How Howard Lutnick’s Commerce Department became an unlikely engine of Trump’s election agenda

President Donald Trump’s election fraud crusade has an unlikely new vehicle: the Commerce Department.

Long known for more mundane work like promoting economic growth, shaping trade policy and producing federal statistics, under Secretary Howard Lutnick, Commerce is proving to be a useful ally in Trump’s efforts to reshape the country’s election systems ahead of the November midterms.

In recent months, the department has produced disputed Census Bureau findings on noncitizen voting and pressed the US Postal Service to adopt stringent new mail-ballot rules. Sources tell CNN that Commerce officials worked quietly behind the scenes to advance both initiatives, and that Lutnick has become a key partner in the White House’s election agenda.

Now, prominent Trump allies — including some inside the administration — are pressing Lutnick to use his department’s sweeping authorities over supply chains to ban certain voting machines, arguing that Chinese-made components could leave them vulnerable to hackers. Some have invoked those concerns to push Trump to declare a national emergency and seize greater federal control over November’s midterm elections.

Emails reviewed by CNN show that a pair of conservative activists who have advocated for banning voting machines discussed election security issues last year with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Trump ally Ed Martin. Last month, those same activists pitched Lutnick on the issue, saying Lutnick told them that “he would be getting on it.”

Commerce has rarely, if ever, sought to wield such influence over US elections that are run by state and local officials. But according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior Commerce officials, the department’s wide-ranging authorities have become a central lever in the president’s efforts to rework the machinery of American elections.

Prominent Democrats, voting-rights advocates and election officials — including some Republicans — warn those efforts are injecting confusion into an already strained system, making November’s elections harder to run and laying the groundwork for Trump and his allies to cast doubt on results they do not like.

The Commerce Department and White House did not respond to CNN’s detailed requests for comment.

With the midterms approaching, Trump allies — including administration officials — are renewing pressure on Lutnick, who has echoed Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election being stolen, to block certain voting machines from use in November.

The idea reached the administration’s highest levels last year, including Wiles.

According to emails obtained by the non-profit government watchdog American Oversight and shared exclusively with CNN, Wiles discussed election security in August 2025 with Will Huff and Conrad Reynolds, two Trump-aligned activists who have long pushed to ban voting machines. Wiles connected Huff and Reynolds with Ed Martin, a conservative lawyer and longtime Trump ally who was previously the Justice Department’s “weaponization chief.”

“Susie and I spoke about election security and moving forward and she agreed we need to be ready for 2026 primary elections,” Huff wrote to Martin as they arranged a meeting.

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The emails show that the activists pitched Martin on sweeping changes the administration could impose before the midterms. Among them: using Lutnick’s authority to bar “critical infrastructure” containing parts from adversarial nations — a move they argued could effectively sideline most voting machines.

“This can immediately force states to move to hand-marked and hand-counted ballots like the President wishes,” Huff wrote in an email to Martin recapping their meeting. “The President has been clear that he doesn’t want computers in voting.”

They sent Martin a “Proposed Ban Plan,” which he forwarded to another senior Justice Department official.

The emails suggest Huff and Reynolds were also in contact with Kurt Olsen, the White House’s self-styled election security czar, who now works at the Justice Department.

Last year, Olsen and intelligence officials urged Commerce officials to consider banning machines made by Dominion Voting Systems, now Liberty Vote, by labeling some components a national security threat, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Olsen’s push was first reported by Reuters earlier this year. Huff and Reynolds did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.

Career officials inside Commerce reviewed the claims but took no action, sources told CNN. They concluded there was not enough evidence to proceed.

Two administration officials said Lutnick was not directly involved at the time.

Former intelligence officials and election experts say there is no evidence that Chinese-made components have allowed a foreign government to manipulate US votes.

“While it would be great if we manufactured all the parts of a voting machine in the US, DHS hasn’t shown that just because the Chinese made a part of a voting machine, they can therefore access the voting machine,” a former senior intelligence official told CNN.

