四月下旬，在前任总统一年半之后唐纳德·特朗普和他的同伙推动选举欺诈的虚假指控，数百名与会者聚集在弗吉尼亚州威廉斯堡的一个高尔夫度假村，参加由特朗普盟友组织的“选举诚信峰会”，这些盟友站在他努力的最前沿推翻2020年大选。
在金斯米尔度假村的一个舞厅里，长期担任保守派律师的克莱塔·米切尔(Cleta Mitchell)拿起麦克风，敦促峰会与会者在即将到来的中期选举之前，在自己的社区招募和建立选举“任务小组”，以避免上次总统选举的重演。米切尔在前总统的努力中发挥了关键作用。
“想象一下，如果我们在这些县有地方工作队会怎么样?如果我们在2020年有像你这样的公民来监督这件事，会怎么样?”米切尔说，在私人首脑会议上，美国广播公司新闻参加了购买机票。
“我们本可以阻止它，”米切尔告诉人群。“这就是为什么我们今晚在这里做我们正在做的事情。”
全国各地的“任务组”
弗吉尼亚的活动是在全国各摇摆州举行的一系列峰会中的最新一次，由米切尔领导并组织了“选举诚信网络”，这是保守派伙伴关系研究所(Conservative Partnership Institute)的一个项目，该研究所是一个右翼非营利组织，由特朗普的前幕僚长马克·梅多斯(Mark Meadows)和米切尔(Mitchell)担任高级合伙人。
这一系列峰会是在特朗普继续扩散之后举行的虚假索赔2020年选举被盗，从他的政治行动委员会的战争基金中向CPI捐款100万美元，这是他在当前选举周期中最大的捐款之一。尽管没有证据表明选民普遍存在欺诈行为，但许多共和党选民表示，他们同意特朗普关于选举被“窃取”和“操纵”的说法——根据最近的一项调查，71%的共和党人同意这位前总统的说法，即他是合法的获胜者ABC新闻/益普索民意调查。
在1月6日众议院委员会正在进行的对国会大厦暴动的调查中，梅多斯已经成为一个关键人物，他有时充当一个特朗普的调解人因为他努力推翻拜登的胜利导致了1月6日的袭击。米切尔成为头条新闻，当时她是前总统要求佐治亚州选举官员在电话中支持特朗普的律师之一“找到”足够的选票扭转拜登的胜利，这引发了一项正在进行的调查。
现在，距离2022年中期选举还有几个月，着眼于2024年总统选举，由梅多斯和米切尔领导的小组正在全国各地建立所谓的“选举诚信任务组”。他们为期多天的峰会包括为投票站观察员和选举官员举办的招募和培训会议，以及由米切尔和其他人主持的小组讨论，主题包括“左派腐败2022年选举的计划”到“投票系统和机器”和“建设选举诚信基础设施”。
根据该组织的网站，今年到目前为止，该组织已经在包括乔治亚州、密歇根州、亚利桑那州、佛罗里达州、宾夕法尼亚州和弗吉尼亚州在内的摇摆州举行了六次峰会。六月，该组织将在北卡罗来纳州和威斯康星州举办峰会。门票起价30美元，包括传统行动(Heritage Action)和茶党爱国者行动(Tea Party Patriots Action)在内的有影响力的保守团体已经参加了之前的峰会。
根据该组织在网上发布的时间表，梅多斯本人被宣布将作为佐治亚州和亚利桑那州峰会的主旨发言人，并被列为就“2020年发生的事情以及我们必须做些什么来保护亚利桑那州未来的选举”发表讲话。根据社交媒体的帖子，佛罗里达州州长罗恩·德桑蒂斯在今年早些时候由CPI主办的佛罗里达州峰会上发表了讲话。
梅多斯和米切尔都没有回应ABC新闻的置评请求。特朗普拯救美国政治行动委员会的官员也没有回应置评请求。
在峰会内部
美国广播公司新闻在四月下旬参加的弗吉尼亚峰会以两小时的“投票观察者”开始选举官员培训研讨会”由保守派团体弗吉尼亚公平选举的克拉拉·贝尔·惠勒主持这需要一支军队，”惠勒告诉参加峰会第一次会议的人群，敦促与会者在中期选举前成为投票观察员或选举官员，然后向与会者介绍如何注册志愿者。
惠勒指出，共和党候选人赢得了2021年弗吉尼亚州州长选举格列，作为迈向2022年的概念验证。惠勒说:“我们在2021年大选中产生了如此大的影响，以至于全国各大新闻媒体都在谈论弗吉尼亚州的投票站观察员大军。”
培训结束后，与会者被转移到一个舞厅，观看由美国公民联合会(Citizens United)主席和特朗普的亲密盟友大卫·博西(David Bossie)拍摄的42分钟的电影，名为“操纵:扎克伯格资助的击败唐纳德·特朗普的阴谋”，该电影声称脸书的马克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)通过捐赠4.19亿美元支持选民投票率和教育工作，扭转了2020年的选举。与会者为影片起立鼓掌，之后公民联盟的JT·马斯特拉纳迪接受了观众的提问。
两党公共政策研究所布伦南司法中心(Brennan Center for Justice)的高级律师Gowri Ramachandran警告说，鉴于上次选举中使用的措辞和对虚假说法的强调，CPI招募投票工作人员和选举官员的努力可能是危险的。
拉马钱德兰告诉美国广播公司新闻说:“招募那些对选举工作人员、他们的公民同胞和他们的选民抱有极端敌意的人担任投票工作人员或投票观察员是不健康的。”“特别是因为没有理由认为在2020年有一些事情需要被阻止。选举被操纵是谎言。因此，告诉人们成为投票工作人员或投票观察者是阻止过去甚至没有发生的事情的一种方式，这不是让人们参与这一过程的健康方式。”
拉马钱德兰说，虽然人们参与选举过程并对选举如何进行感兴趣是好的，但“没有背景，没有理解，让一群在过去一年半里被灌输了关于选举的谎言的人出去做这种没有背景的[工作]是不好的。”
克莱塔·米切尔(Cleta Mitchell)在弗吉尼亚峰会期间主持了多个小组讨论，其中一个题为“左翼计划用我们的税收腐败2022年选举，以及如何保护弱势选票免受左翼选票操纵者的影响。”
