DENY THAT

Trump Lackeys Get Brutal ‘Voter Fraud’ Claim Reality Check

The math doesn’t math for election denial efforts, our must-read newsletter The Swamp reveals.

Welcome to Midterms Meltdown, a special pop-up newsletter from The Swamp—bringing you up to the minute with the secrets the politicians don’t want you to know about the race to November 3.

It is the most consequential election campaign since 2024, and the nooze will be oozing around the nation to shape D.C. for the next two years and beyond. Our David Gardner, Farrah Tomazin, and Sarah Ewall-Wice are getting down and dirty with the inside stories from the battlefields every Monday and Friday.

Melting down in The Swamp today are: Joe Lombardo, Darline Graham, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Dan Schwartz, Annie Andrews, Andy Harris, Mike Rogers, Brian Boxler, JD Vance, Michael Whatley, Roy Cooper, Jake Monssen, Dana Bash, Abdul El-Sayed, Scott Colom, and Donald Trump.

California AG Sticks Boot Into Voter Fraud Fanatics

In Santa Ana, California, on Monday morning, it was Voter Fraud Day for the Justice Department’s second-most powerful man, Trent McCotter, who is Acting Deputy Attorney General and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General.

He and the many adjectives he uses in his title had flown all the way from D.C. to the Left Coast to announce the round-up of a vast fraud ring: A group of non-citizens caught voting in California’s elections. Operation Protect the Vote had delivered.

The breathless hype from McCotter, and an identical-looking entourage of officials, was meant to be an attack on California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and its Democratic officials generally. They had allowed people to register to vote without being citizens. How could you trust them, was the message. Los Angeles County was a particular villain.

And worse, they were on a mysterious list of 20,000 “non-citizens” supposedly voting in California suddenly sent to the state authorities last week on a USB stick.

Then the numbers started to be announced. McCotter was almost giddy as he announced that 28—yes, twenty eight—non-citizens were accused of illegally registering to vote. And a grand total of eight—it bears repeating—eight had managed to apparently cast a vote in the recent primary elections.

And after 17 minutes of Trumpy addresses from the identi-bros, questions from reporters to McCotter and company made things worse. Could more than eight of the people they’re charging (just 13 were actually arrested) have voted? Err, maybe a majority. Which would be as few as 15.

It was then left to California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta to do some basic math.

“There is is the possibility and the reality of one-off isolated incidents of voter fraud and identifying 28 potential incidences,” he said. “These are arrests and we’ll see what the facts show and whether they have to drop charges or they’ll be able to prosecute.

“But 28 out of 23 million registered voters in California, is obviously a drop in the bucket. Numerically, it’s 0.0001% of all the registered voters in it.”

Yes, McCotter, his adjectives, and his identical myrmidons had made an outing to Santa Ana for a crime which if they’re lucky, might have been committed by a total of 0.0001% of people who have voted in recent years.

Power Struggle for Mississippi Voters Revealed

A new poll shows Mississippi voters oppose continuing to build data centers by nearly two to on. So they may be surprised to learn that their Republican senator, Cindy Hyde-Smith, has taken donations from the power company at the center of the state’s data center expansion.

Another AI-connected group also spent nearly half a million to support her reelection.

A poll released by the state’s House speaker, Jason White, found that the top issue for Mississippi voters was predictably soaring prices. But next up data centers, whose expansion 48 percent oppose. In contrast, 28 percent want more of them.

The Mississippi voters might be on to something. Amazon has expanded its data centers in the state since 2024 in partnership with Entergy, which provides the power. But a report earlier this year estimated those data center facilities have already increased rates for Entergy Mississippi residential customers by an average of $10.60 each month—a not negligible $120 a year extra.

Hyde-Smith, who sits on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has been curiously absent from the growing number of Republicans calling for a temporary pause on data centers ahead of the midterms as their races tighten.

Instead, she has been threading the needle, calling for more information to ensure companies pay their fair share and voting for the Ratepayer Protection Act, which would have required states to consider standards for tech companies to pay additional electricity costs for their data centers.

But she has not called for an all-out, temporary pause in data centers the way her Democratic opponent, Scott Colom, has, something he’s been touting on the campaign trail.

“The AI industry is spending nearly half a million dollars to keep her in the Senate, and Entergy is writing her checks, while Mississippi families get stuck with the power bill,” Colom told The Swamp. He accused his opponent of being “bought and paid for.”

On donations, Entergy’s corporate PAC (ENPAC) has given Hyde-Smith $7,500 for her 2026 reelection campaign and $23,500 since 2018. Meanwhile, Entergy Mississippi CEO Haley Fisackerly has donated $6,000 to her reelection campaign.

