Among the names viewed by WIRED are Max Kossek, a researcher at AFPI’s Office for Fiscal and Regulatory Analysis, and Ryan Montgomery, who the website lists as a program assistant with the same AFPI office. Montgomery’s LinkedIn profile, however, says that he is now a “research engineer” at AFPI.
AFPI’s director for secure elections policy, Thomas Lane, is also listed as one of the employees that has been detailed to the Census Bureau. Lane, a former Trump campaign staffer and election denier, was subpoenaed by the Department of Justice in 2022 as part of its investigation into the president’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. (Lane was not charged by law enforcement.) In a 2020 video posted by the Arizona Republican Party, where a group of fake electors attempted to deliver the state’s electoral votes to Donald Trump, Politico identified a man wearing a jacket with the name “Lane” on it passing out the documents for the electors to sign making them “duly elected” and “qualified.” In 2024, CNN reported that Lane was prepared to serve as a backup elector for that same group.
Earlier this year, Democracy Docket reported that Lane helped write part of an early version of the Save America Act, the law that would require voter ID to register to vote, while working for the Republican majority House Committee on House Administration. Parts of the Save Act have also been included in the separate Save America Act, which, if passed, would require proof of citizenship in order to vote, a move that experts say could disenfranchise more than 20 million people.
Kossek, Montgomery, and Lane did not respond to requests for comment.
David Peterson, who AFPI lists as a research engineer with expertise in “computing, machine learning, and advanced software architecture,” and Jackson Mejia, an AFPI fellow who is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin with a PhD in economics from MIT focusing on tax policy, also appear to be detailed to the Census Bureau. Peterson and Mejia did not respond to requests for comment.
Another person, listed as an IPA from AFPI, Michael Corey, is also listed among the group at the bureau. AFPI does not list Corey as a staff member on its website, but an AFPI email with Corey’s name does appear to exist. AFPI did not confirm whether Corey was currently associated with the think tank.
Danah Boyd, a professor at Cornell University who studies the census, says that there are vehicles like the American Association for the Advancement of Science through which agencies like the Census Bureau might bring in multiple IPAs. But AFPI, Boyd says, “is not an institution that is set up to bring all the scientists in the world together or that has built this long-standing infrastructure of doing independent statistical research. This is a partisan group with an agenda,” she claims.
All of the AFPI members are listed under the same project, focused on “ad hoc data analyses” to answer questions from senior leaders at Census and the Department of Commerce, according to documentation viewed by WIRED. The project appears to be led by Michael Lachanski, the bureau’s recently appointed deputy director for data, policy, and science, and a former fellow at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank that also has connections to the Trump administration. Lachanski is a political appointee. All of the AFPI detailees appear to have the “special sworn status” necessary to access sensitive Census data.
