Trump DOJ Threatens Election Officials Nationwide Over Voter Rolls

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has sent letters to several states threatening to criminally prosecute election officials who fail to remove noncitizens from their voter rolls.

Secretaries of state were warned that the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division was authorized to prosecute criminal violations if election officials failed to properly maintain their Statewide Voter Registration Lists, or SVRLs, according to letters obtained by ProPublica.

“Any election officer, including the chief election officer of the state, who knowingly retains noncitizens on the state’s SVRL or facilitates noncitizens in receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability,” the letters stated.

The letters also warned that any “intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens” could be considered conspiracy.

David Becker, a former prosecutor, told ProPublica that the administration’s threat was unprecedented. “It’s a rather transparent attempt at bullying and it’s kind of reflective of the panic that is being felt at the DOJ right now,” he said.

These letters follow the Trump administration’s monthslong campaign to sue states for their voter registration data, in order to target undocumented immigrants. Federal judges across the country have roundly rejected the administration’s efforts. Last month, a federal judge blocked the Department of Homeland Security from continuing to “haphazardly” create a database of millions of Americans it knew was “inaccurate” in order to purge noncitizens off voter rolls. Another federal judge blocked Trump’s executive order attempting to change election rules.

The issue of noncitizen voting remains small to nonexistent. In 2016, noncitizen votes accounted for just 0.0001 percent of the votes cast, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. If Republicans are really looking for election fraud, they might want to check on their own party members—or maybe their party’s leader.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was asked about his lack of “self respect” after he sat idly by and let U.S. President Donald Trump make angry, incendiary statements about taking over Greenland, restarting his war on Iran, and cutting off trade with Spain.

“Mark, you sit next to Donald Trump in moments where he talks about conquering Greenland, talked about lashing out at allies like Spain, starting trade wars—things that [don’t] seem like the old Mark Rutte would approve of,” a Danish reporter asked Rutte shortly after his meeting with Trump Wednesday. “Does this have any affect on your self-respect when you sit next to him like that and say nothing?”

“You know, what I always do is acknowledge when praise is due, and I think we should praise Donald Trump for the fact that NATO is so much stronger,” Rutte replied, dodging the question. “Of course, it has to do with the Russian threat, it has to do with the war in Ukraine, but it very much also has to do with President Trump … trying to equalize spending between the U.S. and Europe. And it makes Europe stronger. It makes Europe more relevant for the United States as a partner.”

Apparently, the short answer is no—showing such deference to Trump while he makes threats against Greenland, lobbies against Spain, and again declares war on Iran has no impact on Rutte’s self respect. But it certainly has an impact on the world’s perception of him, as he uses flattery and submission to appease Trump rather than boldly defending what was once the Western world’s most important post–Cold War institution.

Donald Trump’s latest attempt to weasel his way out of paying E. Jean Carroll involved a bold-faced lie to a federal judge.

In a legal filing submitted Tuesday, Trump’s attorneys asked Judge Lewis Kaplan not to release some of the funds he owes to the beleaguered columnist on the basis that the president’s petition for a new hearing was still pending before the Supreme Court. The only hiccup: The Supreme Court had rejected Trump’s petition filing.

By Wednesday, though, the SCOTUS docket had been updated to reflect that the nation’s highest court was anticipating a corrected petition from the president’s team.

Carroll has a long and grim history with the president. Trump was found liable by a jury in May 2023 for having sexually abused her in the mid-1990s, for which she was awarded $5 million in damages.

Trump lost his defamation case against her the following January, when Kaplan ruled that Trump had continued to defame the advice columnist by denying the rape on the basis that she wasn’t his “type,” and by accusing her of making up the sexual assault allegations against him for the benefit of her book. A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in that case.

But Carroll hasn’t yet seen a dime from either of her legal victories. In May, a federal appeals court allowed Trump to continue staving off his payments until the Supreme Court decided whether to pick up the case. The high court did so last week, rejecting Trump’s challenge and allowing the verdict to stand.

