Richard Hasen

President Trump has also repeatedly cast doubt on the integrity of the election itself, something experts fear could be used as a pretext for interference in close races.

For insight and analysis, we're joined tonight by two guests, Rick Hasen is a professor of law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law.

And Juliette Kayyem is a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, currently at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Thank you both for being with us.

President Trump has also repeatedly cast doubt on the integrity of the election itself, something experts fear could be used as a pretext for interference in close races.

For insight and analysis, we're joined tonight by two guests, Rick Hasen is a professor of law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law.

And Juliette Kayyem is a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, currently at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Thank you both for being with us.

I think the courts, as well as the fact that we have power diffused to the states, we don't have the executive branch of the federal government able to dictate how elections are being run, that really the center so far has held.

And I think unless we have a very close election for control of the House or the Senate, we're likely to squeak through because of a lot of hard work of thousands of people.

Rick Hasen and Juliette Kayyem, thank you both for your insights, of course, over the last few weeks and months leading up to this moment and, of course, on this election day.

We're most appreciative.

unless perhaps there was an illegal use of money that was raised for some other purpose.

There was an argument made by Rick Hasen, who's a professor at UCLA Law School and an expert in election law, that any kind of prosecution for running a campaign based on the subjective motivation for running would violate the First Amendment.

I tend to agree with that to a point, although there could be collateral violations.

So I'm not against investigations, although I would have more confidence if it were a Justice Department and virtually any other administration, Republican or Democratic, that was doing the investigation because the degree to which Todd Blanch has had the Justice Department do the sort of political bidding of President Trump makes me sort of doubt uh have less confidence and the civil suit that they filed is really quite quite uh thin um but you know i think that i don't disagree with fresno you that it's possible there could be a crime here somewhere

So Trump's only real chance of holding on to the House and Senate is to mess with the voting or the certification of the winners.

For comment on his latest moves, we turn again to Rick Hasen.

He's a distinguished professor of law at UCLA, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, and editor of the Election Law blog.

And he's an election law analyst for CNN.

He's the author of many award-winning books.

His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and he's a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow.

Rick Hasen, welcome back.

Good to be back with you.

I will say that part of the war gaming has not been just limited to state and county local election officials.

Part of the war gaming, and I credit Rick Hasen at UCLA here, who's headed up a conglomerate of nonprofits and academics and practitioners, that they've essentially tried to teach the judges around the country.

They've put out a handbook that teaches them how to essentially evaluate these claims, these applications for warrants, because the number one threat, the number one scenario that concerns most election experts is where the chain of custody for the ballots is broken.

Because once chain of custody on ballots is broken, then all of a sudden then if that has happened, that becomes the predicate.