Feds arrest, indict hundreds in Trump voter fraud crackdown: 'Catching it all over the country'
The Justice Department says its crackdown on noncitizen voting and election fraud has already produced more than 200 arrests and indictments, with that number possibly doubling soon and state election officials themselves now facing potential charges for looking the other way.
Since the Trump Justice Department warned state and local election officials that they could be charged with allowing fraudulent voting activities, more than 200 arrests and indictments have been secured in a crackdown on election fraud and noncitizen voting, and that number could double soon, a top official revealed to Just the News.
"I think there are a lot of nervous election officials because I think some of them know that they've been looking the other way when this is happening, and we're catching it all over the country," Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said Monday night in an interview on the Just the News, No Noise television show.
Dhillon also hinted at further developments in the coming weeks, suggesting her department has developed evidence calling into question New Jersey's claim that a computer glitch allowed thousands of foreigners to register to vote in that state and about 400 to actually cast ballots in violation of law.
“I'm not sure we have the correct numbers from New Jersey. They're not really cooperating with us, and so we will get to the bottom of what happened there. And you know, New Jersey tried to blame a vendor for a mistake or a glitch, quote unquote. But you know, I think there'll be another side to that story,” she said.
The software vendor Dhillon referred to is IDEMIA, which told Just the News in July that it was the responsibility of New Jersey officials to verify voter registration.
“IDEMIA works with the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, and has for more than 40 years, to support the process through which eligible individuals may indicate their interest in registering to vote when applying for or renewing a driver’s license or state-issued identification card. IDEMIA’s role is to transmit information through the motor vehicle system,” IDEMIA said in that statement.
“The voter registration information is transmitted to the New Jersey Department of State, Division of Elections, which is ultimately responsible for verifying eligibility to vote. Information submitted by IDEMIA must still be validated and adjudicated by the Division of Elections.”
Dhillon also stated that in the past several weeks, her office has indicted or convicted 67 individuals for election-related crimes, while the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has made more than 160 arrests.
“What we care about is that non-citizens who voted in a federal election canceled out the votes of American citizens. It does happen. It happens a lot more than anybody says. It wasn't being prosecuted under the Biden DOJ. In the four years of the Biden DOJ, they prosecuted a total of 13 people for election-related crimes, and we've done more than that in the last week here at DOJ,” she said.
Left-wing organizations, including the Brookings Institution, the Brennan Center for Justice, and the American Immigration Council, among others, have all claimed that noncitizen voting is either not happening or is incredibly rare.
Recent data suggests otherwise.
Over the weekend, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Fox News that that his agency is investigating 1,620 cases of voter fraud involving noncitizens and has made 151 arrests. He said his department is also looking into an additional 300,000 cases based on states’ voter rolls.
"We're scrubbing them. We're comparing them to those that are in the country illegally, those that are legal permanent residents and those that are citizens" Mullin told Fox News contributor and former White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany.
"We continue to see that. Every single vote, Kayleigh, that we talk about, that was at the hands of an illegal canceled out a citizen that was legally registered and able to vote," Mullin added.
Also this weekend, DOJ announced it had charged 16 people across seven states as part of an investigation into illegal voting, fraudulent voter registration, and additional election-related offenses. In one example, the DOJ alleged that a Venezuelan national and DACA recipient voted nine times in elections between 2008 and 2024. In another example, a Mexican national falsely claimed to be a U.S. citizen in Idaho and voted.
Last week, Gladys Okafor, 56, a Nigerian national living in Massachusetts, was charged with illegally voting in the 2022 midterm elections and the 2024 presidential election. If convicted, she faces up to one year in prison, one year of supervised release, a fine of up to $100,000, and possible deportation.
Earlier this month, three people were charged with paying homeless people in Los Angeles to sign petitions using the stolen identities of registered voters. The petitions were being used to qualify initiatives on ballots in California elections. James Brass, 46, was arrested in connection to the fraudulent signatures, along with Courtney Price, 49, and Jateisha Herron, 33. They are all charged with one count of conspiracy to commit identity fraud in furtherance of a state felony. Brass and Price were also charged with one count of identity fraud in furtherance of a state felony.
"The charged conduct undermines the confidence voters have in our election systems. We will vigorously investigate and charge anyone involved in corrupting our elections," first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli said.
The indictment followed an undercover investigation from independent journalist James O’Keefe, which filmed people admitting to the crimes.
Dhillon told Just the News on Monday night there is more activity brewing in that Los Angeles case.
"We got the guilty plea of the woman who was paying people off, and you know we have now expanded that to indictments for identity theft with other individuals who were associated with that effort," she said. "So three people were I believe indicted for that just earlier this month as well, and so we are expanding these efforts.
"And every single time I see an incredible example of voter fraud or illegal voting or anything related to voting that I believe we have jurisdiction over, I pick up the phone, I call the U.S. attorney, and I flag it for people internally. Just a constant stream of ideas being pushed down to the states to look at," she added.
A man in Beloit, Wisconsin, was charged earlier this month with illegally voting in Wisconsin’s 2022 midterm election. Jesus Javier Jurado Garcia, 25, was charged with the crime, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The outlet also noted that another noncitizen had been caught voting in two separate elections prior to Garcia’s arrest.
A Census Bureau brief published in August said that more than 24,000 noncitizens had voted in the 2020 general election, with California showing the highest number. The state reportedly saw 4,300 noncitizens cast votes in that election, the analysis found, followed by Texas with 2,500. The brief also noted that it could only say it had “high confidence” that 128 million out of 160 million votes cast in the 2020 election were cast be U.S. citizens, leaving 32 million to still be analyzed.
The list goes on, as Just the News reported in July. In the past year, a Kansas mayor born in Mexico, a Filipino senior citizen living in Hawaii, two Pakistani men living in New Jersey, an Australian in Louisiana, and a Chinese student studying at the University of Michigan were also all charged with illegally voting in U.S. elections. At that time, all 50 states were sent notices that the DOJ will prosecute any election officials who allow noncitizens to vote.
Following those notices being sent, the DOJ subpoenaed Nevada’s Democrat election chief seeking voter information. Nevada’s Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said earlier this month that the state had removed a net of 50,130 people from the voter rolls.
The Department of Homeland Security had previously said it identified potentially 16,000 foreigners on the state’s voter rolls, leading to the DOJ subpoena.