But the real money has been outside her campaign. American Mission, the arm of the pro-AI Leading the Future super PAC that supports GOP candidates. It spent $494,527 on ads and a text-driven push to support her campaign just last month.

Hyde-Smith’s campaign responded to The Swamp with a statement from campaign manager Jake Monssen that did not address specific questions on pausing data centers or the donations to her campaign, but stated, she “shares the concerns of Mississippians and wants to ensure there are no blank checks, that companies pay their own way, that families come first, that local resources are protected, and that projects are only built when those standards are met.” It also pointed to her backing the Ratepayer Protection Act. But that was blocked by Senate Democrats as “toothless messaging bill” despite its overwhelming passage in the House.

What Happens in Vegas…

Nevada’s Republican Governor Joe Lombardo had a curious message about Donald Trump when he joined the president on stage at a rally at Red Rock Casino in Las Vegas in August: there’s nothing wrong with Trump “taking care of his billionaire friends,” because billionaires fuel the economy. But when it comes to finding reliable funding for domestic violence services, Trump’s Republican ally seems a lot less enthusiastic about opening the purse strings.

At a town hall event this month for the state’s governor race, Lombardo insisted domestic violence had always been “up there” as an issue for him, but warned that creating a stable funding stream for domestic violence services was “almost impossible” as he asked advocates to “convince” him the issue deserved priority.

But the exchange comes with an awkward back story for the governor, who was Clark County’s sheriff from 2015 until he took office in 2023. In Clark County, the sheriff helps supervise the hiring and promotions of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

According to public files, three officers hired during that period later faced domestic violence record charges: Chandler Pike (who pleaded guilty to abusing his girlfriend for nearly seven hours); Melinda Cooper (who pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges after being accused of breaking her girlfriend’s phone and pushing her down the stairs); and Philippe Dinh (accused of abusing his wife and suspended without pay as his case continues).

Another case involved LVMPD Lieutenant Brian Boxler, who was accused of strangling his wife following an argument over unfinished laundry. Boxler joined the department in 2008 and the precise time in which he was promoted to lieutenant is unclear. The available information does not establish if Lombardo oversaw his promotion personally, or to what extent he knew about the other three officers’ charges, although The Swamp has reached out to his campaign to ask. Still, critics say it’s not a great look for a governor who built his career on law and order – or a president backing him for his tough-on-crime credentials.

Young Voting With Their Feet

Donald Trump and JD Vance are both campaigning in North Carolina this week, where hundreds of college students marched for nearly an hour to cast early ballots after election officials took away their polling sites. If Trump’s team is wondering where the next generation’s political energy is going, it should pay attention.

The early voting scenes at University of North Carolina’s Greensboro campus and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University offer a striking backdrop to polls showing the president losing ground with young voters—a group that helped fuel his 2024 comeback, particularly among young men.

The latest Fox News poll has alarmed Republicans, finding that just 28 per cent of voters under 30 approve of the job Trump is doing – about five to eight percentage points worse than the national average. The reasons are familiar: stubbornly high living costs, housing affordability, and even corruption, which according to the Fox poll ranks as the number one concern of all voters - even ahead of the economy.

“Young people are really concerned about ethics in government, corruption and money in politics,” Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, whose group recruits and supports young candidates running for office. “I think they see that the system is broken and people don’t just trust it to deliver results.”

Of all the seven swing states in 2024, North Carolina gave Trump his tightest margin of victory. Now, frustration over his presidency is threatening to unravel those gains. As Durham student Xavier Jones put it, “We will come and make our voices clear, no matter how far you push a polling site off of our campus.”

What Trump Is Saying:

“I don’t know if her signature means anything.” Trump, after asking Melania Trump in the Rose Garden on Monday if she would like to sign an executive order on her women’s health policy initiatives.

What the Dems are saying:

“Sure. Yeah, absolutely.” Abdul El-Sayed’s answer when he was asked at a Michigan campaign event at the weekend if he would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood.

What the Republicans are saying:

“He didn’t disavow it. He goes on this word salad trying to get around the fact that he can’t do it.” Mike Rogers insisted on Sunday to CNN’s Dana Bash that his Senate race opponent did not disavow the Muslim Brotherhood.

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And Finally…Place Your Bets:

Who will win the South Carolina Senate Seat?

What they’re saying on Kalshi:

Darline Graham - 82 percent

Annie Andrews - 18 percent

What they’re saying on Polymarket:

Darline Graham - 84 percent

Annie Andrews - 18 percent

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