\n<\/p>\n
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they\u2019re published.<\/p>\n
Heather Honey, a high-profile denier of Donald Trump\u2019s loss in the 2020 election, has been appointed to a senior position in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in which she\u2019ll help oversee the nation\u2019s election infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Honey is a protege of Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election results. In 2024, ProPublica reported that Honey had played a key role in Mitchell\u2019s behind-the-scenes effort to change Georgia\u2019s election rules to allow Republican officials to contest a potential Trump loss in that year\u2019s presidential race. Honey also promoted election conspiracy theories, including one Trump cited in a speech to his followers before they stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.<\/p>\n
Though states do the on-the-ground work of running elections, DHS supports them with tasks beyond their capacities, such as protecting IT infrastructure and voter databases from foreign intrusions. The agency, with bipartisan support, took on this role in the aftermath of Russia\u2019s interference in the 2016 election.<\/p>\n
Experts on voting and state election officials warned that Honey\u2019s appointment as DHS\u2019 deputy assistant secretary of election integrity could erode trust between state and federal officials, prompting states not to share information with the agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are witnessing a dangerous trend: the elevation of known bad-faith actors like Heather Honey,\u201d said Adrian Fontes, Arizona\u2019s Democratic secretary of state, in a statement, citing Honey\u2019s \u201cwell-documented history of spreading election lies that have been debunked in court.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fontes called her involvement with DHS \u201cdeeply troubling\u201d and said \u201cwhen the agency gives a platform to individuals who have actively worked to erode public trust, it becomes harder to view DHS as a reliable partner in election security.\u201d<\/p>\n
A DHS spokesperson did not answer questions from ProPublica on Honey\u2019s appointment or the exact nature of her responsibilities. Honey didn\u2019t respond to calls or emails. The White House also didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment. Her name is listed on the organization\u2019s leadership structure online, and her appointment was first reported by the website Democracy Docket.<\/p>\n
In the first Trump administration, the federal government set up programs designed to shield U.S. elections from foreign interference, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an arm of DHS. But Trump soured on this and other initiatives after the director of CISA publicly rebutted his claims that the 2020 election was stolen.<\/p>\n
Since the start of the second Trump presidency, the administration has gutted those programs, cutting hundreds of employees at CISA. Its director, Chris Krebs, is now under federal investigation, DHS has said; Krebs told CNN that the investigation appeared to be an act of political retribution. The Justice Department has also rolled back a program aimed at combatting foreign influence campaigns. Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a memorandum that the Justice Department\u2019s program was disbanded to \u201cfree resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion.\u201d<\/p>\n
David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonprofit focused on building trust in American elections, said the cuts had dismantled \u201cnearly all\u201d of DHS\u2019 capacity to protect election infrastructure. He said state elections officials feared that Honey\u2019s appointment, combined with the program cuts, signaled the Trump administration\u2019s intent to eliminate bulwarks of fair U.S. elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hiring of an election conspiracy theorist with no election knowledge or expertise is the culmination of this reversal,\u201d Becker said. \u201cDHS now appears poised to become a primary amplifier of false election conspiracies pushed by our enemies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two sources familiar with Honey\u2019s hiring at DHS said she began working for the agency last week. An organizational chart dated Aug. 18 on the department\u2019s website identifies her as a leader in the agency\u2019s Office of Strategy, Policy and Plans. Her position wasn\u2019t on a version of the website archived in July, and officials in former administrations said that there\u2019s been no such job previously.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not clear yet what Honey will oversee, but former DHS officials said that deputy assistant secretaries are typically the agency\u2019s top experts in their subject areas. They\u2019re often involved in drafting executive orders and crafting policies. They also serve as liaisons to the White House and the National Security Council.<\/p>\n
Since Honey started, Trump has announced \u201ca movement to get rid of\u201d mail-in ballots and voting machines via executive order, though a top aide subsequently said the administration would pursue those goals through legislative action. DHS has also threatened to cut off about $28 million in grants to help states prepare for terrorism and disasters if they don\u2019t change voting rules to conform to the administration\u2019s priorities, NPR has reported.<\/p>\n
Honey\u2019s duties likely would include helping to organize the government\u2019s policy responses if foreign actors make intrusions into the nation\u2019s election systems, former officials said. To do this, and to assess the security of election infrastructure, someone in her position would typically have access to classified information, including the government\u2019s election-related intelligence.<\/p>\n
Experts expressed concern about Honey\u2019s portfolio, given her history of spreading misinformation.<\/p>\n
\u201cHeather Honey\u2019s past misleading claims about vote counts in Pennsylvania, among other things, have helped fuel false conspiracy theories about stolen elections,\u201d said Larry Norden, an election expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, a nonpartisan law and policy group.<\/p>\n
Before becoming swept up in the \u201cStop the Steal\u201d movement, Honey had no experience in the federal government or as an election administrator, working as a Pennsylvania-based private investigator.<\/p>\n
\n Inside the Memphis Chamber of Commerce\u2019s Push for Elon Musk\u2019s xAI Data Center<\/strong>\n <\/p>\n After the 2020 election, she became a contractor for a Republican-backed audit seeking proof of fraud in ballots cast in Maricopa County, Arizona. According to emails between employees working on the review, which ended up reaffirming Biden\u2019s win, Honey helped draft the final report.<\/p>\n Since then, Honey has led at least three organizations devoted to transforming election systems in ways championed by conservatives, such as tightening eligibility requirements for people to be on voter rolls. Members of Honey\u2019s Pennsylvania Fair Elections, a state chapter of Mitchell\u2019s nationwide Election Integrity Network, have challenged the eligibility of thousands of residents to be on voter rolls.<\/p>\n Honey has also been involved in numerous other efforts to transform elections around the country, including a successful push to get many states with Republican leadership to pull out of a bipartisan interstate partnership to share data to make voting more secure.<\/p>\n Do you have information you can share about Heather Honey or elections work being done in the federal government, especially at the Department of Homeland Security? Contact reporter Doug Bock Clark at doug.clark@propublica.org or on Signal at 678-243-0784. If you\u2019re concerned about confidentiality, check out our advice on the most secure ways to share tips.<\/p>\n Christopher Bing and William Turton contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they\u2019re published. Heather Honey, a high-profile denier of Donald Trump\u2019s loss in the 2020 election, has been appointed to a senior position in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in which she\u2019ll help oversee the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[10947,2167,4668,1275,10214,10948,247,1242],"class_list":{"0":"post-18011","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-denier","9":"tag-dhs","10":"tag-election","11":"tag-heather","12":"tag-honey","13":"tag-oversee","14":"tag-propublica","15":"tag-security"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}