News organizations have found that several members of President Trump’s inner circle were registered in more than one state during the election and several still are.
Donald Trump spent his first week in office repeating the lie that between 3 million and 5 million people had voted illegally in the November election, first to members of Congress, and then on Twitter, and then in an ABC News interview, and then again on Twitter on Friday, citing an unsubstantiated claim popular in conspiracy circles.
He had announced in a pair of tweets that he would be asking for a “major investigation” into voter fraud, “including those registered to vote in two states.”
Since then news organizations have found that several members of Trump’s inner circle were registered in more than one state during the election. Several still are. There is no evidence that any of them voted twice.
Registered in two states:
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• Steve Bannon, Trump’s strategist, was registered to vote in Florida and New York, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune found.
• Tiffany Trump, Trump’s younger daughter, was registered in Pennsylvania and New York, NBC News reported.
• Sean Spicer, his press secretary, was registered in Virginia and Rhode Island, according to The Washington Post.
• Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and close adviser, was registered in New York and New Jersey, according to The Washington Post.
• Steven Mnuchin, who is nominated to lead the Treasury Department, was registered in New York and California, CNN found.
Is this illegal?
Not really.
Have you ever moved to a new state? And did you call up the people in charge of voting in your old state to tell them to go ahead and take you off their list? Probably not. Neither, apparently, did some members of the Trump family and his White House circle.
“There is nothing illegal about that,” Fred Voigt, deputy election commissioner for Philadelphia, told Heat Street, the News Corp.-owned conservative and libertarian site, which also reported Tiffany Trump’s double registration. “The illegality only occurs if one votes in two places, not if you’re registered in both.”
State authorities regularly purge their voter rolls of people who move or die.
Bannon’s case is a little different. A Guardian report last summer found that Bannon was registered at a vacant home he had previously rented for his former wife, but that he had never lived there himself.
Shortly after that report, The Guardian said, Bannon changed his registered address to the home of a Breitbart writer, also in Florida.
When he voted in November’s election, he did so by absentee ballot in New York, a spokesman for the state Board of Elections confirmed. On Wednesday, after widespread news reports of his double registration, Sarasota County removed Bannon from the rolls, The Herald Tribune reported.
What has the White House said?
As the reports of double registrations grew, Kellyanne Conway, one of Donald Trump’s senior advisers, appeared Thursday on NBC’s “Today” show and denied members of Trump’s inner circle were registered in more than one place.
“I talked last night to Tiffany Trump, and she said it is flatly false that she is registered in two states,” she said. But NBC had confirmed that Tiffany Trump, in fact, was.