The New York Times reports:

When President Trump tried to undermine and overturn the election results in 2020, he ran into stiff pushback — not just in the courts, but from many officials in his own government.

He made sure there would be little room for such dissent when he returned to the White House. Those seeking to join Mr. Trump’s second administration had to pass a key litmus test: Did they believe the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump?

With like-minded allies now positioned in key roles throughout the government, Mr. Trump has trained the full arsenal of the federal government on one of his most persistent obsessions: sowing doubt about the security of the country’s election systems.

Major agencies such as the Justice Department, the F.B.I., the Homeland Security Department and the U.S. Postal Service have taken steps to revive his false claims about the 2020 election and try to assert federal control over state-run elections.

His efforts got additional reinforcements on Thursday from the country’s intelligence agencies, which provided the White House with a trove of declassified evidence that Mr. Trump held up as evidence of a broken election system.

“Tonight, I’m announcing the immediate declassification and release of critical intelligence, revealing shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure,” the president said in a prime-time speech from the East Room.

Mr. Trump also said he had directed the F.B.I., C.I.A., the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Justice Department to investigate what he claimed to be a “cover-up” by U.S. officials of the extent of China’s efforts to influence American elections.

In fact, the heavily redacted documents did not reveal new weaknesses in the country’s election systems or show that foreign governments had manipulated any votes. The materials do show vigorous debates inside the government about how to characterize and assess China’s efforts, the broad strokes of which have been public for years.

On Friday, the administration signaled it would continue to ramp up its efforts. In a news briefing for reporters, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin repeated Mr. Trump’s unverified claim that tens of thousands of noncitizens were on voter rolls and warned that local election officials could face prison if they “choose not to” act on “the information they need to secure their elections.”

The president’s ability to bring a whole-of-government approach to shape how Americans view their elections — and potentially who gets to vote — has alarmed public officials and election experts across the country. [Continue reading…]