Martin: Trump met Tina Peters in Oval Office
Several prominent election deniers allied with President Donald Trump have spent recent weeks making fresh allegations of US election vulnerabilities ahead of the November 2026 midterms, in appearances on conservative-friendly media outlets.
The deniers — including Cleta Mitchell, a former politician who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election results; Ed Martin, a controversial former US pardon attorney; and Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation — have used recent interviews to revive claims of mass voter fraud and seed doubts about expected midterm outcomes, echoing arguments the president has deployed to justify expanding federal control over voting.
Mitchell capitalized on recent reports that voting machines in Georgia had a privacy vulnerability to assert the state was not adequately securing ballots. “The problem in Georgia is that they use a version of these machines where … the machine doesn’t count the choices. The machine actually counts a QR code,” Mitchell told the conservative strategist Steve Bannon in a Friday interview.
Martin repeated claims from top administration officials that voting machines with parts manufactured in China and other countries were “compromised.” In a Monday appearance on Eric Bolling’s show on Real America’s Voice, Martin disclosed that Trump had met in the Oval Office with Tina Peters, a Colorado politician convicted of crimes related to her efforts to interfere with the 2020 election results.
“Just hours ago, maybe two hours ago, Tina Peters, you know, from Colorado, was in the Oval Office meeting with the president on election integrity, and they were talking about the plans,” Martin said. Martin added that Trump would act unilaterally if Congress did not pass the Save America Act. “The president is taking it seriously. If the Congress won’t pass the Save America Act, and they won’t, then the president’s going to have to do what he’s going to do,” Martin said.
Roberts, whose Heritage Foundation established and published Project 2025, told Fox Business in September that predictions Democrats could flip the Senate were “a psyop” by polling firms. “I think that this prognosticating is a psyop by so many of these polling firms. In order to do what? To depress conservative turnout,” Roberts said. The Guardian noted that the term “psyop” has been popularized by online theorists to describe covert influence operations they attribute to authorities.
The fresh allegations coincide with the Trump administration’s effort to assert greater federal authority over elections traditionally administered by the states. The president has directed his administration to implement new rules restricting mail-in ballot voting — a method Trump has criticized despite using himself — to create a federal database of eligible citizens, and to require proof of citizenship for federal elections. Most of those actions have been stalled by court challenges, though the Supreme Court has allowed the administration to move forward with compiling a federal database of eligible voters.
Mitchell also told Bannon she had “on good authority, from some of the highest levels in the Trump administration” that the Justice Department was asking the Georgia secretary of state about voter data shared with two non-profit groups. She accused Georgia and other states of being “hypocrites” for refusing to share voter data with the federal government.
The Guardian reported that Trump has previously sought to undermine public confidence in US elections by promoting false claims of 2020 fraud and unverified claims of election insecurity. Earlier this year, the president tried to heighten those claims in a primetime address.