In an interview airing Monday, President Donald Trump told former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino that Republicans should “take over the voting” in at least 15 places.
Trump repeated claims from after the 2020 election that he won states where official totals showed he lost, calling those states “crooked.”
“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least — many, 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,’” Trump said.
Elections are conducted at the state level, per the U.S. Constitution.
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Since 2020, Trump has frequently questioned results from states that permit mail-in voting and do not require voter identification. But multiple audits and reviews found no evidence of widespread fraud and only isolated cases of illegal voting.
Some states eased mail-in voting rules in 2020, extending early voting periods and other measures to make voting from home easier during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump’s comments come a week after the FBI searched an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, as part of a Justice Department effort to seize election records and investigate alleged voter fraud.
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