At noon today, DOJ must reveal which states it pressured
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We know the Department of Justice is threatening California. We know it is targeting Washington State. We’ve seen its outrageous lawsuit in Alaska.
But what about the states that have not revealed the harassment and threats? What about the red states that are gleefully going along with DOJ’s demands to kick voters off the rolls and subvert elections?
We are about to find out.
After a hearing yesterday, Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to disclose every state where they have demanded that election officials remove voters from the rolls, withhold ballots, or set ballots aside.
They have until noon today to comply.
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The order stems from a lawsuit my law firm and I filed against Donald Trump, DOJ, and DHS on behalf of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, the Nevada State Democratic Party, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
The suit seeks to stop the administration’s efforts to coerce election officials into removing voters from the rolls or refusing to count their ballots. The fights in California, Washington and Alaska each involve a single state. Our goal is to stop this illegal behavior nationwide.
As part of this case, we sought emergency discovery into where DOJ and DHS are using these strong-arm tactics. Specifically, we asked the court to require the agencies to:
Identify all States where Defendants have sent state or local election officials communications demanding or requesting that they (i) remove specific registered voters from their statewide voter registration lists; (ii) refuse to issue ballots to specific registered voters; or (iii) segregate, or otherwise not count and tabulate, any ballots returned by specific registered voters for the upcoming November 3, 2026 General Election.
Yesterday, over DOJ’s objection, the court agreed.
Among DOJ’s objections was that the request covered communications from July 1 to the present. DOJ wanted to limit it to the last 30 days. That would have hidden what the agencies did in July, August and September.
The question is why. What are they hiding? What threats have they made? What deals have they cut?
I am not naive enough to think that one court order requiring an answer to one question will end Trump’s assault on free and fair elections. I know that even after this disclosure, much of this pressure campaign will remain secret.
But it is an important step toward understanding the scope and scale of this scheme to corrupt the midterm vote count.
Interestingly, in his order, Judge Boasberg offered DOJ and DHS a way out of answering this question, and out of the entire lawsuit. “Defendants may moot this process at any time,” he wrote, “by filing a notice indicating that they will not engage in the conduct sought to be enjoined in connection with the upcoming election.”
In other words, if Trump and his cronies simply agree to stop threatening and coercing election officials and workers into not counting votes, the entire case will go away. Yet they will never accept this simple resolution.
Trump wants the threats to continue. Indeed, he wants them to escalate. And they are escalating.
According to The New York Times, DOJ has now served grand jury subpoenas on election workers in Los Angeles County, ordering them to appear with records on Nov. 4, the day after the election.
The next step could well be search warrants and threats of indictment.
We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis in which the federal government has weaponized itself against free and fair elections. It is using its vast array of tools and hiding the full extent of its actions from public view.
We will have many more fights in the days and weeks ahead. I have no illusions about how hard this will be. A weaponized federal government is a dangerous adversary.
But at noon today, at least part of that veil of secrecy will lift. We will learn which states DOJ and DHS have been pressuring in the dark, and I will share what we learn as soon as we can.
We have to stand tall and fight back.