Late last month, Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan asked a judge to implement an expedited payment schedule for the sum that Trump owes Carroll (Kaplan is not related to the New York–based judge of the same name). She referred to a June 2023 filing in which both parties agreed that Carroll could collect if the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

Kaplan added that, by this point, the $5 million sum had accrued an additional $779,783 in interest, raising Trump’s debt in the initial case to nearly $5.8 million.

“This is the end of the line,” Kaplan wrote in a June 30 filing. “It is time for him to pay Carroll.”

This story has been updated.

President Trump made two glaring mix-ups Wednesday while speaking to the press at a NATO summit in Turkey.

“We had 111 missiles shot by the Islamic Republic of Japan. They were shot at the aircraft carrier,” Trump said, inventing a new government and confusing Japan with Iran.

A few minutes later, sitting alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and pointing to him directly, Trump asked reporters, “You have a question for President Putin, please?” The assembled press chuckled, and some tried to correct Trump, who then tried to spin his mistake by claiming that’s what he meant.

“Do you have a question for President Putin, not Zelenskiy, Putin?” Trump said, again pointing to the Ukrainian leader on his right. “What would you like to ask him, because I’m going to ask him that question.”

These kinds of mistakes are becoming all too common with Trump. By now, it’s obvious to anyone who regularly watches the president that he’s experiencing some kind of cognitive decline. Zelenskiy brushed it off because he’s seen it before and can’t afford to even mildly antagonize Trump, as he needs the president’s support for U.S. military aid. For the rest of us, though, it raises the question of whether Trump has the mental acuity to be president, and how long the octogenarian can keep going on like this.

If Republicans are really looking for election fraud, they might want to check on their own party members.

In Massachusetts, the State Ballot Law Commission ruled last week to disqualify Republican candidates for lieutenant governor and attorney general from the state’s primary election after they submitted allegedly forged signatures to get their names on the ballot.

Adam Roof, executive director of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, had filed objections to the veracity of the signatures collected by the campaigns of Anne Manning Martin, who is running for lieutenant governor, and Michael Walsh, who is running for attorney general.

Candidates needed to gather 10,000 signatures to appear on the primary ballot. The commission invalidated 1,279 of Martin’s 10,692 signatures and 1,021 of Walsh’s 10,677 signatures.

In Martin’s case, signature gatherer Joe Bronske allegedly used a list of registered Republican voters to forge hundreds of signatures. The allegedly forged signatures were first noticed by another Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, who had also hired Bronske and found he’d collected signatures from deceased voters. When deposed by an attorney for Shawn Oliver, one of Martin’s opponents, Bronske repeatedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment, suggesting he had “something to hide,” according to the ruling.

In Walsh’s case, a handwriting expert determined that many of the signatures from certain towns were “more likely than not written by the same person,” according to the commission’s ruling.

Thousands of miles away in Florida, five people, including three elected officials, have been charged in connection with a scheme to allegedly create and distribute a fake voter guide.

Ahead of the 2024 general election, residents in St. Johns County received flyers that listed the Republican Party’s “official 2024 membership-approved endorsements”—but included a very different list of candidates from the one the party actually supported.

St. Johns County Commissioners Sarah Arnold and Christian Whitehurst, St. Augustine Beach city commissioner and former Mayor Dylan Rumrell, and Jamie Lynn Johnson each face two misdemeanor counts for conspiracy and producing a false voter guide.

Brianna Jordan, Whitehurst’s campaign manager, was also charged with tampering with physical evidence. She allegedly tried to destroy the voter guides after the scheme was discovered.

It shouldn’t be all that surprising that the recent instances of alleged voter fraud are coming from the Republican Party, the same party that idolizes a county clerk found guilty of tampering with voting machines, celebrates a rule-skirting billionaire, and bows at the altar of an election denier and alleged fraudster.