Judge Orders Trump's DOJ and DHS to Stop Threatening Election Officials With Prosecution

U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson issued an eight-page order Friday, Oct. 30, barring the Trump administration from threatening, intimidating or coercing state and local election officials into halting ballot processing based solely on noncitizen-voting allegations. The order followed DOJ letters sent the prior week to officials in 57 of California's 58 counties, including one from First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bilal Essayli to San Bernardino County demanding officials turn over Social Security numbers and other nonpublic voter data on "1,133 likely aliens" within 48 hours or face investigation themselves.

Thompson wrote that "high-ranking DOJ and DHS officials have engaged in a campaign to intimidate, threaten, and coerce" election workers administering the midterms, and that the actions were "likely to have the effect of interfering with election administration and disenfranchising lawful voters," regardless of the administration's stated aim of rooting out noncitizen voting.

The injunction runs through Nov. 16, nearly two weeks after Election Day. It followed separate appeals-court rulings this week rejecting related DOJ efforts to segregate ballots in California, while a similar dispute over Washington state ballots remains pending.