WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s invasion of Minnesota by his de facto secret police force is tied to his conspiracy theory that he won the state in all three of his elections, critics said, and that obsession explains his attorney general’s demand that the state turn over its voter data.
Like the fictional Captain Queeg tearing the USS Caine apart in search of the missing strawberries, Trump appears now to be ripping apart Minnesota in part to find proof that victory had been stolen from him there in 2016, 2020 and 2024.
“It’s hard to imagine that election denial did not motivate his animus, at least in part, that resulted in the ICE surge and the tragedies that followed,” said Norm Eisen, a lawyer in Barack Obama’s White House who worked with the House during Trump’s first impeachment for trying to extort Ukraine. “The whole thing is a witch’s brew of falsehoods.”
When asked if the crackdown in Minneapolis was the “retribution” Trump had vowed against the state, his White House did not deny the assertion.
“President Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered non-citizen voters,” spokesperson Abigail Jackson said.
