Los Angeles Officials Haven’t Plugged in USB Drive That DOJ Insists Is Full of Noncitizens Who Were Sent Ballots

The Department of Justice sent Los Angeles County officials an unsolicited thumb drive they claim contains names of likely noncitizens who received mail ballots for the upcoming midterm elections. Los Angeles County officials haven’t touched it with a 10-foot pole. According to PBS, the DOJ sent a letter to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and the Los Angeles County registrar’s office demanding that officials review the USB stick’s contents and comply with a list of demands. The DOJ instructed both offices that California officials must verify the citizenship of every individual on the list and have local election officials either set aside ballots tied to individuals who can’t be verified or, if they haven’t sent the ballots out yet, withhold them entirely. Of course, the DOJ is threatening a lawsuit if this isn’t done within 48 hours: “If you cannot implement this process by then, given the ongoing federal election, the United States will have no choice but to seek emergency relief.” The hesitation to comply is understandable given the U.S. Constitution empowers Congress to regulate elections and states to run them, not the executive, and the Trump administration is losing nearly all of its voter data-related court cases. Last week, a federal district court judge in DC ruled the DOJ could not run voter rolls from the 18 states that voluntarily handed them over through a DHS database that experts say is very inaccurate; the admin has lost 26 out of 30 lawsuits so far against other states that refused to provide the data. Election Law Blog argued that while the latest case was civil, the judge’s opinion torching the program’s legal rationale could open the door to criminal charges against Trump flunkies who handled the data. Officials haven’t “explicitly refused,” according to CBS. Yet Dean Logan, the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder and County Clerk, told news outlets in a statement that officials had, so far, not plugged in the drive. “We have not accessed the drive because doing so would conflict with established data privacy and information security protocols,” Logan said. “We do not consider the device a secure medium. Additionally, the letter does not specify the number of individuals involved or describe the information contained in the records.” “… [A]ny action to remove a voter from eligibility must be based on verifiable information, not assertions of unconfirmed data matching,” Logan added. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has insisted that 250,000 noncitizens are illegally registered to vote in the states of California, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania alone. PolitiFact reported that election expert David Becker, who attended a White House briefing, subsequently said a White House official said that figure was based on commercial data lacking personally identifiable information. Becker added that method would “create a lot of false matches.” Even as he’s lied about voter fraud, Trump has been crystal clear that the White House’s election agenda has the sole purpose of harming Democrats on the campaign trail. He touted the passage of his signature SAVE America Act, which would require people registering to vote to provide proof of citizenship, as providing “guaranteed” GOP victory in the 2026 midterms. Federal law bans election officials from conducting systematic removals of ineligible voters in the 90 days before federal elections, though the White House and Republican allies in Congress have sought to find legally creative loopholes, like that purges of alleged noncitizens just don’t count. Voting rights groups and the Republican National Committee are currently in a legal battle before the Supreme Court on that issue, but oral argument isn’t scheduled until December 2026. The administration appears to have no intent of slowing down in the remaining weeks before Election Day. “One must question why the DOJ would violate its own rules about investigating elections close to Election Day, and over a week after they knew the state had already mailed ballots out, particularly when their past claims have been full of errors,” Becker told CNN.