The day after Election Day in 2020, a large group of President Donald Trump’s supporters descended on Detroit’s Huntington Place convention center, at the time known as the TCF Center. They were trying to stop poll workers inside from counting ballots.

Police ultimately blocked many of the Trump supporters from entering the room where the poll workers were fulfilling their duties, but the crowd gathered outside the room, banging on its windows.

“Stop the count!” they chanted. “Stop the count!”

The protests that day were encouraged by operatives from the Trump campaign, which sought to prevent the president’s imminent election loss in Michigan by claiming that the vote count was fraudulent. According to court filings from special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s election interference efforts in 2020, a campaign operative whose name was redacted “tried to sow confusion when the ongoing vote count at the TCF Center in Detroit Michigan looked unfavorable” to Trump’s chances.

When the unnamed campaign operative in the court filing — later identified by the Washington Post as Mike Roman — learned that there might be unrest at the TCF Center, he told a colleague present at the convention center: “Make them riot.”

Five years later, Gustafson’s loyalty to Trump paid off.

The TCF protest was part of a broader effort by the Trump campaign to “create chaos, rather than seek clarity, at polling places where states were continuing to tabulate votes,” according to Smith’s filing.

Among the pro-Trump protesters at the TCF Center that day was a man named Daniel Gustafson, according to NBC News.

Five years later, Gustafson’s loyalty to Trump paid off.

He served as a public liaison on Trump’s inauguration committee, according to his LinkedIn profile, and, in January, landed a top job at the Interior Department. Gustafson is among a cohort of Michigan Republican activists who have received plum positions at Interior, a huge federal agency that manages hundreds of millions of acres of public land across the country, controls vast oil and gas resources, administers the National Park Service, and enforces the Endangered Species Act.

Gustafson did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The Interior Department did not provide a comment by press time.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Gustafson is currently serving as the Interior Department’s deputy director of the office of intergovernmental and external affairs, which acts as a liaison between the Interior secretary’s office and state and local governments.

His rapid ascent to a powerful government post aligns closely with the vision GOP operatives laid out in Project 2025, the sweeping policy blueprint meant to guide a second Trump term. Among other things, Project 2025 called on a future Republican administration to “dismantle the administrative state.” Trump allies spent months ahead of his inauguration compiling and vetting a list of Trump loyalists to install in government positions.

A review of Gustafson’s LinkedIn profile shows that he has little if any experience in land, wildlife, or resource management. What he does have is years of experience working as a Republican operative.

“Stop the Count” Unrest

At the time of the Michigan unrest, the afternoon following Election Day 2020, Gustafson was working for the Michigan Republican Party in the key swing state. According to his LinkedIn profile, he served as “Regional Field Director — Trump Victory,”an apparent reference to the behemoth fundraising operation that involved the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee, and numerous state-level Republican parties during the 2020 election.

Like thousands of other Republicans around the country, Gustafson sprang into action as Trump’s chances of victory dwindled.

On the morning of November 4, Trump tweeted that he was leading, often solidly, in many key states run by Democrats.

“Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted,” he wrote.

At the TCF Center, Gustafson can be seen in videos banging on a window and recording on his cellphone.

What followed were protests and disruptions at vote counting sites, including in Philadelphia and in Detroit. According to Smith, the special counsel who investigated interference in the 2020 race but shut down his work in December 2024 after the election, Trump “sometimes used these confrontations to falsely claim that his election observers were being denied proper access, thus serving as a predicate to [Trump’s] claim that fraud must have occurred in the observers’ absence.”

At the TCF Center, Gustafson can be seen in videos banging on a window, recording on his cellphone, and wearing a baseball hat emblazoned with an American flag in the shape of the state of Michigan. The same hat is visible in several photos on Gustafson’s personal Facebook page.

Also present at the protest was Meshawn Maddock, the former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party and one of the 16 “fake electors” in the state charged with multiple felonies for their parts in trying to overturn poll results. (Gustafson hasn’t been accused of involvement in the fake elector scheme; the case is winding its way through court.)

Gustafson’s role in the Trump campaign’s effort to cast doubt on the will of Michigan voters appears to have gone well beyond simply protesting at the convention center in Detroit. A Daniel Gustafson was one of several poll challengers in Michigan who signed a sworn affidavit alleging Election Day misconduct or interference.

“Large quantities of ballots were delivered to the TCF Center in what appeared to be mail bins with open tops,” Gustafson’s affidavit read. “These ballot bins and containers did not have lids, were not sealed, and did not have the capability of having a metal seal. The ballot bins were not marked or identified in any way to indicate their source of origin.”

His affidavit was among several that the right-wing Michigan legal group Great Lakes Justice Center submitted as part of its failed voter fraud lawsuit against the city of Detroit and surrounding Wayne County. Rudy Giuliani, who at the time was Trump’s personal lawyer, cited those affidavits to advance his false claim that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump.

One case filing notes that Gustafson “has taught numerous Poll Challenger training classes.” A Facebook post from Michigan Republicans, dated October 29, 2020, lists Gustafson as the contact for anyone interested in attending a training for poll watchers and challengers.

In a November 13, 2020, ruling, Wayne County Circuit Judge Timothy Kenny rejected the lawsuit brought by the Great Lakes Justice Center and threw cold water on claims that Gustafson and other poll challengers made in their affidavits.

“Mr. Gustafson’s affidavit is another example of generalized speculation fueled by the belief that there was a Michigan legal requirement that all ballots had to be delivered in a sealed box,” Kenny wrote. “Plaintiffs have not supplied any statutory requirement supporting Mr. Gustafson’s speculative suspicion of fraud.”

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