In mid-February, as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was fighting to keep her job, she held an election-security event at a Homeland Security Investigations field office in Scottsdale, Arizona. In the past, she said, the state had been an “absolute disaster on elections,” and ensuring the security of election equipment was her responsibility. She also urged Congress to pass President Trump’s voter-ID bill. The message was less surprising than the location. HSI, the agency’s investigative branch, devotes most of its efforts to going after transnational drug cartels and human-trafficking networks, not to securing domestic elections.A week after the event, Arizona’s acting special agent in charge for HSI, Matthew Murphy, told the state attorney general’s office that his office was now probing the 2020 election in Arizona, according to a person familiar with the details of the meeting. A state investigator asked why the government was scrutinizing the results, given that they had already been litigated and investigated. Murphy made clear that he was acting on “direction from D.C.,” the person told us, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The HSI investigation in Arizona, which has not previously been reported, comes as the FBI has embarked on a separate election probe in the state. “This is not a joint investigation” with HSI, a person familiar with the FBI investigation told us. HSI headquarters and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice are coordinating the investigation, which is focused on identifying alleged voter-fraud activity and related potential enforcement actions, according to a person familiar with the effort.The Arizona investigations are part of the Trump administration’s escalating effort to vindicate the president’s claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Trump narrowly lost the contest in Arizona, and the state has since become a magnet for conspiracy theorists. Early last year, the administration ordered the creation of a small task force within HSI to probe election-fraud claims in other cities, according to a former HSI agent and one current HSI agent who described the assigned personnel as “unenthusiastic.” Last month, HSI investigators reportedly showed up at a high school in Dayton, Ohio, to investigate voter fraud. (HSI’s election work is not wholly without precedent; in 2020, for example, HSI investigators charged 19 foreign nationals with illegally voting in the 2016 election.) The Department of Homeland Security did… [TheTopNews] Read More.
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