards against election deniers.

I am often asked what laws I would recommend blue states adopt. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach, there are seven changes every state could adopt right now, for virtually no cost or administrative burden.

1. Enact a statutory right to vote for every eligible citizen.

This may surprise you, but there is no general federal constitutional right to vote. While state constitutions typically include greater explicit protection, too often these rights are ill-defined or have been limited by past legal precedent. Every state can address this by enacting an explicit right to vote in state law. For states looking for a place to start, here is a simple two-sentence bill that will get them most of the way there:

Every citizen of legal voting age shall have the right to vote and have one’s vote counted in all elections. A government may not impair or burden the ability of an individual to vote or to have one’s vote counted in any election unless the government can prove that the action causing the impairment or burden significantly furthers an important, particularized governmental interest through the least restrictive means available.

2. Ban signature matching of mail-in ballots.

Too many states use the junk science of signature matching to “validate” returned mail-in ballots. Under this method, a voter’s signature on the return envelope is compared to the signature on file with the state. If, in the opinion of an election official, the two signatures do not match, the ballot is set aside and not counted unless the voter “cures” it.

The problems with this approach are serious. Every election, hundreds of thousands of lawful ballots are discarded because an election official decides that, in their opinion, two signatures do not match. We need to ban this harmful practice.

First, there is no requirement that a voter maintain a consistent signature to exercise the right to vote. Many voters, particularly young voters, do not keep a consistent signature across documents. With more voters registering on tablets, this problem is worsening with each passing election.

Second, there is simply no science supporting the current practice of having election workers compare a single signature to the image of a specimen signature on file. Election officials are not experts in signature comparison, and true experts have repeatedly testified that the methods used by states to compare signatures cannot support the current practice.

Finally, the ballot-curing process shifts the burden to the voter, who has done nothing other than cast a lawful ballot, instead of the election worker who has mistakenly rejected it.

3. Count all ballots postmarked by Election Day.

States should count ballots mailed before or on Election Day, even if they arrive at the election office a few days later due to postal delays. Nineteen states already have such laws, and every state with Democratic majorities should enact its own grace-period law.

4. Guarantee voters they will not have to wait more than 30 minutes in line.

Long voting lines are a scourge in our election system. They disproportionately penalize voters who can least afford time off work. They can dissuade voters from turning out and create a negative experience that affects future participation.

Every blue state should guarantee that voters can cast a ballot in person without waiting more than 30 minutes. This starts by requiring counties to track and publicize wait times. I support going further by providing $15 an hour in compensation to voters who wait more than 30 minutes.

We have the resources and the technology. We must end long lines.

5. Ban third-party voter challenges and other forms of vigilantism.

No one should have their registration or right to vote challenged by a random stranger they do not know and have never met. Yet that is what is happening in too many places.

Republicans have built private voter databases used to encourage third-party activists and election vigilantes to submit spreadsheets of voters they want removed from the rolls or hassled at polling places. This practice should be banned and outlawed.

It is bad enough that we must deal with official voter purges. No voter should have to justify their rights based on a nongovernmental challenger.

6. Provide criminal and civil remedies for voter intimidation.

With each passing election, we see new forms of voter intimidation. Direct threats against individuals and groups are rising. Online harassment is at record levels. Videotaping citizens dropping off ballots or entering polling locations has become more routine.

States need new laws that provide stronger protections against voter harassment and intimidation. These laws must allow for prompt civil and criminal remedies and cover a broad range of threats.

Federal laws are not enough. Existing state laws often fail to address newer intimidation techniques. States must move now to ban these practices.

7. Revise and strengthen election-certification laws.

We have all become familiar with the pageantry of democracy that takes place after federal elections. Local officials send results to counties, counties review and certify them to the states, and governors and secretaries of state certify them to Congress.

Unfortunately, what was once a process that strengthened confidence has been weaponized. Local election offices are increasingly filled with election deniers. County canvassing boards are being pressured to refuse to certify accurate results.

States must revise their certification process to make it harder to subvert. Laws must be updated with modern language and must unambiguously state that certification is a ministerial duty. Private parties and state officials should be allowed to sue to compel certification.

Election officials who breach their duty should face monetary penalties and lose official immunity. If all else fails, state courts should be empowered to certify elections.

If we want to preserve free and fair elections, we must pass all these laws. We cannot react after the damage is done. 2026 is around the corner, and Donald Trump and Republicans are not slowing down. That is why we need to act immediately.