House GOP Committee requests classified briefings on Trump’s election fraud claims

President Donald Trump’s election lies from his July primetime speech have been time and again debunked. But some Republicans aren’t convinced.

House Republicans said they want to hear more about Trump’s unfounded claims of voter fraud and foreign election interference, despite no new evidence brought to support these claims.

Committee on House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) sent three letters Thursday to members of Trump’s cabinet asking for classified briefings and documents related to his lies about mass noncitizen voting and voting system vulnerabilities.

“Reports of non-citizens casting illegal ballots continue to emerge, undermining election integrity and public confidence in American elections,” Steil wrote.

In a letter sent to Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, Steil conflated one of Trump’s biggest claims — that 250,000 noncitizens are registered to vote — with a software glitch that led to errors in registering 6,000 non-citizens in New Jersey.

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) has already taken steps to remove these voters erroneously registered and to cut ties with the software vendor she claims is at fault.

This week, Sherrill officially refused to give in to the Department of Justice’s continued attempted grabs at sensitive personal data. She said there is “no legal basis” to back the demands. 

Meanwhile, the DOJ just lost its most recent voter roll grab in no other than New Jersey, marking its 18th loss nationwide.

Notably, while Steil’s letter to Mullin said the non-citizen voter data was found in five states, the Department of Homeland Security’s analysis provided numbers for only four. It’s also still unclear where the numbers are coming from. 

One of the nation’s leading election experts has his own ideas.

“I suspect that 250,000 number is just their wild, highest possible number,” David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation & Research said on a press call the morning after Trump’s primetime speech.

Becker added it’s a “vastly inflated number that is completely noncredible.”

In his other letters, Steil asked FBI Director Kash Patel and Director of National Intelligence William Pulte for briefings on “how foreign malign actors interfere in American elections” for “potential legislative reforms.”

Steil repeated Trump’s claim that China meddled in the 2020 presidential election and said the meddling “may have been suppressed and downplayed by the Intelligence Community.”

Security experts have already debunked the supposed bombshell of a document release that turned out to reveal nothing more than what’s been publicly available information for years.

Steil requested responses to his letters by Aug. 13. However, Classified hearings are not routine for the Committee on House Administration, so a response would not guarantee briefings.