Trump’s Election Playbook: Freeze Oversight, Claim Fraud, Repeat
By halting CISA and investigating past elections, Trump is ensuring voter fraud remains a never-ending narrative.
For years, Donald Trump and his allies have pushed the narrative that U.S. elections are riddled with fraud. It was the foundation of his failed attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the justification for GOP-led voting restrictions, and a rallying cry for his most devoted supporters. With Trump back in power, his administration has taken a critical step toward ensuring that claims of election fraud remain a permanent fixture in American politics: freezing the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the agency responsible for securing elections.
The Trump administration claims this move is simply part of an effort to “restore state control” over elections and investigate CISA’s role in policing misinformation. But the details tell a different story, suggesting a far broader effort to rewrite history, discredit past elections, and set the stage for future election disputes.
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Why Investigate Elections Going Back to 2017?
The freeze isn’t just about future elections. CISA has been ordered to halt all election security operations while reviewing its activities since 2017.
Let’s be clear: this is a direct attempt to revive Trump’s grievances over the 2020 election.
By investigating CISA’s past election security measures, the administration is setting the stage to claim that federal election oversight was corrupt all along. Therefore, the elections it protected (especially Biden’s 2020 victory) were illegitimate.
Why else would they dig back to 2017, three election cycles ago? If this were simply about improving election security, the focus would be on upcoming elections. Instead, the review’s scope ensures that Trump and his allies have an official government mechanism to “prove” their 2020 fraud claims, no matter how baseless they were when first made.
The Contradiction: Screaming Fraud While Disabling Security
Trump has spent years claiming U.S. elections are vulnerable to fraud. Yet his first significant action on election security was to weaken oversight rather than strengthen it.
CISA played a key role in debunking Trump’s fraud claims in 2020. After his team pushed conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines and mass ballot dumps, CISA—then led by Trump-appointed cybersecurity expert Chris Krebs—released a statement calling the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.” That public contradiction was enough for Trump to fire Krebs.
Now, the Trump administration is ensuring that no such contradiction happens again. By freezing CISA’s election security operations and launching an investigation into its past work, the administration is setting up a system where federal oversight will no longer counter false claims of election fraud.
The next time Trump or his allies claim an election was stolen, there will be no federal agency pushing back. Instead, they can point to their own “investigation” into CISA and argue that election security has been compromised for years.
More State Control Means More Election Challenges
The administration also touts this move as restoring “state control” over elections. But let’s be honest, this isn’t about state sovereignty. It’s about creating a more favorable legal landscape for contesting election results.
Republican-controlled states have passed laws restricting mail-in voting, shortening early voting, and increasing partisan control over election certification.
Removing federal oversight makes it easier to claim fraud in battleground states where different rules apply to other voters.
Without CISA fact-checking fraud claims, the narrative of a “stolen election” becomes more challenging to disprove.
In 2020, Trump’s legal team failed to overturn results in states like Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan because even Republican state officials couldn’t find evidence of fraud. By weakening federal oversight, the administration ensures those challenges won’t face the same obstacles in 2026 or 2028.
Setting the Stage for 2028 and Beyond
This is about more than 2020, 2024, or 2026. It’s about creating a permanent justification for election disputes.
If Trump’s team can undermine faith in past elections while also weakening security for future ones, then fraud claims no longer need evidence. They just need repetition. The goal isn’t to “fix” election security; it’s to convince the public that elections can never be trusted unless Trump wins.
With CISA frozen and its past security efforts under investigation, the administration isn’t preventing voter fraud. It’s ensuring that fraud claims remain an inescapable part of American democracy. And that, in the end, is the real play.
Bibliography
Wired – “CISA Election Security Freeze Memo” https://www.wired.com/story/cisa-election-security-freeze-memo
New York Post – “DHS Moves to Fire 12 CISA Employees Who Policed Misinformation” https://nypost.com/2025/02/14/us-news/dhs-moves-to-fire-12-cisa-employees-who-policed-misinformation-and-pause-all-election-security-activities
AP News – “CISA Freeze Sparks Election Security Concerns” https://apnews.com/article/98f1e17c8a6d5923db945a27f06458e7
Brennan Center for Justice – “Voting Laws Roundup 2023: A Review” https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-2023-review
PBS NewsHour – “Fact-Checking Trump’s False Claims About Voter Fraud” https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-trumps-false-claims-about-voter-fraud-and-rigged-elections