DOJ: L.A. County could face criminal charges for counting votes of 20K suspected illegal registrants
OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
2:10 PM – Saturday, October 17, 2026
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has deepened its scrutiny of the Golden State by issuing a letter to Los Angeles County election officials warning that if they allow noncitizens to vote, they put themselves at risk of criminal investigation and possible prosecution.
In a stern letter sent Friday, U.S. Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter reminded Los Angeles Assistant County Counsel Peter M. Bollinger of the dataset the Justice Department recently provided to the county “identifying more than 20,000 individuals who federal agencies reasonably believe are likely noncitizens registered to vote in California.”
“The legal consequences for either facilitating or ignoring a federal crime are significant,” McCotter cautioned. “Noncitizen voting in a federal election is a federal crime—and knowingly facilitating such conduct is equally unlawful.”
The letter cited both the federal law prohibiting noncitizens from voting and the law against aiding and abetting federal offenses.
The DOJ did not ask county officials to do the work of determining individuals’ immigration status or to “purge” voter rolls, but instead, requested that the county temporarily segregate ballots received from those on the provided list until their citizenship and eligibility to vote can be confidently verified.
The department also argued that California cannot rely on its standard voting procedures — which allow voters to declare their own eligibility — to override federal voting laws, given that it has been provided with reason to believe that illegal voter registration has occurred.
“Your assertion that ballots must be counted simply because California’s registration system relies on self-attestation does not relieve election officials of their obligations under federal law when they are on actual notice of noncitizen voting. Nor can state procedures supersede federal criminal statutes,” McCotter wrote.
McCotter also contended against the state’s reliance on the National Voter Registration Act’s (NVRA’s) “quiet period,” a 90-day limitation on voter-list maintenance, which he said did not apply in cases of targeted investigations with “individualized evidence of unlawful voting identified by federal law enforcement.”
“Invoking the NVRA to justify counting ballots unlawfully cast is both legally incorrect and operationally irresponsible,” he stated.
“Additionally, the administrative burdens, timing constraints, or the fact that the investigative list includes individuals residing outside Los Angeles County do not permit the County to knowingly tabulate ballots federal law prohibits,” McCotter continued. “Once the United States provides credible evidence that certain ballots may be unlawful to count, election officials may not disregard that information because it is inconvenient to process. Administrative difficulty is not a defense to violating federal law or aiding or abetting a federal offense.”
President Donald Trump shared the contents of the letter to his Truth Social platform on Friday.
“They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!” Trump added in warning.
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