Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Federal agencies issued a warning late last week to state elections officials about domestic threats from extremists with “election-related grievances” targeting election workers, political candidates and lawmakers in the coming weeks with Election Day just 28 days away.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said the caution in a joint letter from the Department of Homeland Security and FBI did not come as a surprise, noting there had been collaboration between his office and the FBI ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
The Department of Homeland Security, in a separate notice, said Oct. 2 in its Homeland Threat Assessment that “lone offenders and small groups continue to pose the greatest threat.”
That bulletin Aguilar’s office received warned officials of domestic violent extremists who “continue to create, exploit, and promote narratives about the election process or legal decisions involving political figures, and we are concerned that these grievances could motivate some domestic violent extremists to engage in violence, as we saw during the 2020 election cycle,” according to CNN, which obtained a copy of the notice.
The notice was not made available for public consumption.
The extremist action the bulletin warns about was most profound Jan. 6, 2021, when a group of loyalists to then-President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol looking to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election.
Hundreds of rioters were convicted of federal crimes — misdemeanors for trespassing, and more serious felony charges for assaulting police officers and conspiracy —for their actions culminating in the storming of the Capitol. More than 1,265 people have been charged, according to the Department of Justice, in the largest criminal investigation in American history.
Trump remains in legal battles for his role in the scheme.
Special counsel Jack Smith released new evidence last week in the case against Trump, including troves of accounts detailing how Trump inaccurately claimed victory in Nevada (and other swing states) before ballots were fully counted and spread debunked claims of election fraud online.
The former president continues to spew his falsehoods of victory, recently telling the crowd at a Michigan campaign event that he won 2020. He made his comments at the rally the day after Smith’s court filing was unsealed.
“We did great in 2016, a lot of people don’t know we did much better in 2020. We won. We won. It was a rigged election,” Trump said at the rally. “You must tell Kamala Harris, that’s why I’m doing it again. If I thought I lost, I wouldn’t be doing this again.”
The Republican lost Nevada by about 30,000 votes.
Tensions are again high this election cycle, where Trump is attempting to return to the White House in a contest against Vice President Kamala Harris.
The FBI and Homeland Security bulletin is one method the agencies are using to mitigate potential harm in reaction to election results this year.
“Voting is underway in parts of our nation and the FBI is working closely with our law enforcement partners to detect any threats to election workers, public officials, candidates, and others,” the agency wrote in an email to the Sun. “The FBI is aware that some individuals may be motivated to commit violence or other illegal activity, and we are fully engaged with our partners to protect our communities.”
Nevada and other states added legal protections for election workers in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential cycle.
Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo in May 2023 signed Senate Bill 406 into law, making it a felony to harass, threaten or intimidate election workers. The law went into effect that October.
The harassment can include doxxing workers and their families — and the legislation acknowledges such conduct is not limited to occurring at polling sites.
“Our poll workers are the unsung heroes of democracy,” Aguilar said. “Without them, our elections don’t work, and so we need to really, really be considerate and thankful for the work that they’re doing.”
Aguilar said 80% of Nevada’s poll workers were women and “we have to recognize that those are our daughters, our wives, our mothers, our grandmothers, and nobody wants to send anybody that’s in your community into a situation that’s unsafe.”
Cari-Ann Burgess, the interim registrar of voters for Washoe County in Northern Nevada, took a temporary leave of absence last month because of “stress-related health issues.” Her predecessor left the post because of threats.
The experience in Washoe County isn’t unique.
There was a 38% increase in the turnover rate among election officials, according to a Bipartisan Policy Center survey published earlier this year. Turnover increased more in jurisdictions in states that were closely contested in the 2020 presidential election, according to the Cook Political Report. Additionally, the Bipartisan Policy Center said the FBI reported an especially unusual level of threats to election workers in seven swing states — Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Wisconsin — all narrowly won by Biden in the 2020 presidential election and whose election results were challenged by Trump.
Aguilar said the Washoe County incident came at the crux of election season, when it’s important for his office to be in communication with clerks throughout the state to understand their stress points and determine what resources can relieve some of that pressure.
“We can disagree about candidates’ positions, but at the end of the day, we’re all Nevadans, and we need to treat each other with decency,” Aguilar said.
Aguilar shared plans for protecting Nevada’s voters this November through efforts like the Election Integrity Task Force, which was established by the previous secretary of state’s office — led by Republican Barbara Cegavske.
The task force consists of federal, state and local law enforcement and elections officials who share practices and plan for if a potentially disruptive situation were to occur. On Election Day, all the secretary of state’s partners will work from a command center, monitoring any challenges that should be addressed.
“We’ve been planning over the last 18 months for any situation that may come during the election period,” Aguilar said.
Through a spokesperson, the Department of Homeland Security, in a statement to the Sun, said it shared the bulletin because the “United States remains in a heightened threat environment” with threats of extremists during election season. The department said it was helping election infrastructure partners bolster resilience in their cyber, physical and operational security.
“Violence has no place in our politics, and DHS continues to work with our partners to evaluate and mitigate emerging threats that may arise from domestic or foreign actors,” the statement said.
Added Aguilar, “Nevada runs some of the safest, secure and accessible elections in the country. And we want to maintain our place within our democracy.”
[email protected] / 702-990-8923 / @haajrahgilani