On the eve of Tuesday’s midterm elections, Attorney General Todd Blanche floated an unsubstantiated claim about “thousands of illegal voters” — a remark that instantly stoked fears of what’s to come.
“Wow. The Attorney General is lying about the election the night before it occurs,” wrote Karen Piper, an author and former University of Missouri professor, in a social media post on X.
On Monday, the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to step into its fight with California over its voter rolls, claiming that it had identified 20,000 “likely” noncitizens registered to vote in the Golden State. The Supreme Court rejected the DOJ’s request that same day and refused to intervene.
Blanche repeated the claim anyway Monday night — even after a DOJ attorney admitted earlier that day that the agency’s 20,000 tally carried a “high error rate.”
Monday afternoon, California Gov. Gavin Newsom warned the Trump administration against meddling in the state’s elections and vowed that California would have “a free and fair election.” Later that night, Blanche responded to Newsom.
“‘A free and fair election’ — so you’ll be promptly purging the thousands of illegal voters on your rolls?” Blanche wrote.
Journalist Adam Klasfeld flagged the admission by an attorney from Blanche’s own agency that the 20,000 tally was flawed and asked Blanche bluntly, “why lie?”
Journalist and former news anchor Ed Greenberger predicted that Blanche would end up being “one of the first Trump lackeys who ends up in prison,” whereas Robyn Leader, a New York-based attorney, called Blanche’s remark “unethical and unprecedented.”
“This is absolutely disgraceful,” Leader wrote late Monday night in a social media post on X.
The clash capped a weekslong push by the Justice Department, which sued California in mid-October to stop the state from counting mail ballots from the 20,000 voters it had flagged. The suit came less than three weeks before Election Day, with voting already underway in California.
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