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Leaders of leftist influence groups sought to preemptively discredit potential claims of victory by former President Donald Trump and portrayed his supporters as violent in an apparent effort to pave the way for Vice President Kamala Harris to claim victory.
“There is a lot of investment by allies of President Trump to suggest that his victory is inevitable,” said David Becker, founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, which funneled millions in “Zuckbucks” to election officials in 2020. “If he loses the election, or perceives that he’s losing, you can imagine the shock that is going to be felt by his supporters, and how that’s going to be leveraged by grifters to try to anger them, to try to incite them to violence.”
The webinar, which happened Wednesday, was appropriately called “Red, White, and Coup.” It featured Becker; Nora Benavidez, senior counsel for the Free Press (which supports censorship and was founded by a socialist); Heidi Beirich, cofounder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (which smears conservative groups); and Damon Hewitt, president of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (which wages lawfare against conservatives).
Panelists cast a potential Trump claim to victory as illegitimate and suggested his supporters and those with election integrity concerns are “extremists” with a potential for violence, in what appeared to be an attempt to predetermine the narrative and set the stage for Harris to claim victory and suppress dissent.
Discrediting a Trump Victory
Becker suggested two apparent scenarios: one in which Harris seems to win and Trump tries to overturn the results, and another in which Trump prematurely claims victory on election night. In either case, Becker suggested a Trump victory claim would be illegitimate.
If Harris is apparently winning on election night, Becker implied Trump would try to overturn the results. Becker suggested there is a “secret plan for the loser” — presumably meaning Trump — “to steal the election and take office.”
“I don’t think it’s out of the question that the losing candidate may try to create a different impression and may desperately try to grab power in an effort that will fail, but could very likely incite violence,” Becker said. “There might be a plan. It might be attempted. It’s going to fail. The guardrails are in place.”
Becker painted current election integrity efforts as “designed to set the stage for claims an election was stolen later.” Still, he said he was not worried.
“This process is going to play out,” Becker said. “The counties will certify. The states will certify. The governors will ascertain. The electors will meet, and Congress will count the ballots, the electoral ballots, the electoral votes, as they were cast.”
Left-wing election groups like the Campaign Legal Center have been pushing to make officials rubber-stamp election results as a “ministerial” act, taking away their discretion even if results are suspicious.
Becker said there will likely be a delay in obtaining results, during which time Americans will not know the true victor.
“The candidate who thinks they are losing may try to use that vacuum of time, that time between when the polls close and when the media can call the race, to try to spread disinformation,” Becker said.
He blamed this “disinformation” — or speech disapproved by those in power — on Trump, his supporters, and foreign adversaries.
“What we’re also seeing is a steady stream of disinformation about the process, a lot of it originating from overseas,” Becker said. “A lot of it [is] coming from a presidential campaign and from the allies of former President Trump.”
He claimed Russia is intervening on Trump’s behalf, echoing the left-wing obsession with Trump and Russia following the debunked collusion hoax.
“Russia right now is very clearly intervening on the side of Donald Trump,” Becker said. “But even if Trump wins, they are all going to shift towards spreading disinformation designed to get anyone who supported the losing candidate to be angry and potentially violent.”
Becker said that any chaotic events after the election “will have been caused” and called for accountability.
“There will be individuals who are responsible for them, and we should hold them accountable for having caused that,” Becker said. “We should not absolve those who are creating the chaos or creating the division from their responsibility for having done that.”
Targeting Supporters of Election Integrity
“How do we root out unacceptable, bigoted, misogynistic values?” asked Nora Benavidez of Free Press. “Democracies — whether they are new, or older and stronger and more durable — are suffering from these types of attacks of normalized unacceptable values.”
Heidi Beirich, of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, smeared election integrity advocates like Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who chairs the Election Integrity Network, as “election deniers” who have “fused into corners of white supremacy and anti-government movements.”
“People like Cleta Mitchell … the multiple organizations involved in election denial, whether it’s a group like True the Vote or Mike Lindell has an offensive institute — there’s, there’s dozens of these. They have really fused into corners of white supremacy and anti-government movements,” Beirich said. “Their activities could be extremely disruptive post-Election Day, whether it’s frivolous type stuff in the courts, narrative building, disinformation campaigns.”
She also tried to tie Mitchell to a group called “Constitutional Sheriffs,” which pledges to resist unconstitutional government action, suggesting militias might interfere with ballot tabulation.
“They believe … they can insert themselves into election issues, ballot centers — I’m just using those examples,” Beirich said. “They have become very, very close to election-denying organizations like Cleta Mitchell’s, and there has been talk already prior to the election about bringing the militias into areas along with the sheriffs where they’re not happy with certification, counting, and so on.”
Mitchell told The Federalist this is a “pack of lies.” She said she thinks Beirich must have confused her with someone else because she has “never spoken with a white supremacy group in my life” and has “not spoken with any sheriff” except in her own county.
“Everything this lunatic said is false,” Mitchell said. “I have no idea what she’s talking about. And neither does she.”
Mitchell said her group, the Election Integrity Network, instructs poll observers and volunteers “to be right and polite.”
“All we ask is that election officials follow the law, that they conduct the election in a transparent manner (as required by law), and that they count the votes accurately,” Mitchell said. “That’s pretty radical stuff, don’t you think?”
Beirich stoked fears that groups like the Proud Boys and “white supremacists” would interfere in elections, and Becker cast “red counties” as potentially violent.
“I’m worried about all the small counties, maybe even the deeply red counties, where there are activists who believe these lies that they’ve been fed for four years and may be incited to anger and violence,” Becker said.
Damon Hewitt, of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, explained his group’s work to “destabilize” organizations it deems “hate groups.”
“Our litigation — and now multiple lawsuits — against these types of hate groups, or groups that espouse hate, I should say, is to both delegitimize their ideology, but frankly, also to destabilize the organizations,” Hewitt. “Destabilizations happen to some extent. You’re unlikely to see certain individual actors in the streets in D.C. in the next couple of months. That’s in part because they’re either in prison, or because they’re banned from the district.”
Mitchell said election integrity advocates “are not the purveyors of hate.”
“The people on that call are the extremists,” Mitchell said. “These left-wing crazies are off their rockers.”
For more election news and updates, visit electionbriefing.com.
Logan Washburn is a staff writer covering election integrity. He graduated from Hillsdale College, served as Christopher Rufo’s editorial assistant, and has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Tennessean, and The Daily Caller. Logan is originally from Central Oregon but now lives in rural Michigan.
