Trump Doubles Down on Election Fraud-Should Democrats Worry About Midterms?

President Donald Trump and top Republicans are doubling down on unsubstantiated fraud claims in California‘s primary elections this month, a dispute that election experts say points to a bigger threat heading into the 2026 midterms than the country faced in 2020.

Trump called the California primary “rigged” on NBC’s Meet the Press on June 7, pointing to the pace of the count and Republican candidates losing ground as mail ballots were tallied. Pressed by host Kristen Welker for evidence, he replied: “All I have to do is look.”

Speaking at a roundtable in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, last Friday, Trump claimed, without evidence, that Democrats were rigging the election: “It’s a crooked state,” he said.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles said last Friday that it had opened “multiple election fraud investigations” related to California’s elections and sent a prosecutor to the county’s vote-counting center. The June 5 announcement came a day after Trump’s claims of mass fraud in the state’s drawn-out count, as late-tallied mail ballots cut into the totals for his preferred candidates for governor and Los Angeles mayor.

Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy and a co-founder of Third Way, a center-left think tank, said Trump’s fraud claims have a simple explanation.

“There’s a very simple reason Donald Trump is playing the election-fraud card,” Kessler said. “He knows he is going to get walloped in the midterms and because he is someone unable to take accountability for his actions, he needs to blame it on election fraud.”

Experts Dispute Trump’s Election Fraud Allegations

“There is no basis,” Stephen Richer, the former recorder for Maricopa County, Arizona, who is now a legal fellow at the Cato Institute and a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center, told Newsweek when asked whether there is any foundation for the fraud claims.

Richer speaks from direct experience. From 2021 to 2025, he oversaw voter registration and mail voting in the largest swing county in the country and became one of the most prominent Republicans to publicly rebut Trump’s stolen-election claims, drawing threats and a censure from his state party before losing his 2024 primary to a Trump-backed challenger.

Richer said the threat to elections has grown since 2020. The structural difference, he said, is inside the government itself.

“The big change is that for the first time ever, we have people in key law enforcement positions who are willing to indulge this nonsense and might even be willing to mobilize based on fantasies,” he said.

“The election denialism stuff was limited to stray remarks by the president, especially about mail voting. Now it’s seemingly half the people in leadership in the Republican Party. It’s [House] Speaker [Mike] Johnson. It’s [FBI] Director [Kash] Patel. It’s every single judge appearing for confirmation hearings.”

Chris Krebs, the government’s top election security official in 2020, and U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr both rejected Trump’s fraud claims at the time. Barr said the Justice Department found no fraud on a scale that could have changed the outcome, and Krebs was fired after calling the election secure.

A ProPublica examination reached a similar conclusion, finding that many of the guardrails and officials who held the line after 2020 would largely be missing today, with at least 75 career staff gone and appointees from the election denial movement hired, though judges have blocked key parts of Trump’s elections executive orders and some Republican state officials have resisted Justice Department demands for voter rolls.

Could Trump Actually Affect 2026 Results?

Election experts broadly agree that the president cannot cancel or directly reverse elections. State and local officials say they will carry out the elections they are legally required to run, and experts identify the real threats as chaos, legal fights and distrust after votes are cast, according to Votebeat.

Richer told Newsweek that the voting rights community would have wide-ranging views on what meaningfully affecting an election means, with some pointing to actions that chill voter registration groups or the deployment of federal agents to voting locations.

He said he does not share those definitions but believes there is a chance of serious interference.

“Most significant for me would be if federal law enforcement, DOJ, FBI, DHS, DNI, etc., seized materials [e.g. ballots or tabulation equipment] from an election office during the election before all the votes have been tabulated and canvassed,” Richer said. “Even if later returned, it would be tough to certify the affected election jurisdiction with confidence.”

The administration has already moved on 2020 materials. The Justice Department sued Fulton County, Georgia, demanding used and void ballots, signature envelopes and digital envelope files from the 2020 election, the first time it has requested physical ballots, and the FBI later seized 2020 ballots in Fulton County.

The department has also sued election officials in 21 states and the District of Columbia seeking access to voter records. Judges in Michigan, Oregon, California, Massachusetts and Rhode Island have dismissed the department’s voter data lawsuits.

The 2020 results were affirmed repeatedly, often by Republicans. After Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes following the 2020 election, Raffensperger refused and the state’s results were confirmed by a statewide audit and recount. Courts rejected dozens of lawsuits from Trump and his allies.

Kessler, from Third Way, said he hopes Republican officials who have shown new distance from Trump will push back on the claims, though he is not counting on it.

“Let us hope that some of the same Republican elected officials who have discovered some newfound freedom from Donald Trump stand up and do the courageous thing and knock these allegations down,” Kessler said. “Of course, if you are depending on elected officials for courage you may find yourself disappointed.”

Experts Say California’s Delays Reflect Process, Not Fraud

The confrontation carries stakes beyond California. Control of the U.S. House could hinge on competitive districts in the state, where final results might not be known for days after the November 3 midterms.

California and other states where more than 80 percent of votes arrive by mail take a long time to count their ballots, and California is the slowest among them, Richer said.

“But this is the way it was in 2020, 2022 and 2024. This was not unexpected at all,” Richer said. “And frustrating though it may be, it does not mean that there is fraud.”

Because Democrats vote by mail at higher rates and held onto their ballots unusually late in the crowded primary this year, Republican candidates appeared at their high-water marks on election night before their leads narrowed. The pattern, known as the red mirage, fueled conspiracy theories around Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, who led early before dropping to third as mail ballots were counted.

U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, Trump’s appointee as the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, posted on X that California’s elections have “serious structural vulnerabilities,” without detailing the investigations. An assistant U.S. attorney visited the county’s main ballot processing center last Friday and was given a walkthrough of operations, Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder spokesman Mike Sanchez said in a statement.

House Speaker Mike Johnson echoed the suspicions.

“I’m not saying it’s rigged. I’m saying it stinks to high heaven and everybody knows that,” Johnson said, adding that some of the alleged efforts are “so diabolical and so far upstream it is impossible to prove.”

Richer said critics of California’s system should push to change it rather than misrepresent it.

“I applaud those people who are thinking critically about how to change this system without compromising California’s commitment to access,” he said. “Shame on those who are using the situation to lie, score political points or engage in conflict entrepreneurship.”

Kessler echoed that the issue is procedural, not fraudulent.

“The problem isn’t fraud but process,” he said. “Everyone knows it takes California forever to count votes. Part of the reason is that officials are extremely careful with each ballot, but every other state manages to do it faster, and the excuses for California have worn thin.”

Even Republican Steve Hilton, Trump’s favored candidate for governor, said his campaign has seen no illegality in the count.

“We certainly haven’t seen anything of that nature that would warrant legal action,” Hilton told the Associated Press while calling for an overhaul of the state’s mail ballot laws.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, rejected the president’s claims. Bonta said every count, recount, hand count, audit and court case has “demonstrated there is no widespread voter fraud.”

Newsweek has contacted the White House and the Justice Department for comment.

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This story was originally published June 13, 2026 at 2:00 AM.