Nice! Election Denier Hired by Trump Admin for New Election Integrity Role

Heather Honey is most well known for peddling the conspiracy theory that Pennsylvania had more votes than voters in 2020—which Trump repeated before MAGA stormed the Capitol.

By Lauren Tousignant | August 28, 2025 | 6:01pm

Photo: Getty Images Politics

Nice! Election Denier Hired by Trump Admin for New Election Integrity Role

DOGE cuts and horrific jobs reports be damned! At least one American has landed herself a cushy post within the Trump administration—and all she had to do was make a career out of pushing election conspiracy theories to try and overthrow the 2020 election. Land of opportunity, are we.

According to an org chart on the Department of Homeland Security’s website, and first reported by Democracy Docket, Heather Honey was recently named the deputy assistant secretary for election integrity in the Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans. The position did not exist under the Biden administration. ProPublica reports that deputy assistant secretaries are considered experts in their departments.

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Honey is obviously not an expert in election integrity, but she’s pretty good at skewing incomplete statistics to convince people—including the most important person of all, Trump—that the 2020 election was stolen.

The former private investigator founded the anti-voting group Pennsylvania Fair Elections (PFE) and is most infamous for peddling the conspiracy theory that in 2020, Pennsylvania had more votes than voters. Trump repeated her false claim while speaking to supporters on January 6, 2021, saying, “Pennsylvania had 205,000 more votes than you had voters.” Then MAGA stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Democracy Docket further reports that Honey also founded the Election Research Institute, another far-right organization trying to pass off as a legitimate operation while promoting election conspiracy theories. ERI previously published a bogus report claiming Iran hacked Alaska’s election machines in 2020—but they merely twisted a 2020 report from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that said Iran was considered a “threat actor.” She also used her far-right influence to go after Pennsylvania for being a member of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a nonpartisan group committed to sharing accurate voter registration between states.

While Honey has never worked as an election administrator, let alone in the federal government, following the 2020 election, she worked as a contractor trying to find fraudulent ballots in Maricopa County, Arizona. The DHS did not respond to Jezebel’s request for comment.

The election denier also has close ties with Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer and fellow election denier who helped Trump try and overturn the 2020 election. ProPublica previously reported that Honey was part of Mitchell’s effort to change Georgia’s election rules so that if Trump lost in 2024, the GOP could contest the results. Mitchell founded the Election Integrity Network, another far-right anti-voting group, of which Honey’s PFE is a state chapter. Both groups have challenged the voting eligibility of thousands of residents.

In the past week, and what appears to be a few weeks since Honey began her new role, Trump has called mail-in ballots a “scam” that Democrats use to cheat and threatened to issue an executive order that would ban states from using certain voting machines. He was also the one who asked Texas Governor Greg Abbott to further gerrymander the state in order to secure five more House seats for the GOP ahead of the 2026 midterms. Most recently, NPR reported that DHS is threatening to withhold $28 million in funds dedicated to election security if states refuse to comply with new voting policies.

I’m sure the “integrity” part of her job will kick in any day now.

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