Trump Aides Asked CISA to Secretly Hack a Voting Machine, ProPublica Says
Several months into Donald Trump's second term, his appointees at the US Department of Homeland Security demanded that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) secretly buy and hack a voting machine, and pass the results to the White House while hiding any vulnerabilities from the manufacturer, ProPublica reported, citing two former administration officials familiar with the request.
The demand shocked CISA specialists. The agency has traditionally protected election infrastructure from cyberattacks rather than hacking systems, and standard procedure requires notifying manufacturers of any vulnerabilities found. "It occurred to me that they might keep this as a trump card to overturn any results they don't like. This goes against everything CISA stands for," one former official said.
Why CISA refused
CISA staff refused, explaining that the task was technically impossible: the experts able to carry out such an operation had just been laid off as part of "optimisation" by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk. After prolonged refusals, Trump's appointees eventually backed off. ProPublica wrote: "Although the request was not fulfilled, it shows how the Trump administration tried to use the agency for its own purposes while depriving it of resources for one of its most important missions: protecting the country's election systems."
CISA's staff has shrunk by a third during Trump's second term after more than a thousand employees were let go. The president's 2027 budget proposal would cut the agency's funding by another $700 million, forcing out 900 more workers.
Fallout ahead of the midterms
Democratic lawmakers have launched an inquiry into CISA's ability to protect the election system, demanding to know why allocated federal funds are not being used to secure voting. State election authorities say the federal agency has effectively withdrawn from cooperation ahead of the midterms and stopped providing support. Officials from several states told ProPublica they fear what remains of CISA has been compromised by the administration, and that Trump could claim election systems were hacked if Republicans do not win in November. In several large election jurisdictions, officials are already holding closed meetings with equipment makers to prepare a contingency plan in case the administration tries to seize voting machines or declare them compromised.
Other agencies also tried to interfere with voting equipment. In autumn 2025, Justice Department official Andrew McCoy Warner, a known proponent of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, insisted on getting access to machines in Missouri, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard oversaw the seizure of voting devices in Puerto Rico. When the private firm Mojave Research Inc. found no evidence that machines were hacked in 2020, the administration expressed displeasure with the audit and terminated its contract.
Background
CISA was created under a law Trump signed in 2018 and became the key federal body coordinating election protection with states and voting-system vendors. After Trump refused to concede defeat to Joe Biden in 2020, the agency helped certify the results, calling that election the most secure in American history; after its director Chris Krebs rejected White House claims as "baseless" and "technically absurd", Trump fired him. In January 2025, as Trump returned to the White House, his administration began dismantling CISA. More in our politics section.