DOJ spokesperson dismisses NAACP lawsuit claims as ‘fearmongering’
FBI Director Kash Patel told Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) at a Tuesday Senate hearing that he would not “participate in your charade of lies” when the senator asked him to pledge that FBI agents would not interfere in upcoming elections.
“I pledge unequivocally that I will not participate in your charade of lies,” Patel replied, according to United Press International.
The hearing exchange preceded the NAACP and a coalition of civil rights organizations filing suit Friday in federal court in Washington seeking to bar federal agents from polling sites in upcoming elections. The complaint, filed against the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies, accuses officials of “unlawful voter intimidation” in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels dismissed the lawsuit’s claims as “fearmongering” in remarks to The Washington Post.
Named as defendants in the complaint are Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, FBI Director Patel, and David Venturella, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The NAACP lawsuit joins a separate suit filed earlier this month by the League of United Latin American Citizens and other groups that also sued the government in Washington over the same federal election policy.
In the complaint, lawyers for the civil rights organizations argue that the planned deployment of federal agents at voting locations amounts to a modern re-emergence of the tactics that originally prompted Congress to enact the Voting Rights Act.
“The voter suppression tactics that led Congress to enact the Voting Rights Act are re-emerging in a modern form, this time by the federal government and targeting a broader set of voters,” lawyers wrote in the suit filed in Washington.
The complaint also describes what it characterizes as a broader climate of fear among voters that it attributes to recent federal actions.
“Just as earlier generations of voters faced intimidation through threatened use of official powers, Plaintiffs today confront a climate in which armed law enforcement, allegations of widespread voter fraud, denaturalization efforts, and the rhetorical scapegoating of communities of color have created reasonable fears of participating in democracy and substantial burdens on the right to vote,” the complaint states.
The plaintiffs are asking a federal court to declare that the government has violated the Voting Rights Act and to bar officials from “deploying agents in a manner that unlawfully intimidates voters or anyone urging or aiding voters.”
In support of that request, the lawyers argue that federal law already prohibits such deployments. “Federal law expressly prohibits sending armed federal agents to voting locations,” they wrote. “Neither the Constitution nor federal law grants federal agencies any role in assessing or policing voter eligibility or regulating election administration in any way.”
The complaint also accuses the administration of broader interference with election systems. “Yet the Administration has repeatedly sought to interfere with election systems and announced its readiness to unlawfully deploy law enforcement to voting sites,” according to the filing.
The NAACP lawsuit asserts that the impact of any such deployment would fall disproportionately on specific communities. “The result is predictable: voters across the country — particularly Black, Latino, and Asian voters, naturalized citizens, and members of mixed-status families — are afraid to vote, help others vote, and participate in civic life,” the lawyers wrote.