Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson is exploring potential actions to fight back against President Joe Biden’s “unlawful” federal election interference, The Federalist has learned.
“There’s nothing wrong with registering people to vote … but there’s a legal way to do it,” Watson told The Federalist.
Signed by Biden in March 2021, Executive Order 14019 directed hundreds of federal agencies to interfere in state and local election administration by using U.S. taxpayer dollars to boost voter registration and get-out-the-vote activities. Each department was directed to draft “a strategic plan” explaining how it intended to fulfill Biden’s edict, and to collaborate with so-called “nonpartisan third-party organizations” that have been “approved” by the administration to supply “voter registration services on agency premises.”
The DOJ has regularly stonewalled requests for documents related to the order’s implementation, even going as far as to heavily redact records ordered for release by a federal court.
In an op-ed published last week, Watson detailed a recent exchange he had with a White House official who, as the secretary described, admitted that the administration “never intended for [agencies’ strategic plans] to be public.” Watson was one of 15 secretaries of state to sign onto a letter sent to Biden in August 2022 that urged the president to rescind Executive Order 14019.
The admission from the White House “is incredibly troublesome,” Watson said. “It’s weaponization of the federal government” to interfere in state administration of elections.
Watson said he asked that same White House official during the aforementioned phone call what
