Trump's Childhood Friend Floated Martial Law on Activist Call; Legal Experts Say the Law Doesn't Allow Ballot Seizures

A small group of election activists with access to President Trump has spent the weeks before the Nov. 3 midterms talking about martial law, a pause in voting and the seizure of ballots. No verified evidence has been presented that the midterms will be rigged.

The talk is not law, and legal experts say most of it could not become law.

What was said on the Sept. 30 call

On a Sept. 30 video call for election activists streamed on Rumble, Peter Ticktin said: "There would have to be martial law in the event... [of] another rigged election." Ticktin is a lawyer who attended New York Military Academy with Trump and now represents Tina Peters.

He later told Axios that officials would "probably need to be commandeering of ballots and election equipment to make sure that we can get to the bottom of it before anything further occurs."

On the call he also claimed that voter addresses were being altered on mail-in ballots. He offered no evidence for it.

Newsweek reported that in a separate conversation with podcaster Joe Oltmann, Ticktin said Trump "is not going to relinquish control again" if he believes the results are rigged. Newsweek also reported he said that in the event of "a civil war of any sort," it should be "martial law with our side in control of the armaments."

Gregory Stenstrom, who testified about alleged voting irregularities in Pennsylvania after 2020, said he most wanted the election paused over security concerns. His alternative was for Trump to invoke the National Emergencies Act to force states to change how they run elections. Axios said it could not reach him.

Ticktin's narrower position

Ticktin has since pulled back. He told The Daily Beast: "Ordinarily, the White House does not respond to hypotheticals which are suggested. The urging that I do is only in the event of a nightmare scenario where foreign interests take over our election equipment and thereby the outcome."

That is a smaller claim than "another rigged election," but it rests on the same unproven premise. No one on the call has presented evidence that such a takeover is underway or planned.

The Peters connection

Tina Peters, the former Republican clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, was convicted in August 2024 on seven counts, four of them felonies. The charges stemmed from letting an unauthorized person access and copy election system data in 2021. She was sentenced to nine years.

In April 2026, the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld the convictions but overturned the sentence and ordered resentencing. Democratic Gov. Jared Polis commuted the sentence before a new hearing took place, and she was paroled in June.

Peters and Ticktin visited the White House in late June. Peters met Trump earlier this month, according to Axios. Newsweek, citing ABC News and unnamed sources, reported the October meeting was about election integrity. White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told Newsweek: "We do not comment on private meetings that may or may not have happened."

Peters has promoted a plan since August, called "the Tina Plan." It calls for hand-marked paper ballots, protection of voting systems and poll books, and audits and recounts. Ticktin told Colorado Public Radio it would "eliminate whatever effect the machines have."

Hand-marked paper ballots and audits are a mainstream election-integrity idea, and plenty of people who want them have never mentioned the military. The jump from audits to commandeering ballots is where this stops being a policy debate.

What the law allows

Derek Tisler, counsel in the Brennan Center's elections and government program, said emergency powers are not a blank check. The president must still act within the Constitution and statutes passed by Congress.

Congress sets the date of federal elections, so a president cannot delay the midterms on his own. States choose their voting systems and decide how votes are counted, so a president cannot order a nationwide hand recount or swap out machines. Tisler said emergency powers do not override state election laws, and martial law would not give a president authority to seize election materials.

IBT UK reported that legal experts dispute using the National Emergencies Act the way Stenstrom proposed.

David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation & Research made a different point. "This election did not sneak up on the administration," he said. "They've been in office for 21 months. We're 20 days away from this election, and they haven't done any of this stuff."

The part that is already happening

The call's host, Steve Stern, directs viewers to sign up through the Republican Party as poll workers and election observers. Both parties recruit poll workers and observers as a routine, lawful part of American elections. Stern declined an interview request.

Election doubt also reaches into the government. Heather Honey, known for disputing the 2020 results in Pennsylvania and Arizona, is now the Homeland Security Department's deputy assistant secretary for election integrity and a senior adviser to the ICE director. White House adviser Peter Navarro continues to promote his own report alleging mass fraud and irregularities around the 2020 election.

Peters and Stenstrom did not respond to requests for comment. The open question is whether the White House will address the martial law talk on the record before polls open on Nov. 3.