While last year’s effort to ban certain voting machines stalled, the campaign is now regaining steam. John Solomon, a conservative journalist who recently joined the White House to advance the president’s election agenda, is one of several prominent Trump allies pushing Lutnick to act before the midterms.

“There are some pretty quick and simple things Commerce could do,” Solomon said on his podcast last month, adding that protecting critical infrastructure from foreign adversaries “is the bailiwick of the Commerce Department.”

Huff and Reynolds — the activists who met with the White House last year — now say they’ve taken their pitch directly to Lutnick. On their podcast last month, they said Lutnick met with them for more than two hours during a recent visit to Washington and let them “present a plan” to ban most voting machines by declaring them a national security threat.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

“He listened and he took notes, and he called in somebody to help write more notes,” Reynolds said on the podcast. “He was shocked at what we had to say, and he said he would be getting on it.”

American Oversight said the records show how deeply “election denialism” has taken root inside the Trump administration – and directly implicates Lutnick.

“The election deniers aren’t knocking at the door anymore. They’ve been invited inside,” executive director Chioma Chukwu said. “Their ideas are being elevated at the highest levels of the White House and increasingly shaping federal election policy.”

Last month, DHS secretary Markwayne Mullin, who has touted his work with Lutnick on election security, sent letters to the White House and Justice Department arguing that foreign-made components in voting machines could “potentially compromise election infrastructure at any stage of the supply chain.”

In July, Mullin said he and Lutnick were working to withhold federal election funding from states that refuse to adopt the president’s preferred election reforms, including moving away from certain voting machines.

Representatives for the three major voting equipment companies mentioned in Mullin’s letter told CNN that all US industries rely somewhat on foreign manufacturing, and that in the rare situation where a voting problem did arise, election officials could easily pull paper ballots and audit the tally.

An election industry source told CNN many in the business have been nervously monitoring Trump’s attempts to upend voting procedures and are bracing for more scrutiny.

On the concerns about foreign components, the source said, “That’s like asking if there are Chinese parts in your cell phone or car.”

At the Census Bureau, which is part of the Commerce Department, Trump sent shockwaves last month touting a newly published report from the agency in a Truth Social post, claiming that researchers had confidently identified at least 24,000 noncitizens who voted in the 2020 election.

“I WON THE ELECTION,” Trump declared on Truth Social — a conclusion that the bureau’s findings, even if taken at face value, did not come close to proving.

Even high-ranking Census Bureau officials were caught off guard, and CNN’s reporting sheds new light on the internal process that produced the explosive analysis.

The Commerce Department had quietly inserted several researchers from the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned conservative think tank that has served as a personnel pipeline for his administration.

Internal Census Bureau documents reviewed by CNN show the partisan researchers were assigned to conduct a forensic examination of the 2020 census, with the stated goal of improving the bureau’s procedures ahead of the 2030 count.

On its face, the project was not particularly controversial. But carrying it out would require access to a sweeping array of federal records, including sensitive data held by the IRS, Social Security Administration and DHS.

At first, career officials worked with the new team, helping its members settle in and launch the census project. In July, however, the AFPI researchers stopped communicating with the career experts, multiple sources told CNN. Around the same time, numerous senior Census Bureau officials left the agency.

The AFPI team ultimately produced the voter analysis Trump would use to revive his false claim that he won the 2020 election. The report, dubbed a “beginning analysis,” compared a commercial database of 2020 voters with a vast collection of federal records. Of the 128 million voters examined, the report said, about 24,000 matched records associated with noncitizens — roughly 0.019%.

“And that is just the beginning,” Lutnick wrote on X after the announcement. “More than 32 million more voters’ records will be analyzed in the coming weeks, and these records will likely show tens of thousands of additional illegal voters.”

The report had no named author. It did not adequately account for errors in voter or federal records, the risk of false matches when linking massive databases, or the possibility that 24,000 matches fell within a margin for error, several former bureau leaders told CNN.

