The Trump campaign is denying that it hired armed guards to hang around outside a St. Petersburg, Florida, early voting site looking intimidating. If true, that leaves the question: Who were the armed people hanging around outside an early voting site on Wednesday and claiming the Trump campaign had hired them?
Two people dressed in what looked like security guard uniforms with sidearms set up a tent outside the early voting site on Wednesday. When sheriff’s deputies arrived and questioned them, they claimed to be from a licensed security company and to have been hired by the Trump campaign, Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Julie Marcus told local news station 8 On Your Side. The Trump campaign subsequently denied having hired them.
“The sheriff and I take this very seriously,” Marcus said. “Voter intimidation, deterring voters from voting, impeding a voter’s ability to cast a ballot in this election is unacceptable and will not be tolerated in any way shape, or form. So we anticipated many things going into this election. Not only cybersecurity, but physical security and we had a plan in place and executed that plan.”
Both Marcus and Sheriff Bob Gualtieri are Republicans on the ballot in this election.
Donald Trump has encouraged his supporters to go to polling places to combat the imaginary voter fraud he keeps threatening will overwhelm the elections, but paying to send armed guards to a single polling site seems unlikely, especially given a campaign that’s frantically paring back its ad buys due to lack of money. The question, then, is what exactly was going on with these people.