Michigan officials have strongly rejected a demand from the US Department of Justice for 2024 election materials from the Detroit area, accusing the Trump administration of attempting to undermine the integrity of future polls.
The DOJ’s request, sent last week, sought ballots, ballot receipts, and envelopes from the clerk in Wayne County, home to the heavily Democratic city of Detroit. The letter was authored by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson – all Democrats – released the DOJ’s letter and their reply, vowing to fight the request.
“This request is as absurd as it is baseless,” Nessel said in a joint statement. “If this administration wants to bring this circus to our state, my office is prepared to protect the people’s right to vote.”
The demand comes as Republican Donald Trump continues to push false claims that his 2020 election defeat to Democratic President Joe Biden was due to widespread voter fraud. Dhillon’s letter, while focused on 2024, argues for similar scrutiny of those elections.
The DOJ confirmed the letter’s authenticity in response to a Reuters request but did not provide further comment.
The 2020 election remains a prominent concern for many Trump administration officials. In an interview with Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” program, FBI Director Kash Patel pledged that arrests over alleged 2020 election issues are “coming soon.”
On the same TV show, Dhillon touted the administration’s efforts to get states to provide access to voter registration lists, saying the department has sued 29 states and the District of Columbia over their refusal of access to voter rolls.
DOJ staffers so far have reviewed 60 million voter records and found they included the names of 350,000 dead persons, said Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department’s civil rights division. She did not provide any evidence that votes were cast for those names.
In addition, about 25,000 people who lacked proof of citizenship were referred to the Department of Homeland Security “to dig into that further and see the extent to which people voted,” she said.
The Justice Department has suffered multiple legal setbacks in its pursuit of election-related records, with judges ruling against requests in Rhode Island, California, Massachusetts, Michigan and Oregon.
A federal judge on Friday rejected the Justice Department’s bid to force Rhode Island to turn over non-public data on nearly 750,000 registered voters so the Trump administration could probe “election integrity” in the Democratic-led state.
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