Days after a reported blowup with Bari Weiss, Lesley Stahl was back on 60 Minutes on Trump’s intimidation of election officials.
The timing was hard to miss. Status had just reported that Stahl became so frustrated during contentious editing sessions with CBS News editors she privately discussed quitting.
The fight centered on Stahl’s investigation of violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank, a piece she pushed to keep on the air. CBS disputes that account, calling it a “ludicrous, twisted narrative” and saying Stahl’s report received fewer edits than most 60 Minutes stories.
Whatever happened behind closed doors, Stahl did not follow it with safer television.
Sunday’s 60 Minutes opened by saying Trump was using presidential power to intimidate the officials who run American elections and putting the voting system under unusual strain.
Stahl then spent the segment tracing Justice Department investigations, demands for confidential voter data and the seizure of 2020 election records.
One of the sharpest moments came in Utah, where Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson has refused to surrender private voter information including Social Security numbers, full birth dates and driver’s-license numbers.
Officials in 29 other states have also rejected similar federal demands, and the Justice Department has sued them. Henderson herself has now been told she is under investigation.
Henderson told Stahl that election officials once prepared primarily for outside interference.
“But now we also have threats coming from within our own government.”
Stahl followed up: “Your federal government.”
“That’s right.”
The report then moved to Fulton County, Georgia, where armed federal agents seized more than 600 boxes of 2020 election records in January.
County Commissioner Dana Barrett told Stahl she still does not know where those materials are. CBS also reported that an internal FBI email showed 260 analysts had been temporarily reassigned to examine the Georgia material.
Stahl took the administration’s case directly to Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon. Dhillon defended the investigations, said the Justice Department was examining thousands of potential noncitizen-voting cases and denied there was any plan to put ICE agents at polling places. She dismissed fears of disruption to the midterm results as “paranoia.”
That broadcast came less than a week after the reported showdown over Stahl’s previous investigation. CBS says the behind-the-scenes story has been distorted, and nothing about Sunday’s report proves otherwise.
But the sequence is striking.
After reports of a bruising fight over one politically sensitive 60 Minutes investigation, Lesley Stahl came back with another one, this time aimed directly at the Trump administration’s use of federal power around American elections.
Whatever happened in that editing room, Stahl did not come back with a softer story.
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