# Heather Honey **Heather Honey** is a Pennsylvania private investigator who spent the years after 2020 producing the numbers that the stolen-election movement used, and who has since 2025 worked inside the [[Department of Homeland Security]]. In August 2025 DHS made her its first **Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity**, a post in the Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans that had not existed before. ICE records released in October 2026 show that, in that role, she brought **48.4 million voter records** into an [[ICE]] voter-fraud program whose stated purpose was "identification of high-value targets." See [[ICE Voter Records Collection]]. She is a protégée of [[Cleta Mitchell]]. Her local group, [[Pennsylvania Fair Elections]], is a state chapter of Mitchell's [[Election Integrity Network]], and her consulting firm, [[Verity Vote]], has been paid by Mitchell's [[FAIR Elections Fund]]. > [!info] Quick facts > - **2020–21:** Paid subcontractor and "manager" on [[Cyber Ninjas]]' review of Maricopa County's 2020 vote; helped draft the final report, which confirmed Biden's win. > - **Jan 6, 2021:** Trump told the Ellipse crowd "you had 205,000 more votes than you had voters" in Pennsylvania. Votebeat traced that figure to Honey's work. > - **2022–23:** Her ERIC report fed the wave of Republican states quitting the voter-roll cross-check system. > - **Aug 2025:** Appointed DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity. > - **May–June 2026:** ICE briefing papers credit "DAS Heather Honey" with obtaining 48.4M voter records "through independent sources of information." ## The "more votes than voters" number The best-known figure Honey produced was the claim that Pennsylvania counted more votes than it had voters in 2020. [[Donald Trump]] used it at the Ellipse on January 6, 2021: "So in Pennsylvania, you had 205,000 more votes than you had voters." Votebeat and Spotlight PA's 2024 investigation found that "the number appears to be the work of Heather Honey," and that she later revised the gap down to about 121,000 — a figure the reporters said was "still inaccurate." The pattern repeated. Days before the 2022 midterms, a [[Verity Vote]] report claimed that nearly a quarter of a million Pennsylvania ballots had gone to "unverified" voters. The Pennsylvania Department of State said the report "flagrantly misrepresents" how its system works. The "NV" flag she was counting is an internal workflow marker for registrations counties are still processing. ## Arizona Honey was a paid subcontractor for [[Cyber Ninjas]] on the [[2021 Maricopa County Presidential Ballot Audit]]. Documents obtained by reporters list her as a "manager" who billed tens of thousands of dollars. ProPublica reported that emails show she helped draft the final report. That report found [[Joe Biden]] had won Maricopa County by slightly more votes than the official count. ## ERIC Her most consequential work was on the [[Electronic Registration Information Center]], the multistate system states use to find voters who have moved or died. Votebeat called her 29-page ERIC report the research "with the most success": it appears to have influenced several member states' decisions to withdraw. In June 2022 she presented on ERIC to secretaries of state and their staff at a private Washington event hosted by Mitchell. Losing ERIC removed a tool for cleaning voter rolls from the states that left, which is the opposite of what the movement said it wanted. ## The Mitchell network - [[Pennsylvania Fair Elections]] — the local activist group Honey leads, a chapter of the [[Election Integrity Network]] (ProPublica; Sludge). - [[Verity Vote]] — her research and consulting vehicle. [[FAIR Elections Fund]], the charity Mitchell runs, paid Verity Vote about **$72,000** in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2025 (Sludge; Democracy Docket, from tax filings). ## Inside DHS ProPublica reported her appointment in August 2025. An organizational chart dated August 18 listed her as deputy assistant secretary for election integrity. Election officials and voting-rights lawyers objected that the department had handed its election-security portfolio to someone known for spreading false claims about vote counts. American Oversight sued DHS and USCIS for records about her role. ICE's own records now show what the job involved. Briefing papers from May 27 and June 5, 2026, list a "DHS Dataset Intake" line: "48.4 million records were obtained by DAS Heather Honey through independent sources of information." The papers do not say what those sources were. The data went to HSI's iLab "for secondary enrichment and identification of high-value targets," alongside 50.6 million records from the Justice Department. Full detail on [[ICE Voter Records Collection]]. > [!warning] Not yet corroborated > Democracy Docket (Oct 7, 2026) reports that Honey is now a senior adviser to the ICE director and senior counselor to Secretary [[Markwayne Mullin]]. No second source located as of 2026-10-09; the ICE documents from May–July 2026 still call her "DAS." Not added to `roles:` until confirmed. ## Why she matters Honey is the clearest case in the vault of the 2020 stolen-election apparatus being given federal machinery. The same person whose miscounts Trump read aloud on January 6 now sources voter files for an immigration-enforcement targeting pipeline. The claims did not have to be true to work. They only had to justify building the program, and the program now runs whether or not the claims hold up. This is the vault's *the institution does the work, not the proof* pattern in its purest form. ## See also - [[ICE Voter Records Collection]] - [[Cleta Mitchell]] · [[Election Integrity Network]] · [[FAIR Elections Fund]] - [[Cyber Ninjas]] · [[Doug Logan]] - [[Electronic Registration Information Center]] - [[Stop the Steal]] · [[Election Denialism]]