The analysis capped off an 18-month transformation under Lutnick in which the Census Bureau – an agency built, by design, to sit outside partisan politics – was steadily reshaped at the top, stripped of outside oversight, and quietly relieved of safeguards that had long kept its work at arm’s length of the White House, sources told CNN.

John Abowd, the bureau’s former chief scientist and head of its research and methodology directorate, was unsparing in his view of the still-anonymous publication on non-citizen voting.

“Allowing such statistical nonsense to be published on census.gov without the usual internal peer reviews and without the scientific detail required to assess the quality of the results is at best irresponsible but more likely pure partisan manipulation of the Census Bureau’s reputation for reliable statistical products,” said Abowd.

One day after the bureau published its disputed analysis, Commerce quietly revised its own Scientific Integrity Policy, striking language promising that the department’s scientific findings “are not suppressed, delayed, or altered for political purposes and are not subjected to inappropriate influence.”

The policy no longer lists protection from political interference as a hallmark of scientific integrity at all.

The roughly half-dozen AFPI researchers remain embedded at the Census Bureau, multiple sources said. Career officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, warned that the team’s access to troves of sensitive government data — combined with its willingness to use the bureau’s authority for politically charged investigations — raises the prospect of a much broader effort.

The stakes are enormous: Census figures help determine how many seats states receive in Congress and how federal dollars flow to communities nationwide.

The Census Bureau did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on strict new mail-voting regulations – championed by Lutnick – that critics fear could disrupt the midterms.

It all ties back to a March executive order to rein in vote-by-mail, which Trump signed with Lutnick at his side. Lutnick and his team were the architects behind the president’s directives, two sources involved in the process told CNN.

Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

The order prompted the US Postal Service to develop controversial regulations requiring election officials nationwide to upload the names and addresses of every mail-ballot recipient to a government portal, which could be shared with federal law enforcement and used in election audits and investigations.

Under the rules, ballots with discrepancies would be rejected and returned to election offices. States that refused to comply could lose USPS delivery services for mail ballots.

The order also directs DHS to create state-by-state citizenship lists aimed at pressuring states to conduct further audits of their voter rolls. It requires both USPS and DHS to coordinate that work directly with the Commerce Department.

Senate Democrats sent Lutnick a scathing letter in June, saying they were aware of “nonpublic reports” that he and his office had “a key role in drafting and internally advancing” the order.

Last week, a whistleblower alleged that USPS had secretively and haphazardly rushed to build its new portal system. They accused the administration of hiding the system’s high risk of catastrophic failure — potentially disenfranchising significant numbers of mail-in voters. The agency has defended its process.

Last year, Trump floated stripping the Postal Service of its independence and moving it under Lutnick’s Commerce Department.

Lutnick recently unveiled a pilot program that uses postal workers to assist with the US Census, which he said is already underway.

“We’ve got census takers in the post office truck, driving around, and what happens is the postman drives by a house and says, ‘We don’t have to go in that house. Nobody lives there,’” Lutnick explained in a video posted to social media . “They have a deep knowledge of who lives everywhere, so they can confirm it for the census. It’s going to save us billions of dollars.”

CNN’s Marshall Cohen contributed to this report.

唐纳德·特朗普总统发起的选举舞弊运动有了一个意想不到的新工具：商务部。

商务部长期以来以促进经济增长、制定贸易政策和编制联邦统计数据等较为平凡的工作而闻名，但在霍华德·卢特尼克部长的领导下，商务部正成为特朗普在 11 月中期选举前重塑国家选举制度的有用盟友。

近几个月来，商务部发布了备受争议的人口普查局关于非公民投票的调查结果，并敦促美国邮政局采纳严格的新邮寄选票规则。消息人士告诉CNN，商务部官员一直在幕后悄悄推进这两项举措，而卢特尼克已成为白宫选举议程中的关键合作伙伴。

现在，包括一些政府内部人士在内的特朗普重要盟友正敦促卢特尼克利用其部门对供应链的广泛权力，禁止使用某些投票机，理由是中国制造的零部件可能使这些投票机容易受到黑客攻击。一些人甚至以此为由，敦促特朗普宣布国家进入紧急状态，从而加强联邦政府对11月中期选举的控制。

