The Daily Fuckup

In late January 2022, the Justice Department was treating the fallout from 2020 election denial as an active enforcement problem, not a closed political argument. On Jan. 26, Attorney General Merrick Garland met virtually with a bipartisan group of election officials and said the department’s Election Threats Task Force had already reviewed more than 850 reports of threats to election officials and had made its first charge in an interstate threats case. The department also said grant money could be used to help deter, detect and protect against violence aimed at election workers and others involved in running elections. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/readout-justice-department-leadership-meeting-election-officials))

That Jan. 26 meeting was part of a broader Justice Department effort launched the previous summer after a wave of threats against election workers. DOJ said the task force was working with election officials, law enforcement and FBI field offices to assess reports and, where appropriate, investigate and prosecute them. The department’s election-threats page says the task force was created to help protect election workers so they could do their jobs free from threats and intimidation. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/readout-justice-department-leadership-meeting-election-officials))

The record behind that response was already plain by the end of January 2022: threats connected to the post-2020 election fight were producing federal cases. DOJ publicly described the Texas case that led to its first interstate threats charge, and later the department’s election-threats tracker listed additional prosecutions involving threats aimed at election officials and workers. The point was not that every false claim about the election was itself a crime. It was that the harassment and intimidation surrounding those claims had crossed into federal law-enforcement territory. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/readout-justice-department-leadership-meeting-election-officials))

By that stretch in January, the false stolen-election narrative was still doing political work, but the government’s response had shifted from warning signs to case files. DOJ was not talking about abstract disinformation. It was documenting threats, building prosecutions and telling election administrators their safety counted as part of the work of democracy. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/readout-justice-department-leadership-meeting-election-officials))