The Department of Justice is escalating pressure on Kentucky's Republican secretary of state, warning that he is "currently under investigation" for refusing to hand over sensitive voter registration data — one of dozens of states that received similar threatening letters earlier this month.
In a Sept. 4 letter obtained through an open records request, Eric Neff, acting chief of the DOJ's Voting Section, told Secretary of State Michael Adams that he must preserve all voting records dating back to the 2024 general election or risk "civil and criminal sanctions," reported Louisville Public Media.
The letter demanded a "litigation hold" on records Kentucky officials otherwise had legal authority to destroy after 22 months — a deadline that fell the very next day. "Your failure to preserve relevant data may constitute spoliation of evidence, which may subject you to civil and criminal sanctions," Neff wrote.
Kentucky is one of 30 states whose chief election official the DOJ sued in February for declining to turn over voter rolls containing driver's license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. The campaign has yet to succeed anywhere – at least 23 of the lawsuits have been dismissed by federal courts, with none producing a favorable ruling for the department.
A federal judge dismissed the case against Adams in July, and the DOJ has appealed.
Nick Storm, a spokesman for Adams' office, said the secretary has not responded to the September letter, adding, "we're not going to litigate disputes through the media."
Adams has previously said he won't release Kentuckians' personal data without a court order, stating after the February lawsuit that Kentucky's rolls are already clean and that voters' information is protected under state law.
The pressure campaign is tied to the administration's broader push to find evidence of noncitizen voting, a claim President Donald Trump has repeated without substantiation alongside his unproven assertions that the 2020 election was stolen and that this year's midterms will be rigged against Republicans.
Independent research has found little support for the claim, and a recent Reuters analysis identified just 73 noncitizen voting convictions over the past 30 years.
Notably, most states targeted by the DOJ's lawsuits and letters are led by Democratic election officials, making Kentucky one of only four Republican-led states caught in the dragnet.
Pushback has come from GOP officials elsewhere too — Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson told the Salt Lake Tribune the constant threats and investigations undermine, rather than protect, election security. "If you cared about the security of the elections," she said, "you would not be threatening election officials with prison sentences."
All 50 states' chief election officials received a similar warning from the DOJ in July threatening criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting.
Kentucky lawmakers this year authorized, but did not require, use of a federal citizenship verification system — falling short of the mandatory nationwide requirements Trump has unsuccessfully pushed Congress to pass through the SAVE Act.