There’s been no shortage of reasons given for why the Trump administration captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro over the weekend. But election deniers think the operation will finally expose a 2020 election plot involving rigged voting machines. Also in this week’s Eye On The Right: Kari Lake still refuses to accept her 2022 election loss, the five-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot, and more.

As always, thanks for reading.

Election deniers think Maduro’s capture will expose plot to steal 2020 

• There’s been no shortage of reasons why President Donald Trump captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro over the weekend. But election deniers think the operation will finally expose a 2020 election plot involving rigged voting machines.
  
  
• Dumb as it may be, the conspiracy theory stretches way back to the days after the 2020 election, when prominent Trump figures like Rudy Giuliani and lawyer Sidney Powell falsely claimed that voting machine vendors Dominion and Smartmatic were secretly Venezuelan companies.
  
  
• Since Maduro’s capture, prominent right-wing figures like Alex Jones and Benny Johnson, as well as the Trump administration official Ed Martin, have been excitedly predicting that Maduro, desperate to please Trump, will confirm the conspiracy. Trump himself has posted videos on social media promoting false claims about Dominion voting machines since Maduro’s capture.

Kari Lake still refuses to accept she lost her 2022 election

• Speaking of election conspiracies, former perennial Arizona candidate Kari Lake is reviving some old ones — once again insinuating that she should be the governor of the Grand Canyon State.
  
  
• “We have a puppet government, including a cartel lawyer who was fraudulently installed and is now running the state elections and many compromised individuals in top offices,” Lake posted on social media, while sharing a video of former Trump lawyer Christina Bobb falsely claiming that Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) and Sec. of State Adrian Fontes (D) “printed approximately 300,000 ballots and illegally inserted them into the tally.”
  
  
• Lake, who was appointed by Trump to lead Voice of America, famously tried — and failed — to overturn the results of her 2022 election loss in court numerous times. She even wrote in her 2023 memoir that she was the “lawful governor of Arizona.”

DOJ’s voting section is filling its ranks with election deniers

• The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) knows how to pick ‘em: A GOP lawyer who worked to overturn the 2020 election alongside leaders of the effort, and a second who was a senior member of Cleta Mitchell’s anti-voting network, were recently hired to work on voting issues at the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
  
  
• Christopher J. Gardner worked closely with Trump-aligned attorneys including Mitchell, John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro to challenge Georgia’s 2020 results and advise Republicans on casting false electoral votes for Trump. Now, Gardner is representing the DOJ in litigation seeking ballots and other election records from Fulton County, Ga.
  
  
• Until recently, Megan Frederick was a leader of the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, part of the national anti-voting network founded by Mitchell. Frederick also worked as a GOP lawyer during the 2020 election, when she was part of Trump’s attempt to throw out more than 200,000 ballots in Wisconsin. Now Frederick leads the DOJ lawsuit demanding Washington, D.C.’s full voter rolls.
  
  
• Gardner and Frederick’s hiring are the latest signs the DOJ aims to convert its voting section into a unit that works to restrict voting and promote election conspiracy theories.

Five years later, the stain of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot won’t fade

• It’s been five years since thousands of pro-Trump rioters marched to the U.S. Capitol and attacked Congress, in a deadly attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. I wish I could say the country has learned the lessons that led to that horrific event, but it’s clear that Jan. 6, 2021 is a stain on the country that won’t fade.
  
  
• To commemorate the tragedy, the White House didn’t pay tribute to those who lost their lives as a result of the attack. Instead, it attacked Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democrats, falsely blaming them for the unrest Trump deliberately provoked.
  
  
• If there’s a silver lining — and there always is — it’s this: Democracy, I believe, will prevail, just as it did in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack. Trump supporters and MAGA faithful marched en masse yesterday to commemorate the anniversary of the insurrection. But the turnout was underwhelming, and they were confronted by hopeful messages from counter-protesters staked out in front of the Capitol: