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election 2020
‘Isn’t It Humiliating to Be Unable to Answer?’ Asks Ossoff After Trump Spy Chief Nominee Won’t Say Who Won in 2020
"You refuse to answer a basic question about who won a presidential election, but you asked to lead America's intelligence community?"
Jul 15, 2026
Sen. Jon Ossoff on Wednesday put President Donald Trump's nominee to be the next director of national intelligence on the spot by asking him about the results of the 2020 presidential election.
During a confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Ossoff (D-Ga.) asked Jay Clayton, nominated by Trump to replace former DNI Tulsi Gabbard, who won the 2020 election.
"I'm not going to do this with you," Clayton replied.
Sen. Ossoff asks Trump's Director of National Intelligence nominee who won the 2020 election. pic.twitter.com/J3u5mqHqTt
— Ossoff's Office (@SenOssoff) July 15, 2026
"This is a job interview," Ossoff said. "We have established that you have an obligation to be honest and forthright with the committee, yes? You do have an obligation to honest and forthright with the committee?"
"Yes," Clayton said.
"Who won the 2020 election?" Ossoff pressed.
"Like I said, I'm not going to get into that with you," Clayton said.
After former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Trump refused to concede, told multiple lies to sow doubt about the results, tried to enlist officials including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and former Vice President Mike Pence to illegally overturn it, and then incited a violent riot at the US Capitol when those efforts failed.
Ossoff told Clayton that he would keep asking him about the 2020 election results because "you're not being honest and forthright with the committee."
"I'm not going to engage in the theater," Clayton shot back.
After being pressed by Ossoff again, Clayton simply sat in silence, which appeared to make the Georgia Democrat incredulous.
"You refuse to answer a basic question about who won a presidential election," Ossoff said, "but you asked to lead America's intelligence community? Isn't it humiliating to be unable to answer this question, to have to indulge the president's delusions?"
"We know, you know, everybody in this room knows the truthful answer to that question," Ossoff continued. "Why can you not give it?"
Sean Vitka, executive director for Demand Progress, said after the hearing that Clayton's refusal to answer Ossoff's question was disqualifying.
"Clayton’s trainwreck hearing showed us that he is willing to deny objective reality to avoid upsetting the president," Vitka said. "Someone like that must not be allowed to be the director of national intelligence, who wields vast power and must lead the intelligence community with nonpartisan integrity and independence from political pressure."
Vitka added that Democrats serving on congressional intelligence committees need to understand "the clear danger someone like Clayton would pose as Trump’s point man on government surveillance."
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Trump Is Waging a Psychological Warfare Campaign Against US Democracy
By constantly raising the alarm about election fraud, Trump seeks to stir fear, doubt, and confusion in the minds of voters.
Jul 15, 2026
With 112 days to go until Election Day, President Donald Trump’s drive to undermine the vote continues. As time runs short, his efforts grow more aggressive, more brazen. But they are facing pushback with ever greater assurance.
Last Friday, Trump pushed out the remaining commissioners on the Election Assistance Commission. This tiny agency exists to provide help and funding for states. Trump had previously tried to force the commission to implement his pet voter suppression policy—requiring a passport to register to vote—but a federal court barred it from doing so in a lawsuit brought last year by the Brennan Center and others. Now, without any commissioners, the agency can’t do much of anything.
Another federal judge quashed Justice Department subpoenas issued to hundreds of election workers in Fulton County, Georgia. The judge said the subpoenas were “staggering,” and that the Justice Department was engaged in a “fishing expedition.”
Also last week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) sent a scarifying letter to state officials warning that they will be held criminally liable if noncitizens are found on the voter rolls or voting.
All of us who care about free, fair, and secure elections in 2026 should say loud and clear: Voters can vote with certainty.
Utah’s Republican lieutenant governor, who runs elections in that state, wrote: “Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution. I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts. This is truly bizarre behavior by the federal agency that is supposed to be protecting civil rights.”
Trump even claimed that recently deceased Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) last conversation with him involved his allegedly ardent support for the anti-voter SAVE Act.
Now comes word that on Thursday, Trump will deliver an address to the nation, rumored to be when he will reveal that the 2020 election was hacked by... China? Iran? Whoever.
Why is the president continuing to press on like this? Yes, he’s relitigating the 2020 election. And some of his desired election policy changes, were they to become law, could restrict the vote for millions.
But the bigger reason is to stir fear, doubt, and confusion in the minds of voters.
We’re seeing a psychological warfare campaign waged against American democracy by leaders of its own government.
People tell me of encounters they’ve recently had with voters. One voter is convinced she will have a hard time voting because she changed her name when she got married from the one on her birth certificate, even though the SAVE Act has not become law. Another worries that the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act ruling in Louisiana v. Callais means they cannot vote.
