Is it legal for armed FBI agents to be at polling places, according to Eric Holder?

Eric Holder said no: federal and state law bar armed agents and military personnel near polling places, and no FBI agent should be at one without a specific predicate. He responded to FBI Director Kash Patel telling Senator Peter Welch that election crimes coordinators in all 56 field offices would be on duty, and said Democrats would gather testimony from affected polling places and go straight to court.

• Holder called Patel the most unqualified FBI director of all time.
• On the 1,000-plus DOJ monitors sent to all 50 states, Holder noted there are hundreds of thousands of polling places, so 1,000 people have little power to sway results.

▸In their words

“FBI agent, get your ass away from the polling places.” Eric Holder · at 41:39 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Pod Save America (2026-10-25). Read the whole episode summary →

▸More from this episode