An old classmate of Donald Trump is pushing the president to take action against nefarious forces supposedly plotting to undermine this year’s crucial midterm elections.
Peter Ticktin, 80, is a South Florida lawyer who’s known Trump since their days together at the New York Military Academy back in the 1960s. He told Vanity Fair on Tuesday that there is currently “an election emergency occurring” ahead of the November polls, when he expects “foreign interests” to be “putting their thumb on the scale.”
The attorney, who falsely claims Trump won the 2020 election, helped out on the president’s 2022 lawsuit alleging Hillary Clinton participated in a racketeering scheme to try and sabotage the 2016 MAGA campaign.
He is also currently representing a county clerk convicted of criminal charges for trying to overturn Trump’s loss to Joe Biden, and has previously represented a number of participants in the Jan. 6 riots. He’s twice had his lawyer’s license suspended, for conflict of interest and making non-permitted referral payments.
Ticktin claims to have first raised the issue of election integrity with Trump more than a year ago, and that he’s since created an “outline” executive order for the president to intervene in midterms, with measures like banning voter machines and mail ballots. A 17-page draft of that order is now circulating among MAGA allies, though Ticktin says he wasn’t involved in writing the full version.
“It might have been Jerome Corsi,” he said. Corsi is a conspiracy theorist and former contributor on Alex Jones’ InfoWars platform, who aggressively pushed bogus claims about former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Corsi says he didn’t write the full draft, but said Ticktin has been “instrumental” to the wider election-integrity effort.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for this story, along with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
In comments to the Beast, Ticktin said he “never suggested that Donald Trump take over or nationalize the elections,” that he is “advocating only for a few major rule changes for the midterm elections.” Regarding his prior suspensions, he said “nothing was done in either situation which was dishonest or immoral.”
A Trump spokesperson did not respond to Vanity Fair’s questions about Ticktin, referring only to a February 27 statement in which the president said he had “never heard about” any prospective executive orders pertaining to midterms.
Democratic Senator Mark Warner told the outlet he is deeply concerned by wider MAGAworld efforts to bring the November polls, which otherwise fall within the remit of state authorities, under federal control.
Warner pointed to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard as a Cabinet official who could well prove crucial to any such move.
Gabbard, who was present at an FBI raid on an electoral facility earlier this year, is thought to be building a report for Trump on foreign intelligence threats to the U.S. electoral system, which the Democratic senator warns could well be used as a pretext for White House intervention.
“Tulsi Gabbard is a disaster, and she’s chasing debunked theories about the 2020 election,” he said. “She could be the perpetrator of this—putting out a raw piece of intelligence that purports to show foreign interference.”
Ticktin told Vanity Fair the “they” behind his perceived election interference plot are the Democratic Party, Beijing, and the World Economic Forum.
The plan, which involves “automated voting trickery” from Venezuela to China by way of Serbia and Antrim County, Michigan, is designed to eventually see New York Congressman Hakeem Jeffries installed as president.
“For the record, I’m four and a half months older than him,” the attorney says of his relationship with Trump.
