Latest arrests come after DoJ unsuccessfully fought to force state election officials to set aside about 20,000 ballots
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The US Department of Justice (DoJ) in California has charged six more people with alleged voter fraud crimes, an escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign against the state’s election processes on the eve of the midterms.
Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles and a close ally of the president, announced on Monday that his office was prosecuting six lawful permanent residents accused of unlawfully registering to vote and casting fraudulent ballots. The DoJ filed similar charges against 28 people across California last month and arranged for a dramatic on-camera arrest of one 72-year-old defendant, editing the footage into a DoJ promotional video.
The six new defendants are all green card holders, according to criminal complaints filed in federal court, meaning they are immigrants who have legal status, but are barred from voting.
Voting by noncitizens is extremely rare, and experts say when noncitizens do end up on the voter rolls, it is usually due to confusion.
The latest arrests come as the DoJ pushes ahead with its lawsuit seeking to force California election officials to set aside roughly 20,000 ballots that federal prosecutors say may belong to noncitizens who fraudulently registered. The DoJ has said the ballots should not be counted until California can confirm their citizenship status. State election leaders have countered that prosecutors’ list and methodology was unreliable and that complying with the demands in the middle of an election would be logistically impossible and would risk disenfranchising US citizens. Multiple judges have rebuffed the DoJ’s efforts as unconstitutional and a threat to democracy, and the US supreme court on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s appeals.
Five of the six people charged in the latest round of prosecutions have been arrested, Essayli said at a press conference on Monday. The six defendants include people originally from Mexico, Israel, the Philippines, Canada and Iran, prosecutors said.
All six are accused of a single charge each of making false statements on a naturalization application, with affidavits alleging they unlawfully registered to vote, and then when they later applied for citizenship, they falsely claimed that they had never previously registered. The complaints said the defendants cast ballots in recent years, but they are not facing charges specifically relating to fraudulently voting.
The defendants are facing a maximum of five years in prison, according to prosecutors. The charges were outlined in initial complaints written by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents. The defendants have not been formally indicted, and it was not immediately clear if any of them had obtained lawyers. The federal public defender’s office in Los Angeles did not immediately respond to an inquiry.
One 52-year-old defendant from Canada was accused of voting unlawfully twice, then seeking to cancel his registration. The complaint says he has been in the US for more than 40 years. A 43-year-old defendant from the Philippines has been in the US since 1992 and was accused of voting several times since 2020.
Experts have said it was extraordinary for the DoJ to bring these cases in the middle of an election, with federal prosecutors traditionally avoiding taking steps that could be seen as politically motivated or potential interference with an upcoming race. Former prosecutors and defense lawyers have said it was especially galling to see the government present the arrests in such a showy manner, blasting mugshots and parading defendants in front of news cameras.
The Associated Press and other news outlets were present for a pre-dawn arrest of the 72-year-old last month on a quiet residential street, and a Fox News reporter on Monday posted photos of two arrests, including one who appeared to be an Amazon worker handcuffed on the sidewalk. Democrats have accused the DoJ of trying to sow doubt in the results of the election and create a false impression that voter fraud is widespread.
Essayli said the newly arrested defendants were on federal prosecutors’ list of 20,000 voters who might be fraudulently registered, arguing the cases further supported their push to stop ballots from being counted. But an immigrants’ rights group, which sued the government over its use of federal immigration data to challenge voters, analyzed the list and said in a filing over the weekend that more than 40% of the people flagged as potentially fraudulent voters could not be found on the state’s voter rolls.
The 20,000 names represent a tiny fraction of the more than 23 million registered voters in California.
County election officials who have received threatening letters from the DoJ with demands that they set aside certain ballots have also said the lists handed to them were riddled with errors.
When questioned about the prosecutors’ list on Monday, Essayli told reporters the government had used “third-party databases” to identify potentially fraudulent voters, and that it “may not be 100%” accurate, but there was a “very, very high confidence rate”. At a press briefing during the first round of arrests last month, Trent McCotter, the acting US deputy attorney general, said: “There may be some names on there who, it turns out, ultimately are citizens. We’re not perfect, and that’s why we’ve asked California to cooperate with us.”
The DoJ in recent days has also repeatedly threatened to criminally prosecute election officials who process fraudulent ballots, prompting a rebuke from a federal judge on Friday, who said the DoJ’s “intimidation, threats, and attempts at coercion force election workers daily to choose between acceding to [the DoJ’s] unlawful demands or adhering to their duties and thereby subjecting themselves to a serious risk of criminal investigation and prosecution”. The judge blocked the administration from continuing to threaten election officials.
Essayli has continued his crusade against California’s elections even after a federal judge ruled last week that he was “unlawfully” serving as the head of the US attorney’s office since he was not formally appointed and confirmed by the Senate. The DoJ is appealing that ruling.
Sam Levine contributed reporting
