DHS just hired ‘researcher’ who helped Trump lie about the 2020 election

A conservative election researcher, Heather Honey, has been appointed to the new position of deputy assistant secretary for election integrity. This job is in the US Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans. The role did not exist under the previous administration. This appointment comes after President Donald Trump cited Honey’s faulty findings on voter data in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Since 2020, Honey has worked with several election research groups that have produced flawed analyses of election data. These analyses have fueled right-wing attacks on voting procedures. According to NBC News, she runs a consulting firm named Haystack Investigations.

In 2020, her research misrepresented incomplete state voter data to falsely claim that Pennsylvania had more votes reported than voters. Trump repeated this false claim in his speech to supporters on January 6, 2021.

Trump hires more disinformation goons

Honey was also involved in the partisan audit of election results in Maricopa County, Arizona, in 2021. This review lasted six months and was widely criticized by experts for its errors, bias, and flawed methods. Even though it extensively searched for fraud, the audit ultimately confirmed that Joe Biden won the county by an even larger margin than the official results showed.

In 2022, her organization Verity Vote issued a report that falsely claimed Pennsylvania had sent hundreds of thousands of unverified mail ballots to voters. Officials in Pennsylvania stated that this claim grossly misrepresented the state’s ballot application process. They noted that a “not verified” designation did not mean the voter had failed to provide accurate identification or that their ID was not later verified.

Former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, said he was surprised to learn of Honey’s appointment to a position of such authority. Richer, who received many public records requests from Honey that used many hours of staff time, described her as “not a serious auditor.”

Honey’s appointment is part of a broader pattern. It follows reports that the Trump administration has met with other prominent election conspiracy theorists, including MyPillow founder Mike Lindell and election modeler Seth Keshel.

Trump’s decisions on workers in the federal government haven’t been very good. The IRS recently had to roll back his decision to fire workers, and the USDA also had trouble thanks to his workplace firings.

David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, said, “What I’m concerned about is that it seems like DHS is being poised to use the vast power and megaphone of the federal government to spread disinformation rather than combat it. It’s going to really harm DHS’s credibility overall.”