The U.S. Justice Department on Friday warned Los Angeles County and California election officials that they could be held liable as abettors of a federal crime if they count mail ballots returned by more than 20,000 people the Trump administration says are probably noncitizens. The warning lands less than three weeks before the November 3 midterms and sharply escalates the administration’s fight with California over its voter rolls.
Key Takeaways
- Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter wrote that counting the disputed ballots could make officials liable as abettors of a federal crime.
- The warning follows a DOJ lawsuit filed Thursday seeking to block California from counting the mail ballots until citizenship is verified.
- President Trump shared the letter on Truth Social, writing that officials who defy the DOJ “will all go to jail for a long period of time.”
- California’s secretary of state and the L.A. County registrar say the DOJ list is unverified and they will not act on unconfirmed data matching.
A warning letter with criminal overtones
The letter, addressed to Los Angeles County Assistant Counsel Peter Bollinger, accuses county and state officials of refusing to take steps the administration says are needed to deter voter fraud. “Noncitizen voting in a federal election is a federal crime — and knowingly facilitating such conduct is equally unlawful,” McCotter wrote, according to Reuters.
The warning came days after the department gave California 48 hours to review a list of alleged noncitizen voters or face legal action. When the deadline passed, the Justice Department sued California on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, asking a judge to stop the state from counting the disputed mail ballots until each voter’s citizenship is confirmed.
How the dispute built up
In a Tuesday letter to Secretary of State Shirley Weber and L.A. County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan, McCotter said the department had handed officials a “password-protected thumb drive” with names the government “believes are likely noncitizens” who were sent mail-in ballots. The administration wants the state to set aside — not cancel — those ballots and verify citizenship before tabulating them.
Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the lawsuit: “State-facilitated voter fraud is unacceptable in the United States of America.” California pushed back hard. Weber’s office told Reuters the department’s attempts to “unlawfully gain access to states’ protected voter data and purge voter rolls serve only to cause chaos and fuel public distrust in our elections.” Governor Gavin Newsom’s office called the suit “unfounded.”
Logan said the DOJ list actually named people across California, not just Los Angeles County, and arrived without underlying evidence. His office has not opened the USB drive, which came with a handwritten password, citing data privacy and security rules. “We cannot withhold or refuse to count ballots based solely on unverified allegations,” Logan said.
Why California is the flashpoint
California is one of eight states that conduct elections entirely by mail, and the state had a record 23,164,977 registered voters as of September 4 — making the 20,000 disputed names a tiny fraction of the rolls, but one the administration insists must be resolved before votes are counted.
The lawsuit is the latest move in a broader Trump administration push to expand federal oversight of elections, coming as the midterms will decide control of Congress. It also follows weeks of turmoil inside the administration, including the ouster of White House press secretary Katie Zacharia after just five days on the job.
Sources: Reuters; USA Today; The Wall Street Journal.
