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By Andrew Stanton
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President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he will respect the results of the midterm elections as long as they are “honest,” as critics have raised concerns about whether he would accept the results if a “blue wave” sweeps across the United States on November 3.
Trump was pressed by a reporter on whether he would accept the results of the midterms “whatever happens,” to which the president said, “I will, if they’re honest elections.”
His comments come only one week until Election Day, as Democrats appear well-positioned to take back control of the House and appear competitive in the battle for Senate control. Democrats held an 8-point lead among likely voters on the generic ballot in a new Marist University poll, conducted among 1,289 registered voters from October 19 to 20.
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Critics of Trump have long raised questions about whether he would respect the outcome of the midterms, pointing to his conduct after he lost the 2020 election, which he has said was stolen via widespread voter fraud, despite recounts and audits upholding its integrity.
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Legal experts told Newsweek on Tuesday they see risk that the administration could take steps to intervene in the election results after the midterms.
“This is a president who on January 6 took dramatic action in front of the White House to contest certification. He berated and criticized Vice President Pence for following his moral compass and the Constitution. The sky is the limit, and they will use their fertile imagination to take whatever action they think appropriate,” Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor, told Newsweek.
Concerns have mounted about the potential for the Justice Department to get involved in the elections, whether Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act or pressure members of Congress to try to reject certification of new members.
However, Neama Rahmani, also a former federal prosecutor, told Newsweek that he doubts any of those efforts would succeed.
“Free and fair elections is a cornerstone of our democracy,” he said. “If the administration is blocking results simply because they don’t like the outcome or making wildly unsubstantiated allegations that haven’t resulted in any findings of a court of law, whether it’s civil litigation or criminal prosecution, I can’t see a court standing idly by while this is allowed to happen.”
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis told Newsweek Trump wants “free and fair elections,” blaming Democrats for undermining confidence in elections.
“Radical Democrats are keeping Americans from having full confidence in their elections by fighting commonsense election security measures, like Voter ID and citizenship verification to make sure only Americans decide our elections. Anyone who illegally votes in our elections will be held accountable,” Bis said.
While administration officials say tougher enforcement is needed to protect elections, documented cases of noncitizen voting have historically been rare. A Reuters review found the conservative Heritage Foundation had recorded 24 instances of noncitizen voting in U.S. elections between 2003 and 2023.
Some Democratic election officials have voiced concerns about possible election interference. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows told The New York Times that she feels the federal government is “adversarial to the states.”
“This is the first time ever that we have had to engage in scenario planning to safeguard against potential federal interference in elections,” she told the publication.
Justice Department Interference
The Department of Justice (DOJ) could get involved in intervening in the midterms, according to Rossi.
“In any of the Senate races where it is relatively close, it is not beyond the realm that the fertile imagination of the Justice Department would lead to the filing of lawsuits to seize voting machines, to enjoin the certification of the election results,” he said.
Rossi said he is doubtful those lawsuits would be successful, but there is a possibility they could be filed.
Attorney General Todd Blanche said in remarks to reporters that the DOJ could intervene in the elections in a “doomsday scenario.”
“Is there any scenario? Yes, of course, there’s scenarios that we could all come up with hypothetically, some doomsday scenario, for example,” he said. “I don’t think it’s proper to make any kind of conclusory statements about what’s going to happen in the future.”
He said it is not the DOJ’s “intention to interfere with elections or the state confirmation process.”
These challenges could involve challenging ballots or the eligibility of voters, Rahmani said, noting that the DOJ has already challenged 20,000 ballots it said could have been cast by noncitizens.
Earlier in October, the DOJ provided the list of names to California officials and gave them 48 hours to review it. After California declined to carry out the measures requested by the DOJ, the department sued California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan.
On Monday, an appeals court declined to rule on whether California election officials could count those ballots, ruling it is premature for the court to get involved while questioning the accuracy of the list, the Associated Press reported.
It’s not the only state where the DOJ is working to get involved preemptively.
Trump has said he directed the DOJ to sue Alaska and its election officials over the Senate race, which includes two candidates named Dan Sullivan—one the incumbent Republican senator, and the other is a challenger the administration says was planted by Democrats to confuse voters.
