These Trump Cabinet and Staff Picks Had a Hand in Anti-Voting Litigation
Since President-elect Donald Trump’s decisive victory in November, he’s been steadily stacking his cabinet and administration with a veritable rogues gallery of controversial politicians and policy makers.
While many of Trump’s picks represent a grave threat to democracy and the lives and freedoms of millions of Americans, a handful of his most important nominees could play a direct role in the future of voting rights and access to the ballot over the next four years. Several of them have already directly impacted anti-voting litigation over the past few years.
Pam Bondi
Nominee for Attorney General
Pam Bondi has long been a well-known figure in Trump’s orbit. She’s the former Florida attorney general and a longtime attorney who’s been involved with a slew of Trump’s legal efforts — including his 2019 impeachment trial and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
She’s also the chair of America First Policy Institute’s (AFPI) center for litigation and co-chair of its center for law and justice. In these roles, Bondi has spearheaded the group’s efforts to disenfranchise voters around the country: she led a multistate legal effort to overturn a pro-voting Biden executive order that expands voting access, and got involved in several election lawsuits in Arizona, challenging parts of the state’s Elections Procedural Manual (EPM).
America First Policy Institute has been involved in six anti-voting lawsuits since 2020.
Harmeet Dhillon
Nominee for Assistant Attorney General for Voting Rights
As a seasoned attorney, Harmeet Dhillon has a long history of involvement with anti-voting litigation and efforts to roll back voting rights. Through her legal practice, the Dhillon Law Group, she has been involved with litigation in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia and Washington, D.C. challenging voting rights laws, redistricting, election processes or Trump’s efforts to appear on the ballot in the 2024 election.
According to Democracy Docket’s litigation tracker, the Dhillon Law Group has been involved in 25 anti-voting lawsuits since 2020.
William McGinley
Appointed as White House General Counsel
During Trump’s first administration, William McGinley, a longtime election attorney, served as the White House Cabinet secretary. This time around, Trump tapped McGinley to serve as the White House’s General Counsel, meaning he’ll be the administration’s main legal adviser for all manners of issues involving the president — from ethics to judicial nominations and oversight.
McGinley has a long tenure as an election attorney working to disenfranchise voters — most recently during the 2024 election, where he served as outside counsel for election integrity for the Republican National Committee (RNC). During the ‘23 – ‘24 election cycle, the RNC filed or was involved in 55 election lawsuits.
Kari Lake
Nominee for Voice of America Director
Kari Lake, who lost her 2022 Arizona gubernatorial bid and 2024 U.S. Senate bid, was recently picked by Trump to lead Voice of America — the U.S’ international state media broadcasting network. In addition to her long, rich history as an election denier, Lake has a long, rich history of filing lawsuits to overturn her own election results. Her attempt to get the results of Arizona’s 2022 gubernatorial race — in which she lost to Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs — has been rejected by the courts seven times. Despite her recent loss in the state’s U.S. Senate election to Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego, Lake hasn’t filed any lawsuits to challenge the election results — and even came close to conceding.
Linda McMahon
Nominee for Education Secretary
Linda McMahon, the wife of disgraced WWE co-founder Vince McMahon, served as the administrator of the Small Business Administration in Trump’s first term. After Biden’s election in 2020, McMahon went on to lead the AFPI — a conservative think tank made up of former Trump administration officials who worked to push back against Biden policies and actions. Beyond that, “election integrity” has always been one of the target areas of AFPI — under Bondi’s supervision.
In that space, AFPI has been involved in five lawsuits in the ‘23-’24 election cycle to try and disenfranchise voters — particularly in the battleground states of Arizona and Georgia.
Stephen Miller
Appointed as White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor
Stephen Miller, who served as a senior advisor in Trump’s first administration, is best known as the architect of Trump’s hardlined immigration stance, but he’s spent the last four years using the legal system to attack voting rights with America First Legal (AFL) — a legal organization he founded in April of 2021.
Since 2022, AFL has been involved in five crucial lawsuits in Arizona and Pennsylvania, challenging everything from the use of dropboxes to election administration procedures and maintenance of state voter rolls.
John Ratcliffe
Nominee for C.I.A. Director
As a Texas congressman and the Director of National Intelligence in Trump’s first term, John Ratcliffe parroted a lot of the president-elect’s talking points on “election integrity.” In 2019, he introduced a bill to make it a federal crime to hack voting systems used in a federal election, and in 2020 he repeatedly spoke about working with the FBI on “election security” before the election.