'Trojan horse': Expert shares evangelical plot to smuggle election deniers into vote count

Right-wing Christians are encouraging and training some of Donald Trump's most fervent supporters to become election workers in an effort to tip the scales in swing states, according to an expert on religious extremism.

Christian nationalist pastor Lance Wallnau has organized the "Courage Tour," a revival-style political rally in seven key swing states, to energize Trump supporters and help encourage them to get involved through an organization called Lion of Judah in counting votes in November's presidential election, wrote the expert, author Matthew D. Taylor.

"Lion of Judah poses as a Christian ministry aimed at assisting Christians to register as election workers," Taylor wrote. "That might sound mostly innocuous, albeit strange, but you have to look at the context in which they're doing it & how they go about it. They are 2020 election [deniers]!"

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That ministry's leader, Joshua Caleb Standifer, spoke Monday to an enthusiastic crowd in Eau Clair, Wisconsin, where he outlined his action plan and told the gathering how they could exploit any post-election chaos to ensure Trump was re-elected using some of the same tactics his supporters unsuccessfully tried in 2020, Taylor wrote.

“We spent months calculating and creating, meeting with experts, something that we felt like could take Christians and put them in a place of influence," Standifer said. "Just imagine: It’s election night. Chaos is happening. The polls are closing. The volunteers are getting kicked out, but what if we had Christians across America and in swing states like Wisconsin that were actually the ones counting the votes and making sure what’s happening?”

Once the polls close, Standifer said, poll watchers and other volunteers are asked to leave but paid election workers stay behind. He shared a QR code for the overtly pro-Trump online training project "Fight the Fraud" and which people can register on the spot to gain access to the vote-counting process.

"You are actually going to be a paid election worker," Standifer said. "You’re going to be trained by your local municipality. I call this our Trojan Horse in that they don’t see it coming, but we’re going to flood election poll stations across the country with spirit-filled believers.”

The Wisconsin event drew about 2,500 attendees from that state and Minnesota, along with roughly 50,000 people who followed a live stream on Facebook. Wallnau himself has an audience of millions who believe he is a literal prophet. He played a major role in mobilizing right-wing Christians to travel to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021.

"If we don't get every person here convinced they need to become a poll watcher or an election worker or helping to mobilize more voters [for Trump], then we haven't done our job," Wallnau said in Eau Clair, according to Taylor.

Essentially all attendees at Courage Tour events believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and are primed to believe conspiracies about the 2024 vote, according to Taylor. He listed two concerns about Lion of Judah's work and the groups intentions.

"Of minor concern: these people could monkey with the vote-counting process and attempt to rig the election for Trump," Taylor said. "That's possible, and this IS an undeniably partisan effort at election-worker recruitment."

Taylor said he spoke to some attendees and found them to be "the deluded, true-believer, conspiracy theorist types" who believe it's their "duty" to become election workers and prevent the election from supposedly being stolen again, but he said they could play a key role in manufacturing legal challenges to a potential Trump loss.

"A prime reason the effort to overturn the 2020 election was unsuccessful was Trump's lawyers and advocates were unable to offer up any evidence or witnesses to voter fraud," Taylor wrote. "[Rudy]Giuliani and [Sidney] Powell looked like fools. This could change that dynamic."

Trump's campaign and the Republican National Committee have already invested heavily in standing up legal teams in swing states to potentially contest election results at the former president's command, and Taylor said placing conspiracy theorists inside the election apparatus could help them overturn a loss.

"Let's imagine we have a replay of 2020: Trump loses and fights," Taylor wrote. "Wallnau and Standifer are pre-positioning embedded Trump assets inside the voting infrastructure. These are people who will be in place to 'step forward' with 'evidence' of voter fraud or election tampering. Look at the the instructions Lion of Judah gives their trainees!"

Lion of Judah instructs its trainees to report anything fishy to the ministry first before reporting their concerns to election authorities, which Taylor found chilling.

"The scariest thing to me: I can actually imagine these true-believer types manufacturing evidence of voter fraud while believing in their heart it's real," he wrote. "I study these election-denying Christians day in and day out – they are truly disconnected from reality and the fact-based world."

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