House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil sent letters on Wednesday to fourteen Trump administration agencies seeking information related to an ongoing investigation into the Biden administration’s taxpayer-funded get-out-the-vote operation that aimed to elect Democrats.
Less than two months after taking office, then-President Joe Biden issued an executive order mandating federal agencies register and mobilize voters “with the express intent of increasing election participation among minority groups that tend to vote disproportionately Democrat,” as Ben Weingarten explained in these pages. The order instructed agencies to enlist the help of “nonpartisan third-party organizations … to provide voter registration services on agency premises.”
As Weingarten reported, “A since-deleted but archived Demos analysis indicates that, if fully implemented, the order could lead to 3.5 million new or updated voter registrations annually — a massive figure considering recent presidential elections have been decided by mere thousands of votes in a handful of states.”
“Federal funds should not have been used to influence our elections,” Steil said in a statement first obtained by The Federalist. “We had hoped the Biden administration would be transparent and cooperate with our investigation by turning over their strategic plans, but that was not the case.”
The letters — first obtained by The Federalist — were sent to the following agencies: Department of Homeland Security, Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Department of the Interior, Department of Justice, Department of Labor, Department of Transportation, Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of State, Department of the Treasury, and Department of Agriculture.
The letters ask each agency to provide “all documents that address any plan to implement” the Biden order, “all documents that support or describe the use of appropriated funds to implement” the order, and other documents related to partnerships or programs that were created as a result of Biden’s order.
Steil began his investigation into Bidenbucks when he requested documents related to the agencies’ work in May of 2024, but the agencies he contacted did not hand over the strategic plans.
Steil issued subpoenas one month later to fifteen Biden Administration agencies, once again requesting any strategic plans related to Biden’s order and any third-party communications that took place as a result of the order. Steil made subsequent attempts to get information about how agencies were executing Biden’s order.
President Donald Trump promptly rescinded Biden’s executive order on his first day in office.
Foundation for Government Accountability Legal Director David Craig told The Federalist that while rescinding Biden’s order was the right move, the “order has substantial tentacles across government which will take an effort from the new administration to uproot.”
How Bidenbucks Were Used to Help Democrats
These so-called Bidenbucks were used to turn federal, purportedly non-partisan agencies into get-out-the-vote machines. But these efforts disproportionately advantaged Democrats and Democrat goals.
According to a memo from The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, a July 2021 listening session between the Department of Justice and leftist activists took place to discuss how to implement Biden’s taxpayer-funded get-out-the-vote scheme. The Oversight Project found that “every participant whose party affiliation or political donation history could be identified by the Oversight Project was identified as a Democrat except for one Green Party member.”
As Weingarten reported, one recommendation made during the session came from Terry Minnis of Asian Americans Advancing Justice. Minnis suggested agencies develop multi-lingual voting materials and that “voter registration info [be made] mandatory at naturalization ceremonies.”
Meanwhile the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service — the agency that provides meals in K-12 schools — “was involved in a left-wing group’s efforts to get voting-age students in Milwaukee Public Schools to the polls,” The Federalist’s Matt Kittle reported.
“In New Mexico and Kansas, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) schemed to use students in bureau-operated American Indian K-12 schools to carry voter registration cards home to their parents,” Kittle reported, noting that the move may have violated the Hatch Act, which bars “executive branch employees from overt political activities on the job.”
An investigation by the House Committee on Small Business later found that Small Business Association (SBA) Bidenbucks voter registration events held in Michigan took place “mainly in Democratic strongholds.” Michigan is a key swing state. And despite claims that the SBA’s Bidenbucks efforts were “bipartisan,” Minnesota Rep. Pete Stauber pointed out that “roughly 91% of Michigan voters are registered to vote, with small business owners more likely to vote than the general population.”
“If the purpose of the executive order is to register voters on a nonpartisan basis, why didn’t the SBA enter into an MOU with states that have lower voter registration than Michigan?”
For more election news and updates, visit electionbriefing.com.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
