Breaking News
Breaking News
from Washington and beyond

The FBI’s Latest Interviews About 2020 Election Should Terrify You

The FBI has spoken with a man whose claims were central to Donald Trump’s conspiracy.

The FBI logo on the outside of its headquarters building in Washington, D.C.
Kevin Carter/Getty Images

The FBI is interviewing former Wisconsin poll workers who helped to fuel President Donald Trump’s long-debunked claims of election fraud in 2020, Votebeat reported Monday

David Bolter, a poll worker whose claims about election fraud were included in Trump’s failed 2020 lawsuit seeking to overturn his election loss in Wisconsin, told Votebeat that FBI officials had arrived at his doorstep with questions about how local officials had handled the election.

In his affidavit, Bolter alleged that someone in Milwaukee’s absentee ballot counting facility had announced around midnight on Election Day that a “huge truckload of ballots” was going to be delivered. There has been no additional evidence of this claim, but it became central to some conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

The FBI also spoke to another 2020 poll worker, who Votebeat identified as Christine, in order to allow her to speak freely. Christine has also submitted an affidavit to Trump’s failed lawsuit claiming that she saw election workers continuing to count votes after she’d been told all of the votes were counted.

“I suspected wrongdoing, but I’m not saying that it actually happened,” she told Votebeat. “I’m just one lowly person that was working there.”

A nonpartisan audit of Wisconsin’s 2020 election found that the state’s elections were “safe and secure.” So what is the FBI hoping to find?

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said that the Trump administration’s efforts to revisit these long-debunked claims weren’t actually about uncovering anything new.

“This isn’t about the 2020 election, this is about the 2026 and 2028 elections,” he told Votebeat. “This is about intimidating election officials. This is about creating a stream of disinformation designed to delegitimize an election the president may believe he’s going to lose. This is designed by the president’s underlings to satisfy the unrealistic expectations of a president that still cannot comprehend that he lost an election that he definitely lost, and it’s incredibly destabilizing.”

The FBI has also reached out to several election officials in Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city. It’s worth noting that the only people who appear to have plotted voter fraud in Wisconsin were members of Trump’s own team, who cooked up a fake electors plot to undermine the election results.

Homan Denies Inhumane Detention Conditions Because of Spaghetti

Trump’s border czar suggested that complaints about immigration detention centers were overblown because detainees occasionally eat mediocre food.

border czar tom homan scratches face
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Border Czar Tom Homan

Immigration czar Tom Homan claimed that reports of inhumane conditions and abuse at the Delaney Hall detention center were false because he went there and had some spaghetti. 

“I went to the bathrooms, I went to the detention area, I went to indoor and outdoor recreation.… I hear a lot of complaining about the food. I went in there unannounced … and had lunch. I sat in the cafeteria with detainees, had the same meal they had—I had my security  detail with me of course—but I had the same tray of food that they had,” Homan said, accusing hundreds of detainees of lying about what’s happening inside the New Jersey detention center. “There was spaghetti and meat sauce, there was green beans, there was charro beans, there was rolls and butter.… Now is it a five-star cuisine? No. But was it a well established meal? Yes it was.” 

Protests have continued outside the privately run detention center for over a week as prisoners endure a hunger and labor strike over allegations of being served rotten food, being pepper-sprayed excessively, and being held in neglectful conditions. 

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has also denied any reports of inhumane conditions, saying earlier this month that there were “only a handful of individuals” going on hunger strike “because they want their ethnic group—or their ethnic-right food. Well, they can go back to their country and get whatever food they want.” 

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka has threatened a lawsuit if the detention center is not shut down.

Ken Paxton Gets Middle Finger From Own Lawyer Over Senate Race

Dan Cogdell defended Paxton in his 2023 impeachment trial.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton walks in the Capitol
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Texas turning blue wouldn’t have been on any Democrat’s bingo card back in November 2024, when President Donald Trump took the state with 56.2 percent of the vote and Ted Cruz easily held the senator’s seat. But thanks to Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton’s controversial past, and the popular progressivism of Democrat James Talarico, the Lone Star State stands a good chance of swinging left come midterm season.

Just ask the Texas lawyer who represented Paxton in his impeachment trial, Dan Cogdell, who endorsed Talarico on Monday.

Paxton “has lost sight of his core mission, which is to represent the people of Texas,” Cogdell said. “Unlike Ken, I believe to my core that James Talarico believes in unity over division and that he knows how to assemble not only Democrats, but Independents and Republicans, and we need that right now.”

