The Justice Department is demanding all ballots from the 2024 election in the Detroit area, a highly unusual move that comes shortly after prosecutors seized 2020 ballots in Georgia and obtained 2020 election records in Arizona.
The push to collect thousands of election records in swing states is part of a sweeping effort by President Donald Trump and his administration to scrutinize elections that has cast doubt on how they are run. Trump has spent more than five years falsely claiming the 2020 election was rigged against him. In recent months, he has shifted his focus to this fall’s midterm elections by seeking to restrict voting by mail and urging Republicans to “take over” voting in “at least 15 places,” such as Detroit.
The latest demand is for ballots, ballot envelopes and ballot receipts in Wayne County, Michigan, which includes Detroit. It came from Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general who oversees the Civil Rights Division and is widely viewed as auditioning to replace Pam Bondi as attorney general. Dhillon sent her letter Tuesday, and Democratic state officials released a copy of it Sunday.
Those officials — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, state Attorney General Dana Nessel and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson — decried the demand as a baseless attempt to undermine the public’s confidence in elections.
“If this administration wants to bring this circus to our state, my office is prepared to protect the people’s right to vote,” Nessel said in a statement.
Dhillon wrote in her letter to Wayne County that DOJ wants the 2024 ballots so it can determine whether election laws were followed that year in a place with a “history of fraud convictions and other allegations.” She cited three examples of voter fraud in 2020 and a lawsuit alleging election officials did not properly process absentee ballots that year. A judge dismissed that lawsuit, finding the allegations were “not credible.”
Voting fraud is very rare, and Nessel noted it has often been caught in Michigan by election officials. Courts rejected dozens of lawsuits over the 2020 election, and independent reviews have found Trump lost that year to Joe Biden.
Dhillon asked that the ballots be produced within two weeks and said the Justice Department might sue to get them if they are not.
The Justice Department is seeking about 865,000 ballots and hundreds of thousands of other records, according to a letter Nessel sent to the Justice Department on Friday. Dhillon made her demand to the wrong place, Nessel said, because the ballots are held by 43 municipal clerks, not Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett (D).
A spokesperson for Garrett did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday. A Justice Department spokesperson had no comment.
In statements, Benson called the demand the administration’s “latest attempt to interfere in our elections” and Whitmer said it was a “poorly disguised attempt to justify more doubt and misinformation about our elections.”
The post DOJ demands Detroit-area 2024 ballots, escalating election scrutiny appeared first on Washington Post.
