DHS Reported to Have Hired Election-Denial Activist Karen DiSalvo; the Letter Democracy Docket Tied to Her Is Mullin's Aug. 24 Letter to the White House Transparency Task Force

Democracy Docket reported on Friday, August 28, 2026 that the Department of Homeland Security has hired Karen DiSalvo, a leading election-denial activist, to a senior position, and that DiSalvo drafted a DHS letter published online that week which the outlet described as threatening states over voting audits. DiSalvo is described as a close associate of Heather Honey, the Pennsylvania activist whom the same DHS office hired the previous year, also first reported by Democracy Docket.

What the document is

The PDF whose metadata names DiSalvo is DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s August 24, 2026 letter to the White House Transparency Task Force (a response to the Task Force’s request for documents, providing “an unclassified overview of relevant election infrastructure supply chain vulnerabilities”). Its PDF author field reads “Disalvo, Karen,” with a creation date of August 24, 2026 (Microsoft Word for Microsoft 365). It is addressed to the White House, not to states. It does state the grant condition in one passage (“To receive full grant awards, states must demonstrate that they have conducted random post-election manual counts of paper ballots”), so it describes the funding condition rather than threatening states with it. The funding conditions on states are in FEMA’s separate homeland security grant notice: see 2026-07-10–fema-hsgp-nofo-conditions-election-rule-changes-shsp-uasi-20-percent-withholding and the open ticket rebuild-dhs-fema-election-grant-conditioning-on-shsp-uasi-primary-documents.

What is and is not established

• Documented: the PDF’s author field and creation date (archived: dhs-mullin-letter-white-house-transparency-task-force-2026-08-24.pdf). An author field shows whose Word profile produced the file; it is not a signature and does not by itself establish who decided the letter’s content.
• Reported, single source: DiSalvo’s hire and “senior position” (Democracy Docket). Her actual title and office are not in a federal source in this entry.
• Characterisation: “election-denial activist” is Democracy Docket’s; a piece should attribute it or substantiate it independently.
• Honey: hired the previous year; see honey-heather.

Related: 2026-08-28–scotus-lifts-talwani-block-mail-voting-order-usps-rule-effective-nc-first-to-comply (same roundup).