The Trump Justice Department is threatening California election workers with prosecution for counting suspected noncitizen ballots after the state ignored a federal review deadline.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter put Los Angeles election officials on notice Friday: knowingly tabulating ballots from people federal agencies have flagged as noncitizens is not a paperwork dispute. It is a path to criminal liability.
The letter landed one day after the Department of Justice sued California over claims the state refused to purge noncitizens from its voter rolls. The sequence is plain. Federal officials handed California a list. They set a short clock. The state did not meet it. Then came the lawsuit, and the warning that ballot counters who ignore the flags risk becoming aiders and abettors to a federal crime.
ABC News reported that McCotter’s letter went to Los Angeles officials and made the legal stakes explicit.
"The legal consequences for either facilitating or ignoring a federal crime are significant,"
McCotter wrote. He did not leave the core point in soft language.
"Noncitizen voting in a federal election is a federal crime--and knowingly facilitating such conduct is equally unlawful."
And he spelled out how local workers could cross the line.
"If persons knowingly tabulate ballots cast by individuals identified by federal agencies as noncitizens, they risk becoming aiders and abettors to a federal crime."
Earlier in the week, McCotter sent letters to the Los Angeles County Clerk and California Secretary of State Shirley Weber. Federal officials said a password-protected thumb drive held thousands of names of potential noncitizens believed to be on the state’s voter registration list. Officials had two days to confirm they were reviewing the names and segregating any returned ballots tied to that list.
Just the News reported the demand in stark terms: stop sending ballots to the listed names until citizenship is confirmed, and hold any returned ballots out of the count pending verification. If California failed to comply inside 48 hours, the letter warned, the federal government would seek emergency relief.
The state missed that window. The Justice Department then sued, seeking to block counting of mail-in ballots from about 20,000 suspected noncitizens identified among automatic mail-ballot recipients. The New York Post reported the letter went to Los Angeles County Counsel, with copies to Weber and Registrar Dean Logan, and framed the case as a direct follow-on to the missed deadline.
That is not a vague press release war. It is a paper trail: list delivered, deadline set, deadline missed, suit filed, prosecution warning issued.
President Donald Trump reposted the McCotter letter on his social media platform and added a follow-up of his own.
"They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!"
The message matched the Justice Department’s theory of the case. Noncitizen voting is already a federal crime. Knowingly processing those ballots after federal agencies identify the voters is treated as facilitation, not a clerical gray area.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin had previewed the same accountability line over the summer. Election officials, he said, “can be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even depending on how far it goes, prison time.” The Friday letter put that warning on letterhead and aimed it at the nation’s largest state election machinery.
The Justice Department has been moving cases, not only writing memos. In recent weeks it has promoted dozens of arrests of alleged noncitizens who voted in past cycles. Supporting coverage puts the year’s tally higher: about 90 people charged with election offenses, including roughly 50 cases tied to illegal noncitizen voting. Breitbart noted the same charging push in the run-up to the California fight.
Separate from the California dispute, McCotter appeared at a September 22 Justice Department press conference in Washington alongside U.S. Attorney Melissa Holyoak of Utah when officials announced an election worker indictment there for allegedly throwing away ballots. The point of that announcement was the same theme now aimed west: election workers are not insulated from federal criminal law when the conduct is knowing and unlawful.
California officials answered with politics and process objections. Secretary of State Shirley Weber cast the federal effort as an attack on state voter data and public confidence.
"The USDOJ's relentless efforts to unlawfully gain access to states' protected voter data and purge voter rolls serve only to cause chaos and fuel public distrust in our elections,"
Weber said. State officials also called the federal request legally baseless and described it as a last-ditch attempt to intervene in California’s election process.
Sean Morales Doyle, a voting expert at the Brennan Center, told ABC News the administration appears to be “laying the groundwork to challenge results after Election Day.” He added, “They're putting a nail in the wall for something to hang their hat on later.” Those are claims from a progressive voting group. They do not erase the federal statute against noncitizen voting, the thumb-drive list, the missed 48-hour review, or the aider-and-abettor warning that followed.
McCotter’s letter does not criminalize honest mistakes described nowhere in the file. It targets knowing conduct: tabulating ballots after federal agencies have identified the voters as noncitizens. That is the line the Justice Department drew. California’s refusal to complete the demanded review on the federal timeline is what moved the fight from a data demand to a lawsuit and a prosecution threat.
Voters who follow the rules have a right to expect the rolls and the count to follow the law. Officials who receive a federal list of suspected noncitizens on the voter rolls, blow a two-day review deadline, and then denounce the cleanup as chaos are asking the public to treat citizenship rules as optional paperwork.
The Justice Department has now said the opposite out loud. Noncitizen voting is a federal crime. Knowingly counting those ballots is not a protected local custom. And California officials who ignore the warning have been told, in writing, what the next step can be.
Lawful elections require a lawful electorate, and workers who count ballots after a clear federal flag do not get a free pass when the statute says otherwise.
