🧩 BND Motif Index · M702
Fishing expedition
An investigation goes looking for a crime it can't find, widening its net each time it comes up empty.
📜 Plots🗂️ Coercion and Intimidation
- 4claims filed under it
- 2left shows it came up on
- 1right show it came up on
- 2claims retold online
⚠️ A story people tell, not a claim that it's true.
A motif is the shape of a story as its tellers tell it, named the way a folklorist names a tale type, so the same story told about other people, by the other side or in another year lands in the same place. Some of the claims below are true, many are false. Arguing against a story is often a story of its own, its answer (Voter fraud is answered by Voter suppression, Lawfare by No one is above the law), and we file it there; where no answer has a motif yet, the arguments against a story sit with its tellings.
🎙️ Who it came up with
the shows we follow where its claims came up (2 left-leaning, 0 center, 1 right-leaning so far), colored by the show's lean; the bar is how many of its claims each one heard
- left-leaning
- right-leaning
"Came up on" means one of its claims was heard on the show: told, reported or argued against. We don't yet mark which. Show leans are our own grouping of the shows we transcribe.
📰 In the news
the stories its claims were told about, the most told first (matched by our tools, so a link can be wrong)
- 📰 Justice Department subpoenas California election officials in voter rolls investigation 2026-10-29 to 2026-11-01
🗣️ In so many words
the words that carry it
💬 the tellers' own words: “a widening effort to prove unsubstantiated claims” “collecting massive amounts of voter info” “ICE has also opened investigations, investigations, I use that term very loosely, into hundreds of non-profits that help register people to vote” “intensifying campaign to prove thousands of noncitizens are on California’s voter rolls” “Stage one found no illegal behavior on 120 non-profits” “stage two of trumps attempt to find proof” “sweeping nationwide effort to find voter fraud”
🧶 Its claims
what's been told in this shape, in our words, by who told it: newest first in each; a claim's dots are the shows it came up on, in their lean's color (point at them for their names)
Told on the left 1
claims heard on left-leaning shows, and no right-leaning one
- 2026-10-09 “The investigative arm of ICE is collecting massive amounts of voter information and examining voter registration organizations.” 1
Told on the right 0
claims heard on right-leaning shows, and no left-leaning one
🦗 No claim heard only on the right so far.
Told on both sides 1
claims heard on left- and right-leaning shows alike
- 2026-10-09 “ICE is investigating non-profits to interfere with voter registration.” 3
Retold online 2
claims many people posted in their own words
- 2026-10-30 “The Justice Department has issued grand jury subpoenas to California election officials as part of a criminal investigation into voter rolls.”
- 2026-10-08 “The Trump administration is investigating nonprofit organizations that help people register to vote, suspecting them of illegally registering noncitizens.”
M702 · first seen 2026-10-09 · what this is · how the index works