Four days before Election Day, a federal judge in San Francisco ordered the Justice Department and Homeland Security to stop threatening the people who count the votes. The order came Friday night, and here is what it does:
- U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson granted an emergency restraining order that runs through November 16, almost two weeks past Election Day.
- DOJ and DHS may not threaten, intimidate or coerce state or local election officials into halting ballots “solely on the basis that the ballot belongs to an individual alleged by [DOJ] to be ineligible to vote.”
- They may not demand that any state segregate ballots, purge voters or stop processing, and they may not threaten election workers with prosecution for doing their jobs.
- The government has to tell the court about any grand jury subpoenas, search warrant applications or other demands for ballots tied to its lists of supposed noncitizens.
Thompson, a Biden appointee, wrote that “high-ranking DOJ and DHS officials have engaged in a campaign to intimidate, threaten, and coerce state and local officials and employees.” The Justice Department had not responded by late Friday.
The ruling is getting reported as a legal headline. What the eight-page order rests on is a 46-page complaint that no one has bothered to read aloud, and it describes a federal operation that looks nothing like law enforcement.
How the Threats Were Delivered
The Service Employees International Union, AFSCME, LULAC and the NAACP filed the complaint on Thursday against DOJ, Attorney General Todd Blanche, DHS and Secretary Markwayne Mullin. The paragraphs the wire stories skipped are the ones that matter.
The list of roughly 20,000 California voters DOJ wanted set aside arrived at Los Angeles County on a thumb drive, with the password written on a post-it note stuck to it. Letters to county registrars went out on October 23 and were delivered by armed federal agents. Butte County’s clerk got 47 names and 48 hours to comply. After DOJ opened a criminal investigation into Los Angeles and at least three other counties, federal marshals served one local official at home even though that employee had already been served at work. The president amplified a post saying the county workers who count ballots “will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!”
And the department’s second-ranking official, Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter, said this on Fox News on October 17:
Imagine you walk up to someone, you say I don’t think you’re a citizen, but here’s a ballot, here’s a return envelope. Wink, and you let them send it in. You’re just as guilty as they are.
That is the theory Thompson rejected. Election workers who follow state law, she wrote, “do not violate federal criminal law even if a particular ballot belongs to a registered voter” the government claims is ineligible.
We think the record speaks for itself. An agency that believed it had a case would serve paper at the office and argue in court. One that sends armed agents to hand-deliver letters, moves sensitive voter data on a thumb drive and threatens clerks on cable television is trying to scare people out of counting. Friday’s order is the fourth court loss for this campaign in a week: Judge David Carter refused to set aside the 20,000 ballots on Wednesday and told DOJ “these threats must stop,” the Ninth Circuit twice declined to disturb that ruling, the second time on Friday afternoon, and now Thompson has enjoined the threats themselves in every state.
The department has not slowed. On Thursday McCotter signed letters to all 50 states reminding officials that “it is a crime to willfully fail to comply with Section 20701,” the records-retention statute, punishable by up to a year in prison. Whether those letters are the intimidation Thompson just enjoined is now a live question in her courtroom, and the polls open Tuesday.