IC Oversight & Policy — 2026-10-20

Trump Appointees Asked CISA to Secretly Acquire and Hack a Voting Machine

BLUFDHS appointees' attempt to build a private vulnerability catalogue for voting machines signals a willingness to weaponize federal cyber capabilities against election infrastructure, constrained now only by staffing gaps that could be reversed.

ProPublica reported that political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security asked the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a few months into Trump's second term, to secretly acquire a voting machine, hack it, and pass the findings to the White House, according to two former administration officials 123. CISA was also directed not to alert the manufacturer to any flaws found, contrary to standard practice 14. Career staff repeatedly called the request impossible, partly because DOGE had just laid off the agents able to do it, and the appointees eventually stopped pressing 14. White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said Trump has done more than any other president to ensure free and fair elections, while DHS and CISA did not respond to ProPublica's questions 14.

Analysis
DHS appointees sought a covert federal hack of a voting machine, with findings routed to the White House and the vendor left uninformed, which would have given the administration a private catalogue of exploitable flaws. The request stalled on capacity, not principle: DOGE layoffs removed the agents able to do it, so the constraint may lapse if CISA rebuilds that skill set. State officials are already planning for federal seizure or decertification of machines, and information sharing with CISA is eroding ahead of November's midterms. Confidence is low because everything traces to one ProPublica account built on two anonymous former officials, with no document, named participant or on-record DHS or CISA response, and the five other outlets only amplify it. The request may also have been a scoping inquiry the White House could defend as routine election-security diligence, with career staff reading political intent into it.

6 sources