from the running-the-government-like-a-mom-and-pop-operation dept

For the past several months, the DHS and DOJ have been pushing hard to make Trump’s illegal voter election conspiracy theories a reality. Trump continues to claim millions of non-citizen voters are participating in federal elections — something he persists in proclaiming despite having won two of the last three presidential races.

This isn’t really about Trump as much as it is about convincing as many people as possible that any election results Trump doesn’t like must be the result of illegal activity. This has led to the DOJ raiding election offices and the DHS claiming (with no facts in evidence) that there are hundreds of thousands of people across the United States who are illegally registered to vote.

Any cursory investigation of the administration’s claims have immediately proven them to be false. And that appears to have altered the administration’s tactics. It’s no longer willing to make wild claims about voter registries. It is now engaging in almost immediate lawfare if its targets don’t immediately bend the knee and kowtow to whatever demands the administration is making.

Here’s what’s happening in California now, as reported by Chris Geidner on Bluesky:

The complaint [PDF] filed by the DOJ insists California is illegally registering non-citizens for voting and then allowing them to vote. But before we get to the complaint, let’s hang back and take a closer look at the clown squad that now presents itself as Trump’s Department of Justice, as delivered here by NPR:

On Tuesday, three weeks before Election Day, the Justice Department delivered a flash drive to the top voting official in Los Angeles County. That official was told he had 48 hours to investigate names listed on that drive or he would be sued.

[…]

So this thumb drive included the names of 20,000 people that the federal government believes are likely noncitizens and on the voter rolls in California. But LA County did not consider this drive to be a secure medium for this sort of information. I mean, the password for the drive was literally included on a Post-it note with the delivery of it. And the clerk there, Dean Logan, noted that. Also, he told the DOJ he felt the process that they were asking for would actually break numerous other laws that govern how elections run, including restrictions on voter purges this close to Election Day.

So, this doesn’t look like the end result of a competent investigation by government professionals. Instead, it looks like a half-assed, poorly thought-out attempt at extortion. And the timing makes it seem even more suspect, given that the DOJ has had the entirety of its existence to create a voter fraud case against California. When you instruct partisan hacks masquerading as DOJ professionals engage in a rush hit job mean to keep California from (yet again) electing more Democrats than Republicans during an impending election, this is the absolute peak of competence you should expect.

The lawsuit is just the DOJ carrying out its threat — the one delivered alongside a thumb drive and password-laden Post-It note. The DOJ claims it gave California election officials plenty of time to investigate the 20,000 people it stated were possibly registered to vote illegally. Then it claims that its failure to do so in this extremely compressed time period is evidence of California’s refusal to cooperate with a federal investigation.

What it wants the court to do is force California to prevent any votes associated with this list from being counted until the DOJ has a chance to look them over. The very real result of this demand is that up to 20,000 votes simply won’t be counted following the mid-term elections, especially if the Trump DOJ doesn’t like who these voters voted for. The DOJ claims blocking these from being counted pending an investigation would prevent “dilution” of the vote. But that’s exactly what it wants to happen: the removal of votes it thinks might go to candidates that aren’t part of Trump’s MAGA platform.

Given the timing, it seems the DOJ is headed towards an injunction blocking it from blocking these votes from being counted. But stranger things have happened, even in a judicial circuit (the Ninth) that is less likely to side with government than the people, no matter which party has control of the government at that point in time.

But the threat will always exist as long as this administration is in power. The DOJ will do Trump’s bidding, even if it means destroying what little remains of its reputation, all in service of future illegitimate seizures of power.

Filed Under: california, dhs, doj, election integrity, midterm elections, trump administration, voter suppression