BREAKING: Schumer Announces 'Bombshell Whistleblower Complaint' About Trump Effort To 'Rig' Election

My colleague, great senator from California, Alex Padilla. Okay, well look, we just got more proof of Trump's vile schemes to rig our elections. Senator Padilla and I are revealing a bombshell whistleblower complaint about the Department of Homeland Security's effort to interfere in the upcoming election on Trump's behalf. A DHS whistleblower warns that the department is pulling hundreds, hundreds of federal agents for national security roles and sending them on a wild goose chase. The goal? To try and prove Trump's sad, tired, and long-debunked election conspiracy theories. The lengths Trump will go to cheat, lie, and steal in this upcoming election are simply beyond the pale. Apparently, agents are being commanded to violate state laws, to access private voter information, and fabricate law enforcement records as part of DHS's, quote, unlawful voter initiative. DHS is pulling these officers away from work they were hired to do, including protecting our national security, to go hunting for, or worse, manufacturing evidence of voter fraud claims, and they're sneering Americans in their schemes. The whistleblower alleges that U.S. citizens are being investigated and flagged based on unreliable data. You hear that, America? DHS, under Trump, is forcing its officials to carry out an illegal scheme, break state laws, and treat U.S. citizens as collateral damage, all to advance his scheme to rig the election. They're even asking people to lie about their identities so they can create this illegal scheme. We are weeks from the midterms. Americans should not have to fear being targeted by their own government because of how they're registered to vote. Senator Padilla and I are demanding that DHS immediately shut this initiative down and give Congress answers about what it's doing, what data it's using, how many Americans have been swept up in these investigations. Trump is willing to go extreme lengths to interfere in these elections. We will go to every length necessary to protect them. Every eligible American deserves to vote. Every lawful vote deserves to be counted. And Americans, not Trump, will decide our elections. And I'm going to turn it over. It's going to be in Alex's capable hands. Thank you, Leader Schumer. Thank you all for joining us this afternoon. Look, we've known for a long time that Donald Trump will go to extraordinary lengths to try to interfere with the midterm elections. And just last week in Dallas, you heard him call on his supporters to, quote, cheat like hell to make sure that Republicans win this November. Trump's words, cheat like hell. He even offered $5,000 to every American if they reelect Republican majorities. But today we have new insight into just how far this administration is willing to go. Thanks to the courage, courage of a whistleblower who came forward last week, we now know that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service officers have been ordered to lie. They've been ordered to misrepresent themselves to access state voter systems. Systems explicitly warning that accessing another voter's information without authorization is against the law. You cannot break the law when you say you're trying to enforce the law. But they're doing it anyway, systematically, to obtain the kind of private voter information, like registration status, political party, voting history, and more, that Donald Trump has been trying to get his hands on since 2017. That's right, almost 10 years. In 2017, I served as California Secretary of State, and I stopped him from obtaining California voter data, as my Secretary of State colleagues from across the country, Republican and Democrat, did as well. Today it's 2026, and it's the courts that have stopped Donald Trump over 30 times from trying to force states to submit their voter registration databases to the federal government. But when the front door is locked, Trump tries to break in the back door. And now he has USCIS officers combining the data that they are getting with other DHS data that they recognize and they admit is unreliable, and which includes, quote, a lot of US citizens. They're doing this to build cases against individuals at the rate of five cases per hour. That's their charge. That's their quota. One case every 12 minutes. That's not exactly a lot of time in which to conduct a thorough investigation. And they're relying on something called, quote, supplemental magic to do it. Let's be clear. There's nothing magical about any of this. It's unreliable data combined with data that they couldn't get through failed litigation being used to manufacture allegations and misidentify individuals as a, quote, unlawful voter. And that false label has serious, serious consequences. It can follow you to the airport when you're suddenly pulled aside after returning from a trip overseas. It can show up at your home when the FBI or Homeland Security investigators knock on your door. But even more troubling is that when officers have raised questions about the legality of this initiative, they've reportedly been told to proceed anyway and promised that they won't be held, quote, personally liable. That's what's coming from superiors in response to officers who are raising these concerns. If this effort is truly legal, then why does DHS leadership have to promise its officers that they're not going to be held liable? That says a lot. The truth is this has nothing to do with protecting the integrity of our elections. That's just a pretext. It's about the potential of using manufactured evidence to intimidate voters, to disenfranchise eligible Americans, and even undermine or challenge this November's election results. Classic Trump playbook. We're 50 days away from election day and the stakes could not be higher. So Senator Schumer and I are calling on Secretary Mullen to immediately end this unlawful sham initiative. And we'll continue to do everything in our power to ensure that anyone who has broken the law is held accountable. Thank you. I'll take a couple questions here. Yes. Yeah. So a couple of things. I mean, as I move about the country, particularly throughout the state of California, I do get the question, are we going to have free and fair elections this November? Because they know what Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters and his supporters here in Congress are doing to try to interfere, whether it's disenfranchising voters, taking them off the voter rolls, whether it's trying to eliminate vote-by-mail opportunities, or anything else. And they deserve to know that there are people standing up for their right to vote, standing up to defend free and fair elections. Our elections are safe and are secure. And I think what's really going on here, it's a political effort. Donald Trump knows his record has been so bad, not just unpopular, but harmful to families across the country. His only chance of keeping Republican majorities in Congress is to interfere with the elections. That's what this all has been about, starting from the redistricting fights from last year, to his efforts to obtain the voter rolls. And now we know why he was so desperate to try to get voter rolls to his executive orders and legislative efforts to eliminate vote-by-mail, on and on and on. But we're going to continue to defend the right to vote and access to the ballot. What exactly, aside from these press officers and releases, can Democrats do to actually protect it? And what are you doing to make sure there are protections in place so that these officers, if they do show up, do not ultimately interfere? Can you speak to sort of what perhaps the Democratic plan is to actually protect it? Right. So there's multiple prongs here, right? One is, what legislative tools do we have to push back? So it's asking the questions we've formally sent a letter, not just asking Secretary Malone to cease this initiative, but a lot of questions for them to come forward with how this all came together, number one. And by the way, when we take the majority, we'll be able to ask these questions of administration officials under oath, if they're not more responsive and forthcoming before them. Second, legally, exercising all of our legal options. But one of the most important efforts is letting voters know what they have in their power, right? They have 50 days until Election Day, and they should make their plan to vote. They should verify for themselves their voter registration status to make sure they haven't been improperly removed from the rolls by Trump and his allies. They should make their plan to vote. In a state that offers vote by mail, know what it takes to request your vote by mail ballot. You won't have to worry about federal agents at the polls on Election Day if you vote by mail. States that offer early voting opportunities, we encourage people to exercise those. More people that vote early, whether it's by mail or in person, are less people who have to worry about shenanigans on Election Day. But regardless of how you do it, make sure you verify your registration status, or you register if you haven't been registered before. You make your plan to vote, you vote, and get every family member, every friend, every co-worker, every neighbor to do the same. All right. Thank you all very much.