Cogdell defended Paxton in his 2023 trial, during which prosecutors alleged the attorney general accepted bribes and used his office to cover up his infidelity. The case saw Paxton impeached by the Texas House of Representatives but acquitted by the state Senate. Cogdell also represented Paxton in a separate securities fraud case, which was settled in 2024 after Paxton was made to pay $300,000 in restitution.

More recently, Paxton was criticized for offering a sweetheart plea deal to a repeated child molester, which would see the offender spend just one day in jail.

It’s difficult to ascertain where the Houston-based Cogdell falls on the political spectrum. He criticized Trump frequently in recent years, but gave $6,500 to the hard-right Paxton’s campaign in 2025, according to campaign finance reports. He then gave Talarico’s campaign $1,000 in March.

Talarico appeared thrilled with his new ally, using the defection to petition others to do the same.

“If you voted for John Cornyn, you have a place in this campaign,” he said in a statement. “If you’re a Republican tired of the corruption you’re seeing in government, you have a place in this campaign. Even if you’re Ken Paxton’s impeachment lawyer, you have a place in this campaign.”

MAGA Is Melting Down Over the Results From L.A.’s Mayoral Primary

After reality star Spencer Pratt fell into third place, right-wingers started screaming about fraud. They’re wrong, but it doesn’t matter.

Spencer Pratt holds up a card reading "Let it Burn"
Photo by MEGA/GC Images
Spencer Pratt

Mail-in ballots continue to be counted in the race to determine which candidates will square off in Los Angeles’s Mayoral election, as California state law allows them to be received for seven days after Election Day (Tuesday, June 2), and they are verified before being counted. But a late surge for Los Angeles city councilmember Nithya Raman, a progressive Democrat challenging incumbent mayor and fellow Democrat, Karen Bass, is driving right-wingers nuts.

They were hoping that Republican Spencer Pratt, known for his time on reality TV show The Hills, would perform well enough to finish in the top two, allowing him to advance to November’s general election under California’s jungle primary rules. After initial reports last week showed him behind Bass in second place, his right-wing supporters thought his advancement was in the bag.

But ballot returns for the past few days now show him falling into a distant third, and MAGA supporters from far beyond L.A. are crying conspiracy. Several conservative influencers and pundits are calling Raman’s surge “impossible,” attacking the results as illegitimate and calling L.A. Democrats “cheaters.” X user DC Draino said the results showed “Insane levels of fraud.” Republican Representative Abe Hamadeh, whose district is in faraway Arizona, said “the steal is blatant.” Elon Musk spent his Monday morning amplifying conspiracy theories about the results.

President Trump has also weighed in, calling the mayor race a “rigged election” in a Truth Social post Monday morning. But all of that whining belies the fact that the last polls before Election Day predicted Bass and Raman finishing first and second, respectively. And late arriving mail-in ballots tend to favor younger, more left-leaning voters, especially in a solidly left-leaning city like Los Angeles. The right will just have to realize that L.A. voters are Democrats who aren’t going to be taken in by a reality TV star.

Donald Trump Ruins Perfect Vibes in New York City

The president will attend Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden—and inconvenience tens of thousands of New Yorkers.

Trump sitting next to his son Eric displays whack shooting form
James Devaney/WireImage
Trump at a Nets-Bulls game in New Jersey in 2007. What kind of Knicks fan goes to watch the Nets?

The New York Knicks have canceled their rambunctious, wildly popular outdoor watch party at Madison Square Garden to accommodate President Trump’s attending Game 3 of the NBA Finals on Monday night. The most recent watch party saw 12 people arrested.

Fans must now arrive two hours early and without bags. Trump, a native New Yorker, is also friends with embattled Knicks owner James Dolan.

This move has the potential to curse the Knicks in the midst of their most successful run of the century. The reason so many fans gather outside the Garden in the first place is because the cost of getting in is astronomically high. Now they’re shutting all that energy down to accommodate one of the least popular presidents ever.

“I’m not sure it’s gonna be a good reception for him,” House minority leader and fellow New Yorker Hakeem Jeffries said over the weekend. “Why does Donald Trump always have to ruin a good thing? Literally the Knicks haven’t been in the NBA Finals for 27 years, the city is trying to celebrate this, we’ve embraced this team, and this guy has to inject himself.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is offering an alternative, free watch party in Bryant Park.