Key Trump ally behind emergency elections order reveals loony conspiracy theory motivating his effort

A prominent conservative attorney said to be coordinating with the White House to push President Donald Trump to take control of elections via executive order cited a bizarre 2020 conspiracy theory involving Michigan voting machines as the emergency that justifies the scheme. 

Peter Ticktin, a close ally of Trump and a longtime conservative lawyer, was speaking Monday at a conference of election deniers at the Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach, Florida, organized by the conservative podcaster Steve Stern.

A video of the hours-long confab was posted to Stern’s Rumble page.

Ticktin, who represents the convicted election denier Tina Peters, said the president should sign an executive order to take over voting machines, because machines in Antrim County, Michigan flipped votes from Trump to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

“My time is short here, so I can’t get into the details, but let me tell you that these machines are capable of changing the vote,” said Ticktin, who appears to moonlight as a poet.

He continued: 

“Everybody who voted for Trump, those votes went for Biden in Antrim County. And afterward, there was a lawsuit, and in the course of that lawsuit, the computers and the tabulators were examined, and we now know as a fact, not as a question, not as a suggestion, not as an accusation, but as a fact that there are phone chips in the tabulators, and those phone chips literally call out to a central source of computers. And this is what happened in 2020.”

The lawsuit Ticktin mentioned was filed by Matthew DePerno — a known election denier and failed GOP Michigan attorney general candidate — who claimed that the Dominion tabulators and voting machines used in Antrim County were fraudulent. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed by the Michigan Supreme Court and the election results remained certified.

The unofficial results of the 2020 election in Antrim County were initially reported incorrectly. But an investigation launched by the Michigan secretary of state’s office found it was caused by human error — not because of issues with the county’s voting equipment.

In addition to Peters, Ticktin represents Stefanie Lambert, a Michigan lawyer who will go on trial next month in connection with a scheme to access and tamper with voting tabulators after the 2020 election. Lambert was previously sanctioned for her role in a “frivolous” lawsuit to overturn Michigan’s 2020 election results.

Ticktin is a key figure behind the push for Trump to take control of voting in the midterm elections via emergency executive order. Last week he told the Washington Post he has had “certain coordination” on the issue with White House officials. And he provided Democracy Docket with a version of the draft order, which would allow Trump to unilaterally ban mail-in ballots and voting machines on the basis that they are susceptible to foreign interference. He also sent us a legal memo purporting to find a constitutional basis for the order — which experts quickly ripped to shreds.

A newer version of the draft order, first reported by the Washington Post, claims China interfered in the 2020 election. The newer draft order cites China interference, rather than anything about voting machines flipping votes, as justification for the emergency.

In his speech Monday, Ticktin painted blocking the use of the voting machines as an existential issue.

“The weaponization that we’ve seen in the past is going to be just a taste of what’s coming in the future,” Ticktin told the gathering of anti-voting activists. “And so this is the most important topic that I speak of at this time, because all of our fates are up for grabs right now, if those machines are allowed to be used in the 2026 midterms.”