Trump scrutinized PBC mail voting before 2020 elections | Exclusive

• An attorney for President Donald Trump scrutinized the Palm Beach County elections office before the 2020 election.
• The review concluded that the county's vote-by-mail process was being conducted correctly.
• Despite criticizing mail-in voting, Trump himself has voted by mail in Palm Beach County.
• The county's Supervisor of Elections said Trump's use of mail ballots shows he has faith in the process.

An attorney sent by President Donald Trump spent days scrutinizing the Palm Beach County elections office in advance of the 2020 presidential election.

The end result of the comprehensive review, said county Supervisor of Elections Wendy Link, is that her office "was doing it right."

"He requested, and we allowed for him, to have somebody come and really shadow for a while all of what we were doing," Link said during a video conference Thursday, Sept. 24 hosted by the Center for Election Innovation and Research.

"That person, an attorney, was with us for several days seeing everything that we did with our vote by mail process. And they came out and said, Palm Beach County was doing it right."

Link said she could not recall the attorney's name, or whether she was a private legal representative working for either Trump or his campaign, or was employed by the U.S. Department of Justice.

In the 2020 presidential election, the then-first term president seeking re-election voted in person during the early voting period at a West Palm Beach library with Link present that morning.

The revelation came as Trump's voting preferences in the Palm Beaches, including voting by mail twice this year, have themselves come under scrutiny as he decries the availability of vote-by-mail to electorates across the country.

The president has sought to curtail the practice by limiting it to people who might be away for business or who have mobility challenges, for example.

The seemingly thorough and unprecedented review of a county's electoral processes by a representative of the incumbent president occurred in an equally unprecedented election year under the shadow of the global coronavirus pandemic six years ago.

That happened as Trump himself railed about, but without evidence or basis, that U.S. by-mail voting was rife with fraud.

In July 2020, Trump had suggested postponing the elections to favor in-person voting, a call that was roundly dismissed and sharply criticized. At the time, Gov. Ron DeSantis called Florida, in particular, a model for the way the state carries out elections.

Link acknowledged that the commentary about Trump's use of mail-in voting has zeroed in on his use of the practice even as he seeks to curtail its availability to other people. But she said the president's opting for a mail ballot serves to bolster confidence in the process.

"The fact that it gets out that he's doing that generally is helpful, because it shows that he does have faith and trust in, at least in our county," she said, noting that her office does not disclose per se how Trump voted but rather it is public record found by others.

Link added that the county's processes follow state law, and as such voters and the electorate across Florida should have the equal measure of confidence in voting by mail as the president.

David Becker, who leads CEIR, said the same goes for the rest of the United States.

"The protections that Florida has on vote by mail, or similar protections every other state has where they verify the ballot before it goes out, they verify the ballot when it comes in," said Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan institute. "It seems like there's a lot more correlation about the president's criticism based on who happens to win those states rather than what their policies and practices are."

Becker also pointed out that Trump voted by mail during a spring election when he was "physically present in Palm Beach County" at Mar-a-Lago during early voting.

"He could have chosen to vote early in person," he said.

Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at [email protected]. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.