Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday rejected the idea that election monitors being deployed to polls during the midterm elections will be armed, categorizing the notion as fearmongering and false.
Blanche sat down with Fox News Sunday and explained that the Justice Department‘s monitoring of elections is not a new initiative, adding that Congress should be thanking the Trump administration for ensuring fair elections.
The attorney general reacted to a June press release from Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) in which she claimed President Donald Trump was weighing whether or not to send “armed federal agents to our schools, churches, fire stations, and other polling locations.”
“I wish that the senators and the congressmen that are saying these fearmongering, false statements would just not do that. It’s not fair to the American people,” Blanche said, adding that the DOJ has safeguarded elections since the 1960s. “President Trump is doing the same thing that every single administration has done in our administration.”
Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, announced in August that the DOJ plans to deploy 1,000 election monitors in the 2026 elections, a record number as the department has typically sent out between 200 and 800 monitors.
Blanche said lawmakers who oppose election monitors are reacting inaccurately.
“What these senators should be saying is ‘thank God that we have a government that’s ready to show up,” he said. “We’re hoping to have 1,000 or more. They are not going to Republican states. They’re not going to Democrat states. They’re going to every state to make sure that our elections are carried out legally, fairly, and appropriately.”
He added that the claim that the monitors will be “armed federal agents” is “completely false” and they will be the same monitors as in elections past.
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Democrats have warned in recent months that Trump is planning to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents or the National Guard to polling stations, as the president has made election security one of his key objectives in his second term.
In May, Trump said he would do “anything necessary” to ensure fair elections, appearing to leave the possibility of sending federal agents to the ballot boxes on the table. On Thursday, the president changed his tune, saying he has not thought about deploying ICE in the November elections. White House border czar Tom Homan said last month that there are no plans in place to send ICE to polling sites.