Supreme Court rejects administration appeals in California ballot dispute
On Monday, Bill Essayli, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, announced that his office was prosecuting six more lawful permanent residents in California accused of unlawfully registering to vote and casting fraudulent ballots. Each defendant faces a single charge of making false statements on a naturalization application. At a Monday news conference in Los Angeles, Essayli said five of the six defendants had been arrested. The announcement came as federal prosecutors continued their effort to stop California from counting roughly 20,000 disputed ballots ahead of the midterms, and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Trump administration appeals on Monday.
An Associated Press photograph of Essayli at the Monday news conference in Los Angeles was credited to Jae C Hong.
The defendants are lawful permanent residents, or green card holders, according to criminal complaints filed in federal court, and are barred from voting. Prosecutors said the defendants included people originally from Mexico, Israel, the Philippines, Canada and Iran. All six are accused of a single charge each of making a false statement on a naturalization application. The affidavits allege that the defendants unlawfully registered to vote and later falsely claimed on their citizenship applications that they had never previously registered. The complaints say the defendants cast ballots in recent years, but they are not facing charges specifically related to fraudulently voting. Each charge carries a maximum of five years in prison, prosecutors said.
The federal cases remain at the initial-complaint stage. Department of Homeland Security agents wrote the complaints, and none of the defendants has been formally indicted. It was not immediately clear whether any had obtained lawyers; the federal public defender’s office in Los Angeles did not immediately respond to an inquiry.
One 52-year-old defendant from Canada was accused of voting unlawfully twice and later seeking to cancel his registration. His complaint says he has been in the US for more than 40 years. A 43-year-old defendant from the Philippines was accused of voting several times since 2020; he has been in the US since 1992.
Voting by noncitizens is extremely rare, experts said, and when noncitizens do end up on voter rolls, it is usually because of confusion. The six prosecutions follow similar charges the Justice Department filed against 28 people across California last month.
The latest arrests came on the eve of the midterms after the Justice Department unsuccessfully fought to force California election officials to set aside roughly 20,000 ballots that federal prosecutors say may belong to noncitizens who fraudulently registered. Prosecutors have said the ballots should not be counted until California can confirm their citizenship status. State election leaders countered that the prosecutors’ list and methodology were unreliable and that complying with the demands in the middle of an election would be logistically impossible and would risk disenfranchising US citizens.
Essayli said the newly arrested defendants were on federal prosecutors’ list of 20,000 voters who might have fraudulently registered, and he argued that the cases supported his effort to block ballot counting. An immigrants’ rights group that sued the government over its use of federal immigration data to challenge voters said in a filing over the weekend that more than 40% of the people flagged as potentially fraudulent voters could not be found on California’s voter rolls. The 20,000 names represent a tiny fraction of the more than 23 million registered voters in California. County election officials who received threatening letters from the Justice Department demanding that they set aside certain ballots also said the lists were riddled with errors.
When questioned about the list on Monday, Essayli said the government had used “third-party databases” to identify potentially fraudulent voters and that the list “may not be 100%” accurate, but had a “very, very high confidence rate.” At a briefing during the first round of arrests last month, acting US deputy attorney general Trent McCotter said: “There may be some names on there who, it turns out, ultimately are citizens. We’re not perfect, and that’s why we’ve asked California to cooperate with us.”
Several judges have rebuffed the Justice Department’s efforts as unconstitutional and a threat to democracy, and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s appeals on Monday. Legal experts said it was extraordinary for the Justice Department to bring such cases in the middle of an election, noting that federal prosecutors traditionally avoid steps that could be viewed as politically motivated or as potential interference with an upcoming race.
In the earlier round, prosecutors arranged an on-camera arrest of a 72-year-old defendant and edited the footage into a Justice Department promotional video. The Associated Press and other news outlets were present for the pre-dawn arrest of the 72-year-old last month on a quiet residential street. A Fox News reporter posted photographs of two arrests on Monday; one person in the photographs appeared to be an Amazon worker handcuffed on the sidewalk.
Former prosecutors and defense lawyers said the government’s showy presentation of the arrests was especially galling. They specifically cited the release of mugshots and defendants being paraded before news cameras. Democrats accused the Justice Department of trying to sow doubt in the election results and create a false impression that voter fraud is widespread.
In recent days, the Justice Department had repeatedly threatened to criminally prosecute election officials who process fraudulent ballots. A federal judge on Friday said the department’s “intimidation, threats, and attempts at coercion force election workers daily to choose between acceding to [the DoJ’s] unlawful demands or adhering to their duties and thereby subjecting themselves to a serious risk of criminal investigation and prosecution.” The judge blocked the administration from continuing to threaten election officials.
Separately, a federal judge ruled last week that Essayli was “unlawfully” serving as head of the US attorney’s office because he had not been formally appointed and confirmed by the Senate. The Justice Department is appealing that ruling while continuing its California election litigation.
Sam Levine contributed reporting.