CNN查阅的电子邮件显示，两名主张禁止使用投票机的保守派活动人士去年曾与白宫幕僚长苏西·威尔斯和特朗普的盟友埃德·马丁讨论过选举安全问题。上个月，这两名活动人士就此问题向卢特尼克提出建议，称卢特尼克告诉他们“他会着手处理此事”。

美国商务部很少（甚至可以说从未）试图对由州和地方官员管理的美国选举施加如此大的影响力。但据对十几位现任和前任商务部高级官员的采访显示，该部门广泛的权力已成为总统重塑美国选举机制的核心杠杆。

包括一些共和党人在内的知名民主党人、投票权倡导者和选举官员警告说，这些举措正在给本已紧张的选举系统注入混乱，使 11 月的选举更难进行，并为特朗普及其盟友质疑他们不喜欢的选举结果奠定了基础。

美国商务部和白宫均未回应 CNN 的详细置评请求。

随着中期选举临近，特朗普的盟友——包括政府官员——正加大对卢特尼克的施压，要求他阻止某些投票机在11月的选举中使用。卢特尼克曾附和特朗普关于2020年大选被窃取的虚假说法。

去年，这个想法甚至传到了政府最高层，包括威尔斯在内。

根据非营利政府监督机构“美国监督”（American Oversight）获取并独家提供给CNN的电子邮件显示，威尔斯在2025年8月与威尔·赫夫和康拉德·雷诺兹讨论了选举安全问题。赫夫和雷诺兹是两位与特朗普关系密切的活动人士，长期以来一直推动禁止使用投票机。威尔斯将赫夫和雷诺兹介绍给了埃德·马丁，马丁是一位保守派律师，也是特朗普的长期盟友，曾任司法部“武器化主管”。

“苏西和我谈到了选举安全和未来发展，她同意我们需要为 2026 年的党内初选做好准备，”赫夫在与马丁安排会面时写道。

Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

这些邮件显示，活动人士曾向马丁提出政府可以在中期选举前实施一系列影响深远的改革措施。其中包括：利用卢特尼克的权力，禁止使用含有敌对国家零部件的“关键基础设施”——他们认为此举实际上可以使大多数投票机失效。

“这可以立即迫使各州按照总统的意愿，采用人工标记和人工计票的方式，”赫夫在给马丁的一封电子邮件中总结了他们的会面内容。“总统已经明确表示，他不希望在投票中使用电脑。”

他们向马丁发送了一份“拟议禁令计划”，马丁又将其转发给了司法部的另一位高级官员。

这些邮件表明，赫夫和雷诺兹还与白宫自封的选举安全沙皇库尔特·奥尔森有过联系，奥尔森现在在司法部工作。

据两位知情人士透露，去年奥尔森和情报官员敦促商务部官员考虑禁止 Dominion Voting Systems（现为 Liberty Vote）生产的投票机，理由是某些组件构成国家安全威胁。

奥尔森的举动最早由路透社于今年早些时候报道。赫夫和雷诺兹没有回应CNN的置评请求。

据CNN报道，商务部内部的职业官员审查了这些指控，但没有采取任何行动。消息人士称，他们的结论是证据不足，无法继续调查。

两名政府官员表示，卢特尼克当时并未直接参与其中。

前情报官员和选举专家表示，没有证据表明中国制造的零部件让外国政府得以操纵美国选举。

一位前高级情报官员告诉 CNN：“虽然如果我们能在美国制造投票机的所有部件，那当然很好，但国土安全部并没有证明，仅仅因为中国人制造了投票机的某个部件，他们就能因此获得投票机的使用权。”

去年禁止使用某些投票机的努力虽然受阻，但如今这项运动又重新燃起了势头。约翰·所罗门是一位保守派记者，他最近加入白宫，负责推进总统的选举议程。他是几位敦促卢特尼克在期中选举前采取行动的特朗普盟友之一。

