In Peter Ticktin’s world, there always seems to be a conspiracy or cover-up lurking. The 2020 election?

Ticktin claims multiple countries interfered to steal it from President Donald Trump. The criminal case against Tina Peters, the former Colorado clerk who was freed from prison last month?

Ticktin insists his client was the victim of Democratic election officials concealing their own supposed crimes. And the upcoming midterm elections?

Ticktin says a plot is afoot for Democrats to steal enough congressional seats to impeach and remove Trump and Vice President JD Vance from office, so that House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries can ascend to the presidency from the speakership. Ticktin, 80, is, in his words, a boyhood “best friend” of Trump’s from boarding school at the New York Military Academy.

Now a lawyer based in Florida — with a colorful clientele that has included a member of the Backstreet Boys and Meghan Markle’s estranged half-sister — Ticktin has become a prominent 2020 election denier. He’s frequently pushed unproven conspiracies and represented leading figures in the movement, including Peters, former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, and many of the convicted US Capitol rioters from January 6, 2021.

Ticktin represented Trump in civil litigation and joined Peters in the Oval Office last week for a meeting with Trump following her release, though a White House official downplayed their relationship. But amid Trump’s repeated frustrations that Congress can’t pass the SAVE America Act to enact strict voter ID restrictions, Ticktin is one of a number of Trump allies pushing him to go even further with an executive order to effectively seize federal control of the upcoming midterms by declaring a national emergency based on alleged foreign interference through electronic voting machines.

It’s a scenario that state election officials and election law experts say would plunge the country into a constitutional crisis. The US Constitution clearly gives power over elections to the states and Congress — but not the president.

In a wide-ranging interview with CNN, Ticktin insisted that evidence proving claims about the 2020 election would become public soon, asserting that Venezuela, China, Iran and others are all involved and that evidence would emerge from the Trump administration’s capture and indictment of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. “With the evidence that we’ve got, and with the evidence that would be forthcoming, that there’ll be no question about it — and what these machines did,” Ticktin said. “It’s a surreptitious overtaking of a country.” Six years after the intensely scrutinized 2020 election, such evidence has never surfaced publicly, even as Trump and allies like Ticktin have continued to claim Trump’s loss to Joe Biden was not legitimate. A US intelligence assessment from 2021 found that a number of countries, including Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela, tried to influence the 2020 election — some to help Trump, some to hurt Trump, and others just to sow chaos.

But importantly, US intelligence concluded that no country “attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results.” Hovering in Trump’s orbit Ticktin is cagey when asked where his information is coming from inside the Trump administration or who he’s engaging with. He says he speaks to Trump a few times a year and has an open line of communication that dates back to his representing the president in an ill-fated lawsuit against Hillary Clinton while Trump was out of office.

He also says he’s in contact with officials at the Justice Department — and he even floated himself in right-wing media as a candidate to succeed former Attorney General Pam Bondi. Under Trump, outsiders with a line into the president have sometimes made a larger impact on the administration’s agenda than elected officials or traditional Washington powerbrokers.

But there are reasons to question how much influence Ticktin truly wields inside Trump world. One White House official told CNN that while Ticktin is well meaning, he seems to overstate his current relationship with Trump.

Ticktin doesn’t speak with the president regularly and does not influence the White House’s policies toward elections and voting, the official said. Still, Ticktin secured a major victory in May when Colorado Gov.

Jared Polis, a Democrat, commuted the sentence of Peters, who was convicted of conspiring with Trump allies to breach voting systems in her county in 2021. Ticktin had briefly appeared to notch another win when the Justice Department announced a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” — something he’d been pushing for months, with clients eager to file claims.

But the Trump administration has since appeared to kill the idea amid stiff, bipartisan political and legal blowback. Ticktin says he’s still pursuing lawsuits for his clients against the US government over January 6.

A review of Ticktin’s lengthy career as a lawyer in Florida and his efforts trying to help Trump prove election fraud show both that Ticktin has a flair for the dramatic as well as a willingness to push the limits of the legal process. His unorthodox and sometimes line-crossing behavior has been repeatedly rebuked in court by judges, but he says he’ s simply operating at the “cutting edge of the law.” Hunting for fraud Ticktin’s claims of foreign election interference in the 2020 election are focused on voting machines, particularly those manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, which worked for years in Venezuelan elections.

Unproven allegations that voting machines were hacked by foreign powers through their software have been percolating for years — it’s a claim Trump’s then-lawyer Sidney Powell made at an infamous press conference in the days after Trump’s 2020 loss. A March 2021 report from the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security debunked the allegations of foreign hacking, saying a multi-agency investigation found the claims were “not credible.” DHS and DOJ found no evidence “that a foreign government or other actors compromised election infrastructure to manipulate election results,” the report stated.

