Trump threatens California officials with imprisonment over stance on mail ballots

By Jasper Ward

WASHINGTON, Oct 16 (Reuters) – The US Justice Department on Friday warned Los Angeles County and California election officials they could be 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 to the Los Angeles County Assistant Counsel Peter Bollinger came less than three weeks before the November 3 midterm elections and days after the department gave California 48 hours to review a list of alleged noncitizen voters or face legal action. On Thursday, the Justice Department sued California to block the state from counting the ballots.

“Noncitizen voting in a federal election is a federal crime — and knowingly facilitating such conduct is equally unlawful,” Trent McCotter, the acting US deputy attorney general, wrote in a letter released on Friday. McCotter called on the county and California’s secretary of state to reconsider their refusal to take steps that the Trump administration argues are needed to deter voter fraud.

US President Donald Trump shared the letter on Truth Social with the comment: “They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!”

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan were copied on McCotter’s letter. 

The county’s counsel office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Weber’s office referred Reuters to an earlier statement in which she said the Justice 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.”

An earlier letter that McCotter sent on Tuesday to Weber and Logan said the Justice Department provided officials in Los Angeles County with a “password-protected thumb drive” with the names of people ​the federal government “believes are likely noncitizens” that were sent mail-in ballots from California.

Los Angeles County Counsel Dawyn R. Harrison said on Thursday the county cannot comply with the Justice Department’s requests because the Trump administration did not explain how the list was made. Friday’s letter from McCotter said the Justice Department used “internal immigration records” and data matching.

In July, Trump said his administration had uncovered evidence of more than 275,000 non-citizens registered to vote, but it was not clear how many had actually voted.

In some previous cases, systems intended to verify citizenship have mistakenly flagged some naturalized US citizens as noncitizens. Studies have found that noncitizens casting actual ballots is exceedingly uncommon.

Since July, the Justice Department has ramped up prosecutions of people accused of illegally voting while not holding US citizenship. The White House has also pushed federal agencies to accelerate their review of at least 47 state voter rolls obtained by the Department of Homeland Security, according to an internal email seen by Reuters.

(Reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington; Editing by Sergio Non and Tom Hogue)