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When it started to become clear that President Donald Trump’s chosen candidate in Los Angeles’ mayoral race—reality star turned MAGA hero Spencer Pratt—was headed for defeat, he wasted no time pivoting to his old playbook. “There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California,” Trump posted two days after the state’s primary election, citing not a single piece of evidence. Within 24 hours, the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli announced his office was conducting numerous election fraud investigations. It’s more than likely a smoke-and-mirrors show that accomplishes two things, neither of which have anything to do with fraud: Seed doubt in California’s elections and every state across the country while working a practice round for phony prosecutions that are likely to come up again during the upcoming midterm election cycle and beyond.

California held its nonpartisan primary last week, and one of the most closely watched contests was the Los Angeles mayoral race. Incumbent Democrat Karen Bass was up against progressive City Council member Nithya Raman and Pratt, who is a registered Republican. California uses “blanket” primaries, which means the top-two vote-getters advance to the general election regardless of party. The race was shaking out to be mighty close, and as the first initial votes were tallied, Pratt was leading Raman for the second spot behind Bass, but by Sunday Raman began to pull ahead. Come Monday she was leading Pratt by nearly 22,000 votes and was being declared the second finalist for November’s general election. This delayed overtaking of Pratt by Raman was largely expected, because California’s vote-by-mail system accepts ballots postmarked on or before Election Day and received within seven days of the election. Yet, on Monday, Trump weighed in to say, “Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had.”

Indeed, it was possible for Pratt to have lost, as Republicans tend to vote in person and those ballots are counted first. Democrats tend to vote early and by mail, ballots that are counted later in the vote tallying process, which is why Raman’s lead over Pratt took a few days to register. Now, Trump is deeply familiar with this process but simply does not like it, and he’s been actively trying to limit mail voting and federalize U.S. elections, despite the Constitution explicitly giving states the power to facilitate their own elections. (A lawsuit is currently challenging Trump’s executive order on mail voting). Anyone who attempts to take action based on Trump’s words, namely Essayli in this context, is doing so purely to appease the White House and without any real end goal in mind.

“When the........

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