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This October, more than 100 politicians and local and state election officials around the country received envelopes in the mail with an unidentified white powder. They included the Arizona secretary of state; several members of Congress from the California delegation; the Washington secretary of state’s electoral office; and election offices in Louisiana, Ohio, and Oklahoma.

No one was hurt — and it’s not been made public whether the powder contained a biological or pharmaceutical substance capable of harming the recipients — but the effort to intimidate people who are vital to the smooth running of the voting process was a clear signal that, this election season, malign actors are looking for any and every way to gum up the works.

Secretaries of state from both parties condemned the attacks. The FBI, U.S. Capitol Police, and U.S. Postal Service opened investigations. But, from the president, there was only a cavernous silence.

For a man who loves the sound of his own voice to the extent that Donald Trump does, and who weighs in on everything from soccer game red cards to the physical appearance of candidates on the campaign trail, this refusal to issue even the mildest of rebukes against those attacking the electoral system’s guardians was particularly telling. If silence speaks a thousand Truth Social posts (to mangle the old adage), Trump’s refusal to publicly condemn the attacks on elected officials was extraordinary.

Instead, all week Trump and his enablers in the “Justice” Department focused on circulating their highly suspect allegations of fraud, announcing the arrest of 28 noncitizen California residents for illegally voting, and claiming that agents have arrested 113 people around the country since the summer on similar charges. No matter that this is a far cry from the hundreds of thousands of noncitizen voters that they have previously claimed are on voter rolls; by sowing the seeds of doubt about the integrity of voter rolls, they are setting the scene for their likely post-election strategy should the electorate send GOP candidates packing around the country in November. Some of Trump’s advisers have, apparently, even urged him to declare martial law to root out electoral “fraud.”

Poll: 7 in 10 Americans Doubt Trump Will Accept Midterm Results

With Trump ramping up pressure on election officials, the Justice Department also announced that it was seeking to toss out tens of thousands of California ballots, suggesting that they were cast by voters flagged by the Justice Department and Homeland Security’s citizenship-check systems.........

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