The Department of Justice sent threatening letters to at least 30 top election officials across the country, expanding its efforts to gain access to private voter data and election records.
The letters warned states not to destroy any records related to the 2024 election, explaining that their chief election officials “are currently under investigation” and subject to “ongoing litigation.” The notices come amid a barrage of efforts by President Trump and his administration, which have been fruitless so far, to find evidence of widespread voter fraud.
It is not clear what the department is investigating, nor whether its probe is criminal or civil in nature. The letters do not cite any criminal statutes. Instead, they point to some of the same claims made previously as part of the administration’s ongoing effort to identify fraud in the nation’s elections, including machine anomalies and noncitizen voting. In court, the Justice Department has tried to force states to hand over unredacted voter lists, including personal information like driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.
The Justice Department has sued 30 different states for this data. They’ve lost 23 of those cases and have won none. Decisions are pending in the rest.
Mr. Trump has falsely claimed for years that millions of noncitizens are illegally registered to vote or have actually cast ballots. Multiple studies have shown the practice is exceedingly rare.
Kiersten Pels, a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice, confirmed that the department sent the letters to “the states we are in active litigation against regarding their failure to provide the full” statewide registered voter list. Ms. Pels did not respond to questions about unspecified criminal investigations.
Calli Jones, a spokeswoman for the Arizona secretary of state’s office, said the office would comply with what the law requires, regardless of any requests from the Justice Department.
“Our office and our counties follow state document retention laws,” Ms. Jones said in an interview, “and to imply otherwise is an insult to the work that election administrators do in Arizona.”
While the states the Justice Department has sued are largely controlled by Democrats, a number of Republican states, including Kentucky, Idaho, West Virginia and Georgia, have also been targeted.
Officials in some of the states being sued, including Maine and Georgia, said they had not yet received a letter from the department.
The new letters come as election officials across the country have faced increasingly hostile rhetoric and threats from the upper echelons of the Trump administration.
Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, sent letters in July to the top election official in all 50 states threatening criminal prosecution if noncitizens cast a ballot that was counted in the midterm elections. Later that month, Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, threatened election officials in a speech, saying they could face prison time if they did not comply with the Trump administration’s efforts to change election policies.
The Trump administration is also actively pleading with the Supreme Court to allow its plans to restrict mail-in voting before the midterms. The Department of Homeland Security is in the midst of a weekslong hunt for noncitizens among the nation’s registered voters despite an absence of evidence of widespread fraud.
Francisco Aguilar, the Democratic secretary of state of Nevada, said that the letters followed a pattern of threats coming from the administration.
“It’s the constant ‘flood the zone’ of harassment and intimidation and threats of legal action hoping we’d fold at some point,” Mr. Aguilar said.
He added, “We’re going to continue to follow the law and do what’s in the best interest of our voters.”
Officials are allowed to destroy voting records 22 months after each election. That date was Sept. 5; the department sent the letters a day prior.
Election officials are well versed in policies regarding document retention, explained David Becker, a former voting rights lawyer for the Justice Department, and such threatening letters are unnecessary. Mr. Becker said the Justice Department may be seeking to pressure the states for more information than is legally necessary.
Sending what is effectively a sternly worded reminder to states two months before an election “is completely meaningless,” Mr. Becker said. “There’s only two reasons to send that letter: Either the lawyers who send it don’t understand litigation obligations, or they’re hoping that states will misinterpret it and retain more than they’re legally required.”
Kellen Browning and Alan Feuer contributed reporting.
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