根据美国广播公司新闻获得的时间表，弗吉尼亚峰会还包括茶党爱国者的联合创始人珍妮·贝丝·马丁和前特朗普顾问迈克·罗曼，他们推动了未经证实的指控关于2020大选后的选民舞弊。
“控制本地设备”
除了自身的营销，峰会系列还得到了亲特朗普渠道的广泛推广，包括特朗普白宫顾问史蒂夫·班农广受欢迎的“战争室”播客的广泛推广。
班农在弗吉尼亚峰会的前奏中展示了峰会的多位嘉宾，包括米切尔，他鼓励观众参加。
在弗吉尼亚事件前几天的“作战室”露面期间，米切尔将该计划描述为“武装人们反击激进左翼”，称她的目标是“防止他们再次窃取它”。
“这些活跃的研讨会能让他们真正了解如何在地方选举中接管、掌控和控制地方机构吗?”班农问米切尔。
“当然，”米切尔说。“这绝对是我们正在做的事情。”
Inside the Trump-backed effort to take 'control' of elections ahead of 2022 and 2024
In late April, after a year and a half of former PresidentDonald Trumpand his associates pushing false claims of election fraud, a few hundred attendees gathered at a golf resort in Williamsburg, Virginia, for an "Election Integrity Summit" organized by Trump allies who were at the forefront of his effort tooverturn the 2020 election.
Inside a ballroom at the Kingsmill Resort, Cleta Mitchell, a longtime conservative lawyer who played a key role in the former president's efforts to hold onto power, took the microphone and urged summit attendees to recruit and create election "task forces" in their communities ahead of the upcoming midterms to avoid a repeat of the last presidential election.
"Imagine if we had had local task forces in these counties? What if we had citizens like you in 2020, overseeing this?" Mitchell said at the private summit, which ABC News attended by purchasing a ticket.
"We could have stopped it," Mitchell told the crowd. "That's why we're doing what we're doing here tonight."
'Task forces' around the country
The Virginia event is one of the latest in a blitz of summits being held in swing states across the country, led by Mitchell and organized the "Election Integrity Network," a project of the Conservative Partnership Institute, a right-wing nonprofit organization that is spearheaded by Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who is a senior partner, and Mitchell, who serves as a senior fellow.
The series of summits comes after Trump, who continues to spreadfalse claimsthat the 2020 election was stolen, made donations amounting to $1 million from his political action committee's war chest to CPI -- one of his largest donations in the current election cycle. Despite there being no evidence of widespread voter fraud, many Republican voters say they agree with Trump's assertions that the election was "stolen" and "rigged" -- with 71% of Republicans agreeing with the former president's claims that he was the rightful winner, according to a recentABC News/Ipsos poll.
