During a press conference on Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin openly threatened to jail state officials who refuse to cooperate with the Trump administration’s midterm election security “program” this fall, leaving a number of critics stunned over the blatant admission.

Mullin’s admission came just one day after President Donald Trump’s national address on supposed election security shortcomings, and amid the Trump administration’s ongoing push to exert more control over the midterm elections, which include efforts to seize states’ voter registration data through threats of withholding federal funds earmarked for disaster preparedness, among other things.

“If the states that choose not to participate with the program and they choose not to participate in securing the elections, we will make sure that we make those states a priority to look at who voted in their states and hold them, the election officials, accountable,” Mullin said in response to a question from a Daily Caller reporter.