所罗门上个月在他的播客节目中表示：“商务部可以做一些非常快捷简单的事情。”他还补充说，保护关键基础设施免受外国敌对势力的侵害“是商务部的职责所在”。

去年曾与白宫会面的活动人士赫夫和雷诺兹表示，他们已直接向卢特尼克提出了他们的方案。在上个月的播客节目中，他们透露，卢特尼克在最近一次访问华盛顿期间与他们会面了两个多小时，并让他们“展示一项计划”，即通过宣布投票机构成国家安全威胁来禁止使用大多数投票机。

Alex Wong/Getty Images

雷诺兹在播客节目中说：“他认真听了，做了笔记，还找人帮忙补充笔记。他对我们的发言感到震惊，并表示他会着手处理。”

美国监督组织表示，这些记录表明“否认选举结果”的思想在特朗普政府内部已经根深蒂固，并且直接牵涉到卢特尼克。

“那些否认选举结果的人不再只是敲门了，他们已经被请进了门，”执行主任奇奥玛·楚库说。“他们的理念正在白宫最高层得到提升，并日益影响着联邦选举政策。”

上个月，国土安全部部长马克韦恩·穆林（Markwayne Mullin）曾吹嘘他与卢特尼克（Lutnick）在选举安全方面的合作，他致信白宫和司法部，声称投票机中的外国制造部件“可能在供应链的任何阶段损害选举基础设施”。

7 月，穆林表示，他和卢特尼克正在努力阻止向拒绝采纳总统偏好的选举改革（包括弃用某些投票机）的州提供联邦选举资金。

穆林信中提到的三家主要投票设备公司的代表告诉 CNN，所有美国产业都或多或少依赖外国制造，而且在极少数情况下，如果出现投票问题，选举官员可以很容易地抽出纸质选票并审核计票结果。

一位选举行业人士告诉 CNN，业内许多人一直在紧张地关注特朗普试图颠覆投票程序的举动，并准备迎接更多审查。

对于有关外国零部件的担忧，该消息人士表示：“这就像问你的手机或汽车里是否有中国制造的零部件一样。”

上个月，特朗普在 Truth Social 上发帖吹嘘美国人口普查局（隶属于商务部）新发布的一份报告，声称研究人员已确定至少有 24,000 名非公民在 2020 年大选中投票，此举引发了轩然大波。

“我赢得了选举，”特朗普在 Truth Social 上宣称——但即使从表面上看，该机构的调查结果也远不足以证明这一点。

就连人口普查局的高级官员也措手不及，CNN 的报道揭示了产生这份爆炸性分析的内部过程。

美国商务部悄悄地安插了几名来自“美国优先政策研究所”的研究人员，该研究所是与特朗普结盟的保守派智库，一直是特朗普政府的人员输送渠道。

CNN查阅的人口普查局内部文件显示，这些带有党派色彩的研究人员被指派对2020年人口普查进行司法鉴定，其明确目标是在2030年人口普查之前改进该局的程序。

表面上看，这个项目并没有什么特别大的争议。但要实施这个项目，就需要查阅大量的联邦记录，包括国税局、社会保障局和国土安全部持有的敏感数据。

起初，资深官员与新团队合作，帮助成员们安顿下来并启动人口普查项目。然而，据CNN多位消息人士透露，7月份，美国人口普查局公共政策研究所（AFPI）的研究人员停止了与这些资深专家的沟通。大约在同一时间，多名人口普查局高级官员离开了该机构。

美国政治研究所（AFPI）团队最终完成了特朗普用来重申其赢得2020年大选的虚假声明的选民分析报告。这份被称为“初步分析”的报告将一个包含2020年选民信息的商业数据库与大量的联邦记录进行了比对。报告称，在所调查的1.28亿选民中，约有2.4万人的记录与非公民相关——约占0.019%。

“而这仅仅是个开始，”卢特尼克在公告发布后在X网站上写道。“未来几周还将分析超过3200万份选民记录，这些记录很可能会显示数万名额外的非法选民。”