Meadows, amid the Jan. 6 House committee's ongoing investigation into the Capitol insurrection, has emerged as a key figure who at times acted as amediator for Trumpas he worked to overturn Biden's win leading up to the Jan. 6 attack. Mitchell made headlines when she was one of the pro-Trump lawyers on the phone call in which the former president demanded of Georgia election officials that they"find" enough votesto reverse Biden's win, which sparked an ongoing investigation.
Now, months out from the 2022 midterms and with an eye on the 2024 presidential election, the group led by Meadows and Mitchell is working to put in place so-called "election integrity task forces" around the country. Their multi-day summits feature recruiting and training sessions for poll watchers and election officers, as well as panels hosted by Mitchell and others speaking on topics ranging from "The Left's Plans to Corrupt the 2022 Election" to "Voting Systems and Machines" and "Building the Election Integrity Infrastructure."
So far this year the group has held half a dozen summits in swing states including Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, according to the group's website. In June the group will host summits in North Carolina and Wisconsin. Tickets start at $30, and influential conservative groups including Heritage Action and Tea Party Patriots Action have already participated in previous summits.
Meadows himself was announced to appear as the keynote speaker for summits in Georgia and Arizona, and was listed to speak on "What Happened in 2020 and What We Must Do to Protect Future Elections in Arizona," according to a schedule posted by the group online. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke at a Florida summit hosted by CPI earlier this year, according to social media posts.
Neither Meadows nor Mitchell responded to a request for comment from ABC News. Officials with Trump's Save America PAC also did not respond to a request for comment.
Inside the summit
The Virginia summit attended by ABC News in late April began with a two-hour "Poll Watcher& Election Officer Training Workshop" led by Clara Belle Wheeler from the conservative group Virginia Fair Elections. "It takes an army," Wheeler told the group gathered for the first session of the summit, urging attendees to become poll watchers or election officers ahead of the midterms, and then walking attendees through the process of how to register to volunteer.
Wheeler pointed to the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election, won by Republican candidateGlenn Youngkin, as a proof of concept heading into 2022. "We made such an impact in the 2021 election that every major news outlet across the country talked about the army of poll watchers in Virginia," Wheeler said.
Following the training session, attendees were moved into a ballroom to watch the 42-minute film from Citizens United president and close Trump ally David Bossie called "Rigged: The Zuckerberg Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump," which claims that Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg swung the 2020 election through $419 million he donated to support voter turnout and education efforts. Attendees gave the screening a standing ovation, after which Citizens United's JT Mastranadi took questions from the crowd.
Gowri Ramachandran, Senior Counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, a bipartisan public policy institute, warned that the efforts by CPI to recruit poll workers and election officers could be dangerous given the rhetoric used and the emphasis placed on false claims about the last election.
"It's not healthy to recruit folks to either be poll workers or poll watchers with such an extreme hostile level of suspicion towards both election workers and their fellow citizens and their fellow voters," Ramachandran told ABC News. "Especially because there is no reason to think that there was something that needed to be stopped in 2020. That's a lie that the election was rigged. So telling people that becoming a poll worker or poll watcher is a way to stop something that that didn't even happen in the past is just not a healthy way to bring people into the process."
Ramachandran said that while it's good that people are engaged in the process and have an interest in how elections are run, "it's not good to, without context, without understanding, have a bunch of people who've been fed a diet of lies for the last year and a half about elections, have them go out and do this sort of [work] without context."
Cleta Mitchell moderated multiple panels during the Virginia summit, including one titled, "The Left's Plans to Corrupt the 2022 Election with Our Tax Dollars and How to Protect the Vulnerable Votes from Leftwing Vote Manipulators."
According to a schedule obtained by ABC News, the Virginia summit also included panels featuring Tea Party Patriots cofounder Jenny Beth Martin and former Trump adviser Mike Roman, who pushedunsubstantiated claimsabout voter fraud after the 2020 election.
'Control the local apparatus'
Beyond its own marketing, the summit series has received broad promotion from pro-Trump channels, including extensive promotion on Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon's popular "War Room" podcast.
Bannon featured multiple guests from the summits, including Mitchell, in the lead-up to the Virginia summit, which he encouraged viewers to attend.
During a "War Room" appearance days before the Virginia event, Mitchell described the program as "arming people to fight back against the radical left," saying her goal was to "keep them from stealing it ever again."
"Are these active workshops where they actually understand how to take over and grab hold of and control the local apparatus in their local elections?" Bannon asked Mitchell.
"Absolutely," Mitchell said. "That's absolutely what we're doing."