Alaska uses a ranked-choice voting system in which four candidates, regardless of their party, advance to the general election. In the Senate race, the candidates are Democratic former Representative Mary Peltola, Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan and two other Republicans who have trailed in polling—Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. and Gerald Heikes.
The DOJ says the “sole purpose” of Daniel J. Sullivan’s candidacy is to “benefit the Peltola campaign by reducing the number of votes for Senator Sullivan," the DOJ wrote in its lawsuit.
The lawsuit seeks to block the certification of the Alaska Senate results if the incumbent does not win the election and if he would have won the election "had all votes cast for Dan J. Sullivan been cast instead for Senator Sullivan and Alaska's rank-choice process played out accordingly."
It would also require an investigation into whether Alaskans who cast their vote for Daniel J. Sullivan intended to vote for the incumbent and allow further procedures to determine what the election result would have been without the alleged confusion.
Michael McAuliffe, a former federal prosecutor and former elected state attorney, said the administration has “shown its hand” in cases challenging certification elections that have not yet taken place, which he described as a “naked, unabashed act of intimidation or an act of desperation.”
“It’s not clear at all that the administration even has standing to do so at any time, much less prior to an individual election’s results being known,” he said.
Declaring State of Emergency
During a recent interview in Time magazine, Trump was asked about whether he would rule out declaring a state of emergency in the lead-up to the midterms, but he declined to say he would not do so.
“I don't rule anything out or in,” Trump said.
Rahmani said he would be “very surprised” if the administration were to try to invoke the Insurrection Act.
“It’s very limited under federal law when you can use military forces for civilian law enforcement,” he said. “I don’t see how any of the specified parameters of the Insurrection Act would apply.”
Such a declaration would not give Trump control of the elections, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which wrote in an October 16 report that power “clearly” lies with the states and Congress.
In an August interview with Trump, Wayne Allyn Root, a conservative television host on Real America’s Voice, told Trump that if Congress does not pass the SAVE Act, a bill that would require Americans to present documentary proof of citizenship when applying to register for federal elections in an attempt to prevent participation from undocumented immigrants, Trump should “declare a national security emergency for elections.”
“If you declare a national security emergency as the president of the United States, they can’t challenge it. It can only be overturned by a two-thirds vote by both houses of Congress. So, if you do this in the next month, we will get photo ID, proof of citizenship and a limit to mail-in ballots,” he said.
Trump responded that “stranger things have happened.”
Pressuring Congress to Reject Swearing In
Others have raised concerns that the president could seek to pressure Republican leaders to reject the swearing-in of new members who may end up flipping seats in the midterms.
After his loss in 2020, Trump allegedly called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and urged him to "find" 11,780 votes in the state, Raffensperger wrote in his book, Integrity Matters. There were also alleged attempts at pressuring Pence against certifying Biden’s win, although the then-vice president defied wishes from Trump and other Republicans to block the certification on January 6.
Rahmani said it is a “political” possibility but, legally, is a more difficult question.
When Congress reconvenes in January, members’ terms will have expired. If Democrats retake the House, Republicans would no longer be in control of the speakership, so it’s not entirely clear how they could broadly block the swearing-in of new members.
McAuliffe said the new term will be an “open slate” for membership.
“That is, all members’ terms of the current session will expire—they will no longer be members. A statutory process exists for convening the House, for installing the new members, and for selecting new leadership,” he said. “The previous Congressional leadership’s ability to make mischief ends with the end of the current session”
There have been cases where individual members were not seated over concerns about qualifications or elections. Rossi pointed to the case of Adam Clayton Powell, a Democratic member of Congress from New York. As he faced allegations of corruption, Congress at the time voted to exclude him in 1967, but the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the qualifications in Article I of the Constitution are exclusive.
In more recent history, following the 2018 election, Republican Mark Harris was not seated after a narrow victory in North Carolina’s 9th District after the state election board declined to certify the results over an investigation into fraud allegations surrounding absentee ballots.
Rahmani said there would need to be legitimate disputes about an individual’s qualifications to serve, such as whether they are a citizen. Courts are unlikely to allow Congress to delay the certification, he said.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Gray R. Thomas
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