Crazy rumors fly. That former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, for example, will “confess” to stealing the 2020 election in exchange for leniency. And so on. Few pan out. But the decibel level can be deafening.
All this requires deftness by those who would protect the vote. Every election year, voting advocates like the Brennan Center weigh carefully whether and how to reassure voters, as merely mentioning the potential threats to voting could backfire and scare people away from the polls.
Latino voters and other immigrants, for example, may fear Immigration and Custom Enforcement being present at polling places. Even though such a deployment would be illegal, simply raising it as a possibility may cause voters to stay home. Fear would have done its work.
For other voters, though, we may see a new phenomenon: Efforts at suppression could fuel mobilization. In the South, Black voters are outraged by the efforts to redraw election maps after the Supreme Court’s Callais decision gutted the Voting Rights Act. They could turn out in historic numbers. People get really mad when you try to take something from them—and when it’s representation and the vote, watch out.
All of us who care about free, fair, and secure elections in 2026 should say loud and clear: Voters can vote with certainty. Make a plan to vote. Vote as early as you can. In person, via drop box, in the mail.
One hundred twelve days. It will feel like longer. But when this year is done, the strong response across the country to an egregious effort to undermine our democracy may be the real story.
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Colorado Governor Fires Officials Who Criticized Democrat's Release of Election-Denying Clerk
"Firing people who oppose you is also a page out of Trump's playbook," said US Rep. Pramila Jayapal.
Jul 02, 2026
US Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal on Thursday accused Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis of conduct commonly seen from President Donald Trump's after Polis fired two members of the state clemency board, citing their decision to speak out publicly against his release of former county Clerk Tina Peters.
In 2024, Peters was sentenced to nine years in prison for tampering with voting equipment in an effort to prove the false claim that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump. The president, who faced his own legal challenges for spreading the falsehood and trying to overturn the election, issued a symbolic pardon for Peters and pressured Polis to commute her sentence, which Polis did in May, angering members of his own party and democracy advocates.
Two members of the state clemency board, Hannah Seigel Proff and Azra Taslimi, were among those who opposed Polis' decision, and they went against the board's usual custom of maintaining secrecy about its proceedings to reveal that the entire board had twice voted unanimously to reject Peters' bid for a shorter sentence, only to be overruled by the governor.
On Wednesday, Proff and Taslimi told The New York Times that they'd received dismissal letters from Polis, who told them they had "breached the required duty of confidentiality by publicly divulging board members’ votes."
Jayapal (D-Wash.) said Polis' commutation of Peters's sentence was akin to acting like the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by election-denying Trump supporters "didn't happen."
"Firing people who oppose you is also a page out of Trump's playbook," said the congresswomen.
The board members also revealed that Polis had passed over other deserving applications for parole before he allowed Peters to walk free on June 1.
"We have reviewed hundreds of applications that moved us to tears," they wrote in an op-ed at The Denver Post. "People who spent decades atoning for a single terrible decision, who attended college or seminary behind bars, completed countless programs, developed curricula for other incarcerated people, mentored young offenders, and raised thousands of dollars for victims’ rights organizations."
"Along with nine other members of the board, we have read applications supported by prosecutors who tried the case, by prison wardens who watched the transformation happen, and even by victims themselves," they continued. "And we have seen the governor fail to act or delay many of these applications."
A spokesperson for Polis told the Times that their decision to divulge the two unanimous votes against Peters' release threatened the "credibility of the board." Taslimi told 9NEWS Denver that Polis' real message in deciding to fire the two board members "is that the public doesn't have the right to know that his own advisory board told him no, twice, unanimously."
"That's not protecting the process, that's protecting himself from scrutiny," said Taslimi.
Gov. Jared Polis passed over other deserving inmates to give clemency to Tina Peters, according to two members of his clemency board who revealed Polis overruled the unanimous recommendation of his experts. Polis has now fired both of them. pic.twitter.com/N2bc8uxSc7
— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) July 2, 2026
The two dismissed board members noted in their op-ed that Peters, unlike many of the people who have submitted clemency applications that have been rejected by Polis, has "expressed no contrition" for the crime she was convicted of.
"Within hours of her release, Peters appeared on a podcast and immediately resumed her attacks on the integrity of US elections," they wrote. "She repeated the debunked conspiracy theory that voting machines cheated Donald Trump out of reelection in 2020 and portrayed herself as a martyr to the effort to expose it. She called her release a miracle."
"The governor said he was moved by her admission that she made a mistake," they added. "She walked out of prison and told the world she made no mistake at all."
Proff told 9NEWS that she might regret her decision to speak out if her fellow board members were "disappointed" in her public revelations about the panel's operations.
"But I really have a feeling that the person who's upset," said Proff, "is the one that was using our board as backing for a politically unpopular and unjust decision."
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