这份报告没有署名作者。几位前联邦调查局领导告诉CNN，报告没有充分考虑到选民或联邦记录中的错误、链接大型数据库时出现错误匹配的风险，以及24000个匹配结果可能在误差范围内的可能性。

据 CNN 报道，这项分析标志着卢特尼克领导下的人口普查局在 18 个月的改革中取得了最终成果。人口普查局是一个旨在置身党派政治之外的机构，但其高层却被逐步重组，外部监督被剥夺，长期以来使其工作与白宫保持距离的保障措施也被悄然解除。

约翰·阿博德是该局的前首席科学家兼研究和方法论主管，他对那份至今仍未公开的关于非公民投票的出版物毫不留情地表达了自己的看法。

阿博德表示：“允许这种毫无根据的统计谬论未经通常的内部同行评审，且缺乏评估结果质量所需的科学细节，往好了说是不负责任，但更有可能是纯粹出于党派利益操纵人口普查局在可靠统计产品方面的声誉。”

在联邦调查局发布其有争议的分析报告一天后，商务部悄悄修改了自己的科学诚信政策，删除了承诺该部门的科学发现“不会出于政治目的而被压制、延迟或篡改，也不会受到不正当影响”的措辞。

该政策已完全不再将免受政治干预列为科学诚信的标志。

多位消息人士称，大约六名美国政治研究所（AFPI）的研究人员仍驻扎在人口普查局。一些不愿透露姓名的资深官员警告说，该团队能够接触到大量敏感的政府数据，再加上他们愿意利用人口普查局的权力进行政治敏感的调查，这增加了他们采取行动的范围扩大的可能性。

事关重大：人口普查数据有助于决定各州在国会中获得的席位数量，以及联邦资金如何流向全国各地。

美国人口普查局没有回应 CNN 的置评请求。

最高法院预计很快将对卢特尼克倡导的严格的新邮寄投票规定作出裁决，批评人士担心这些规定可能会扰乱中期选举。

这一切都源于3月份特朗普签署的一项限制邮寄投票的行政命令，当时卢特尼克就在他身边。据CNN报道，两名参与此事的知情人士透露，卢特尼克及其团队正是总统指令的幕后策划者。

Patrick T. Fallon/法新社/盖蒂图片社

该命令促使美国邮政局制定了有争议的规定，要求全国各地的选举官员将每位邮寄选票接收者的姓名和地址上传到政府门户网站，这些信息可能会与联邦执法部门共享，并用于选举审计和调查。

根据规定，存在差异的选票将被拒收并退回选举办公室。拒绝遵守规定的州可能会失去美国邮政署的邮寄选票服务。

该命令还指示国土安全部建立各州公民身份名单，旨在向各州施压，要求其对选民名册进行进一步审计。该命令要求美国邮政总局和国土安全部直接与商务部协调这项工作。

参议院民主党人在 6 月份给卢特尼克发了一封措辞严厉的信，称他们知道有“非公开报道”称他和他的办公室在“起草和内部推进”该命令方面发挥了“关键作用”。

上周，一位举报人声称美国邮政署秘密且草率地匆忙搭建了新的门户系统。他们指责政府隐瞒了该系统极易发生灾难性故障的风险——这可能会导致大量邮寄投票选民失去投票权。邮政署则为其流程进行了辩护。

去年，特朗普曾提出剥夺邮政服务的独立性，并将其置于卢特尼克领导的商务部之下。

卢特尼克最近公布了一项试点计划，该计划利用邮政工作人员协助美国人口普查，他表示该计划已经启动。

“我们安排了邮局的卡车，上面载着人口普查员四处巡查。有时候，邮递员路过某户人家，会说：‘我们不用进去了，那里没人住。’”卢特尼克在社交媒体上发布的一段视频中解释道。“他们对每家每户的居民情况都非常了解，所以可以核实人口普查结果。这将为我们节省数十亿美元。”

CNN的马歇尔·科恩对本报道亦有贡献。