The Justice Department has ordered Wayne County, Michigan, to hand over all ballots cast in the November 2024 presidential election, marking another phase in the Trump administration's sweeping review of voting records across dozens of states and jurisdictions.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon sent the demand on April 14, giving county officials 14 days to produce ballots, ballot receipts, and ballot envelopes. In her letter, Dhillon cited three election fraud convictions and five lawsuits alleging fraud against the county as justification for the request.
The timing carries political weight. Trump won Michigan statewide in 2024, but Wayne County, which encompasses Detroit, rejected him decisively by nearly 250,000 votes.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, condemned the move as a brazen misuse of federal authority. She characterized the request as "absurd" and "baseless," and accused the administration of turning the Justice Department into a political instrument.
"Once again, President Trump is weaponizing the Justice Department in an attempt to sabotage our democratic process and turn it into his own personal agency to interfere in state elections," Nessel said in a statement. She pledged her office would defend voting rights if the administration pursued legal action.
Nessel argued that the very convictions cited by Dhillon proved Michigan's safeguards work. She called instances of voter fraud "rare and addressed," and suggested the demand was designed to intimidate election clerks and resurrect discredited theories about the 2020 election.
The Wayne County demand is not an isolated action. The Trump administration has now sought voting records from 29 states and Washington, D.C. The FBI subpoenaed election records from Maricopa County, Arizona, last month tied to the 2020 election, and earlier raided an elections hub in Fulton County, Georgia, seizing documents related to that same year.
Trump's election-related activities extend beyond records requests. He signed an executive order last month aimed at restricting mail voting by creating federal lists of citizens, sparking lawsuits from Democrats and voting rights groups. Earlier this year, he also suggested Republicans should "take over the voting" in at least 15 unspecified locations, alarming election officials nationwide.
Under Article 1 of the Constitution, states retain primary control over how elections are administered. The administration's aggressive posture has raised questions about the scope of federal authority in that domain.
Author Sarah Mitchell: "The Justice Department is clearly building a case to justify tighter federal control over elections, but seizing ballots from a county Trump lost only strengthens the argument that this is politics, not law enforcement."
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