The intelligence community’s declassified report said that US intelligence had “no information suggesting that the current or former Venezuelan regimes were involved in attempts to compromise US election infrastructure.” Ticktin is part of a group of 2020 election deniers who have dismissed the government’s conclusions — and urged the Trump administration to keep investigating 2020. Since Trump returned to office, the administration sought to find fraud in the 2020 election by seizing ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, after a referral from former White House official and 2020 election denier Kurt Olsen, as well as voting machines from Puerto Rico.

Ticktin pointed to the administration’s charges against Maduro and another former Venezuelan minister in May, saying that the onetime Venezuelan leader was the key cog that would lead to evidence of election fraud spilling out. “He’s gonna talk. He’s gonna sing like a canary,” Ticktin said. “Maduro is one of the heads of the snake that caused all of this.” DOJ officials, however, pushed back on the idea that Maduro has offered any evidence of election-related crimes.

The Justice Department’s charges against Maduro are related to international drug trafficking, and prosecutors have never indicated the investigation into Maduro went beyond the drug conspiracy. A lawyer for Maduro did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Last year, Ticktin helped to draft an executive order to declare a national emergency based on alleged 2020 foreign election interference, which asserts that Trump can take steps including restricting most mail-in voting and banning the use of voting machines. “The machines are still in play,” Ticktin claimed. Trump did release an executive order earlier this year that sought to curb mail-in voting, though it did not go nearly as far as Ticktin is seeking (federal judges have blocked the US Postal Service from carrying out the order). ‘Best friends’ from childhood Ticktin’s history with Trump dates back to their time at the New York Military Academy, a boarding school about 50 miles north of New York City. “We were very close.

In fact, you could say we were best friends in our senior year of high school,” Ticktin said. Ticktin went on to become a lawyer, first in Ontario, Canada and then in Boca Raton, Florida.

Working as a civil litigator, Ticktin proved a knack for generating headlines. While defending homeowners facing foreclosure in 2010, he made national news by releasing 150 depositions from bank employees who said they had little to no formal training and skirted requirements while signing foreclosure affidavits.

Ticktin also represented notable clients more recently, including Markle’s estranged half-sister in a defamation lawsuit against the Duchess of Sussex and a member of the Backstreet Boys over a Florida beach property dispute. Ticktin’s efforts in 2010 helped many of his clients avoid foreclosure.

But the Florida Bar investigated the novel way he was paid by clients lacking funds — by taking out a mortgage owed to the law firm if they won their cases. Ticktin says he was cleared of wrongdoing.

Ticktin’s Florida bar license was also suspended three months in 2009 over conflict-of-interest allegations. As Trump launched his 2016 political campaign and won the presidency, Ticktin was often quoted in news stories about Trump’s childhood, such as a Washington Post story that recalled Trump’s reaction to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In 2020, Ticktin penned his own book about the president: “What Makes Trump Tick: My Years with Donald Trump from New York Military Academy to the Present.” Pushing to pardon Tina Peters After the president tried to overturn the 2020 election results and his supporters rioted at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, Ticktin became part of Trump’s cadre of lawyers and also represented some of the most prominent election deniers. Controversy followed him throughout the legal system.

Ticktin joined with Trump attorney Alina Habba to represent Trump in a sprawling 2022 civil lawsuit filed against Hillary Clinton, alleging that she conspired to undermine his 2016 campaign by tying him to Russia. A judge threw out the suit and sanctioned Habba, Ticktin and the other lawyers for making allegations “that were either knowingly false or made in reckless disregard for the truth.” An appeals court upheld the sanctions.

In recent years, Ticktin led a surprisingly successful effort to free Peters, the county clerk who became a folk hero among election deniers for being the last person in prison for crimes related to efforts to undermine the 2020 results. Peters was found guilty of state charges in a 2021 conspiracy to breach voting machines in Mesa County, Colorado, in hopes of proving Trump’s voter fraud claims.

Ticktin joined her legal team after the trial and became a leading advocate in right-wing media, and beyond. In December, Ticktin sent a nine-page letter to Trump, making the case for a presidential pardon.

He appealed to Trump’s longstanding grievances about the election. “Tina Peters is a critical, and necessary witness to the most serious crime perpetrated against the United States in history,” Ticktin wrote, referring to the 2020 presidential election. Within days, Trump granted the symbolic federal pardon.

