Election denier Cleta Mitchell granted DHS elections official Heather Honey a lot of money

Anti-voting lawyer Cleta Mitchell granted just over $72,000 last fiscal year to Heather Honey, an election conspiracy theorist who was hired last year by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for its election integrity division. In fiscal year 2024, Honey’s company was granted $121,284 for consulting services. 

The grants came from Mitchell’s Foundation for Accountability, Integrity & Research in Elections Fund (FAIR), paid to Honey’s Verity Vote, LLC company for consulting and research services, according to tax filings. Honey is also listed in the tax document as a vice president and director for FAIR, for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2025. 

Honey and Mitchell have a long track record of working together to undermine election security and spreading false claims of voter fraud. Honey founded the anti-voting Pennsylvania Fair Elections group, which falls under the Election Integrity Network (EIN) run by Mitchell. 

But the filings show that their relationship has also been financial.

In October 2025, the government watchdog group American Oversight (AO) sued DHS for failing to respond to records requests it submitted for information on Honey’s hiring. Besides her frivolous voter fraud claims, Honey’s suggestions that Trump could take over election controls from states by declaring a national emergency, led AO to file the complaint. 

“Transparency about Honey’s appointment and tenure is key to understanding who is tasked with overseeing our election infrastructure,” wrote AO about its lawsuit. “The records at issue in our lawsuit could show how Trump and his allies intend to undermine, and potentially subvert, the security of future elections.”

In Pennsylvania, Honey’s misleading and poorly assembled claims about voter fraud led many right-wing activists to believe that Trump was cheated in the 2020 election that he lost to former President Joe Biden. Trump himself cited her baseless allegations in his Jan. 6, 2021 speech just before rioters ransacked the U.S. Capitol.

Honey also led efforts to pressure states to withdraw from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a nonpartisan organization that assists with voter file maintenance through cross-state records analysis.

Despite this, DHS appointed her in August 2025 as deputy assistant secretary for elections integrity in the department’s Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans — a position that did not exist before.

Mitchell, meanwhile, has continued her work to undermine election security from outside the government, including supporting measures to kill early voting, promoting passage of the anti-voting SAVE America Act and attacking other local election policies used to expand voters’ access to ballots. 

In May, her EIN organization released a “Model Election Laws Handbook,” a Project 2025-like blueprint for how to rein in or eliminate several ballot expansion measures. One of the more alarming proposals would redefine election certification as a discretionary act, giving certain officials the power to hold up or reject the certification process, even over fatuous accusations of fraud.

The news outlet Sludge reported that Mitchell’s FAIR fund tripled its grant spending in fiscal year 2025, compared to the year prior, on election conspiracy and denial groups such as EIN and the Article III Foundation – which alone was given $1.8 million. The Guardian reported that these groups used the money to run deceptive ads ahead of the 2024 election, some of them targeting Spanish-speaking populations.