Trump Calls for Federal Takeover of Elections in "Crooked" States

President Donald Trump renewed his call for the federal government to take control of elections in states he deems corrupt, making the remarks while signing a government funding bill into law.

Trump first floated the idea earlier this week during a podcast appearance with former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, where he said Republicans should "take over the voting" in at least 15 locations. He repeated false claims that he won states where official results showed he lost, calling those states "crooked."

"If a state can't run an election, I think the people behind me should do something about it," Trump said during the signing. "A state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don't know why the federal government doesn't do them anyway."

Trump specifically named Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta as places with "horrible corruption on elections," adding that "the federal government should not allow that."

Georgia has remained central to Trump's unsupported claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. The comments come one week after the FBI searched an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, as part of a Justice Department effort to seize election records and investigate alleged voter fraud in the county. It's unclear what, if anything, the search yielded or whether additional actions are planned.