And more importantly, Trump also mounted a monthslong pressure campaign against Colorado and its Democratic governor — the only person who held clemency power for her state-level crimes — to try to secure Peters’ freedom. Polis granted a commutation in May, drawing bipartisan blowback from state prosecutors and lawmakers.

Peters was released the next month. Among other things, Polis cited a letter Peters included in her clemency petition where she, in his words, “expressed contrition.” But in an interview with CNN, Ticktin disputed the notion that Peters is “feeling contrition and remorse.” And on the day of Peters’ commutation, Ticktin’s first public statement credited Trump — not Polis. “Without his efforts, she would still be behind bars,” Ticktin said.

Ticktin accompanied Peters last week when Trump hosted her at the White House. “We had a wonderful talk,” Ticktin said of the meeting. “‘FREE TINA!’ became the rallying cry of the Republican Party over the past two years,” Trump posted on Truth Social, along with a photo of Peters. Counsel to conspiracy theorists In addition to Peters, Ticktin represents other prominent election deniers trying to fend off defamation lawsuits tied to their false voter fraud claims.

Among his clients are Byrne, the former Overstock CEO, and Joe Oltman, a podcaster from Colorado. They were sued by Dominion Voting Systems and a former Dominion executive for falsely claiming their machines fraudulently flipped millions of votes in 2020 from Trump to Joe Biden.

These cases have been thrown into chaos thanks to conspiracy-filled emails from Ticktin to opposing counsel, his continued work with an attorney disqualified for leaking Dominion’s files, and even a physical altercation before a deposition, according to a CNN review of dozens of court records. The fight happened in January before ex-Dominion executive Eric Coomer was set to be deposed in his case against Byrne.

Coomer’s lawyer, Charlie Cain, said in court filings that he was “physically attacked” by Ticktin, who “shoved” him twice while “yelling” and “shouting” about the deposition. These claims were backed up by surveillance footage and eyewitness affidavits. “Despite only being involved in this case for six months, Ticktin has managed to violate virtually every rule of decorum,” Cain wrote in a February filing.

Ticktin has claimed that Cain was the aggressor and called him a “lying sleazebag” in court filings. “I was assaulted by Cain and responded appropriately by pushing Mr. Cain,” he told CNN. “I should have slugged him, or at least that is what he deserved.” The Byrne-Dominion case has been similarly roiled by Ticktin’s antics.

Lawyers for Dominion told the judge that metadata in a brief filed by Ticktin showed that it was authored by Stefanie Lambert, an election-denying lawyer already banned from the case for leaking. In Ticktin’s later filings, the author name was switched to Rick Astley, of “rickroll” meme fame.

Internal emails later made public in court filings showed Ticktin insulting Dominion lawyers, spurning the collegiality usually seen among attorneys. “Let’s not forget who the real criminal is here,” he told the Dominion team, accusing their clients of election crimes related to 2020. A fight over January 6 clients After Trump returned to the White House, Ticktin joined forces with Missouri attorney Mark McCloskey — who gained notoriety in 2020 after he and his wife pointed guns at Black Lives Matter demonstrators from their St.

Louis front yard — to push for compensation for those charged, then pardoned by Trump, for their role in the January 6 riot at the US Capitol. Last year, Ticktin repeatedly criticized then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has since been nominated to become the full-time attorney general, over the treatment of January 6 defendants. “He doesn’t understand what’s going on with the weaponization,” Ticktin said of Blanche. “He never took control of his own department in a way that would fix it.” But Ticktin’s partnership with McCloskey, who was representing hundreds of January 6 clients, ended in acrimony.

Earlier this year, McCloskey stepped away from the effort after receiving a medical diagnosis with a median life expectancy of less than three years. He told CNN he feared he wouldn’t be able to see his clients’ cases through, so he passed them to Ticktin. (He declined to specify the exact condition.) Then a month later, the Justice Department announced the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” that could have reimbursed those convicted of crimes related to January 6.

McCloskey wrote to his clients that he intended to “continue the fight” now that the fund was on the table to shorten the timeline. But there was a rift with Ticktin, McCloskey told CNN.

Many of his clients stuck with Ticktin and didn’t return, he said. “Peter, for whatever reason, apparently wasn’t very happy about me wanting to step back in,” McCloskey said. “He has made it clear that he no longer wishes to work with me.” Ticktin said that McCloskey quit and handed off his clients with no notice, and that he chose not to continue his partnership with McCloskey because “he does not work well with me.” He filed a lawsuit last week against the federal government representing a dozen January 6 defendants alleging prosecutorial misconduct.