Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter says the Justice Department has charged 113 people across 20 different states with illegally voting or illegal registration in just the last seven weeks. McCotter put the numbers in direct context: the Biden administration charged only 13 people for the same offenses over its entire four years in office — not 13 in a month, not 13 in a year, but 13 total in four years. At the current pace, he noted, the DOJ is now surpassing that full four-year total every single week.
"This causes real damage to real elections and real damage to American citizens."
McCotter made the remarks as the department announced its latest sweep — Monday's California operation charging 28 noncitizens with fraudulent voter registration, illegal voting, and related false statements on citizenship applications. Asked about the timing so close to the election, McCotter blamed state officials, saying their refusal to cooperate forced the department's hand: "It's an emergency of their own creation." U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian added that Operation Protect the Vote would continue through the election and beyond, and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli rejected claims that noncitizen voting is too rare to matter: "This is not a conspiracy theory. This is not made-up stuff."
McCotter emphasized that every illegal vote cancels out the vote of an American citizen, and that the prior administration largely turned a blind eye to these cases. The seven-week total spans 20 states and runs alongside the department's court fight with California over more than 20,000 flagged registrants whose mail ballots the DOJ wants set aside until citizenship is verified.
California officials are fighting back. Attorney General Rob Bonta attacked the timing of Monday's operation: "Their timing is rife with and smacks of and reeks of desperation and bad faith, to do this during an election." Sen. Alex Padilla, joined by Democratic Sens. Richard Durbin and Sheldon Whitehouse, wrote to the DOJ last week asking it to reaffirm its longstanding election non-interference policy. State officials maintain that noncitizen voting is extremely rare and that the larger federal list is unverified — a claim the department's 113 charges in seven weeks are now being used to answer.
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