WASHINGTON — A conservative think tank that is making plans for a complete overhaul of the federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the presidential election suggests that President Joe Biden could try to retain the White House “by force” if he loses the November election.
The Heritage Foundation’s warning, which contradicts Biden’s own public statements, appeared in a report released Thursday that the group said was the result of a role-playing exercise that played out possible scenarios before and after the 2024 election.
“The Biden administration’s lawlessness — at the border, in staffing, and in routinely ignoring court rulings — makes clear that the current president and his administration not only have the means, but perhaps the intent, to circumvent constitutional constraints and ignore the will of the voters as they demand a new president,” the report said.
The report, released just ahead of the Republican National Convention and four months before the presidential election, shows how conservative groups that backed former President Donald Trump are trying to turn the tables on the narrative about which candidate poses the greatest threat to the country’s democratic traditions. Biden has committed a handful of speeches to lay out the case against Trump, while Trump and his supporters point to his four criminal cases to suggest that Democrats are using the legal system as a weapon against their primary political opponent.
The Heritage Foundation and other pro-Trump groups continue to promote the same false claims of election fraud which fueled Trump’s efforts to remain in power despite his loss to Biden in 2020These efforts culminated in the violent attack of January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitolwhen rioters tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.
At a press conference to discuss the report, the authors warned of the approaching elections, using a technique Trump used throughout his political career to sow doubt about the validity of the election if he lost.
“As things stand now, the chance of a free and fair election in the United States of America is zero percent,” said Mike Howell, executive director of the foundation’s Oversight Project.
The report raised concerns among experts, who pointed out that there is no evidence that Biden plans to retain the presidency if he loses.
“This is gaslighting and it is dangerous to fan the flames, which could lead to potential violence,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Biden has said he will accept the election results.
“As President Biden has previously committed to, he will accept the will of the American people,” his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, told reporters in May. “That is a commitment from the president.”
Biden’s campaign on Thursday condemned the claim, noting that the group is the same one promoting Project 2025, a nearly 1,000-page blueprint for dismantling many parts of the federal government and implementing far-reaching changes, including rolling back protections for the LGBTQ community and embedding Christianity more deeply into society. It said the group was “laying the groundwork to try to steal another election.”
“This document is nothing more than an attempt to justify their efforts to suppress the vote, undermine the election and ultimately engineer another January 6th,” said James Singer, a campaign spokesman.
Trump has not committed to accepting the results. In CNN’s recent presidential debate, he said he would do so “if it’s a fair, legal, good election.”
The Heritage Foundation report details the results of two role-playing exercises that it says were conducted by a bipartisan group of participants that it declined to name because it kept the exercises secret for security reasons. The report offers a number of key lessons and findings, much of which revolve around possible left-wing efforts to influence the election.
It instructs the public to “reflexively disbelieve and challenge the intelligence community’s claims about Trump, foreign interference, and Republican efforts to legally win the White House.”
According to Hasen, these recommendations appear aimed at casting doubt on institutions that “help protect the integrity of elections and provide voters with the truthful information they need to evaluate the evidence presented to them.”
The report was prepared as part of a collaboration called the “Transition Integrity Project,” which Heritage said was created in January in response to Biden’s “weaponization of government” and “record of violating norms and constitutional limits on executive power.”
The authors drew inspiration from another group of the same name that conducted an exercise in 2020 predicting that Trump would likely contest that year’s election results. Howell said he found that group’s efforts ideologically biased, while his own project was bipartisan.
Rosa Brooks, one of the organizers of the 2020 exercise, said of the new report that she “would have welcomed a good-faith assessment of the vulnerabilities, but this is not it.” She said she has criticisms of Biden, but “I have no concern that he will refuse to accept the election results.”
The report’s publication comes a week after Heritage Foundation Chairman Kevin Roberts announced the move. said on Steve Bannon’s podcast “War Room” that the country is in the midst of a “second American Revolution” that will be bloodless “if the left lets it be.”
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Swenson reported from New York.
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