The Trump administration is escalating its feud with California over allegations of noncitizen voting, threatening on Friday to criminally prosecute election employees who knowingly tabulate ballots belonging to noncitizen voters.
“The authorized penalties for both facilitating or ignoring a federal crime are important,” Trent McCotter, the performing deputy lawyer normal, wrote in a letter to Los Angeles officials. “Noncitizen voting in a federal election is a federal crime–and knowingly facilitating such conduct is equally illegal.”
McCotter continued: “If individuals knowingly tabulate ballots solid by people recognized by federal companies as noncitizens, they threat turning into aiders and abettors to a federal crime.”
U.S. Appearing Deputy Lawyer Normal Trent McCotter speaks alongside U.S. Lawyer for the District of Utah Melissa Holyoak throughout a press convention on the Division of Justice on September 22, 2026 in Washington, DC. McCotter introduced that an election employee in Utah has been indicted for allegedly throwing away ballots. (
Finn Gomez/Getty Photos
President Donald Trump reposted the letter to his social media platform. In a follow-up publish resharing the letter, Trump wrote “They are going to all go to jail for an extended time period!!!”
The Justice Division’s menace to carry election employees criminally responsible for noncitizen voting will not be the Trump administration’s first such salvo. Over the summer time, Homeland Safety Secretary Markwayne Mullin similarly warned that election officers “could be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even relying on how far it goes, jail time.”
Division of Elections employees kind mail-in ballots for the California major election at Metropolis Corridor on Tuesday, June 2, 2026, in San Francisco.
Jeff Chiu/AP Photograph
Trump has made the difficulty of noncitizen voting a private fixation regardless of scant proof that it’s widespread. The Justice Division has promoted dozens of arrests in latest weeks of alleged noncitizens who’ve voted in previous cycles. However even these examples fall far wanting the kind of figures that may tilt the scales in any outcomes.
McCotter’s menace to prosecute native election officers comes in the future after the DOJ sued California over claims that the state has refused to purge noncitizens from its voter rolls.
Earlier this week, McCotter despatched letters to the Los Angeles County Clerk and California Secretary of State demanding California voting officers entry a password-protected thumb drive that DOJ officers stated contained 1000’s of names of potential non-citizens believed to be on the state’s voter registration checklist.
The letters gave a two-day deadline for the officers to substantiate they had been conducting a assessment and in addition transferring to segregate any potential ballots that will have been returned from people whose names had been on the thumb drive.
California characterised the request as legally baseless and a last-ditch effort by the Trump administration to intervene within the state’s election course of.
“The USDOJ’s relentless efforts to unlawfully achieve entry to states’ protected voter information and purge voter rolls serve solely to trigger chaos and gas public mistrust in our elections,” California Secretary of State Shirley Weber stated.
Specialists overwhelmingly agree the lawsuit is unlikely to succeed. However they concern the results of publicly calling election outcomes into query may harm confidence in democracy.
Sean Morales Doyle, a voting skilled on the Brennan Middle, instructed ABC Information on Friday that the Trump administration seems to be “laying the groundwork to problem outcomes after Election Day.”
“They’re placing a nail within the wall for one thing to hold their hat on later,” Morales Doyle stated.
