Democrats sue Trump administration over L.A. voter fraud probe Play

Democrats in Congress Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the Justice Department's voter fraud probe in Los Angeles County, calling it a pretext to seize control over California's elections. The trigger was a White House thumb drive given to L.A. County voter officials last week, supposedly containing the names of about 7,000 ineligible voters on the rolls.

The lawsuit accuses the President, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Attorney General of using shoddily compiled lists of supposed non-citizens to make coercive threats of legal retaliation against California officials. It was filed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Another plaintiff is Erick Jose Jimenez, a California voter and a naturalized U.S. citizen since 2006, who says he now fears he will be unlawfully targeted and disenfranchised by the Trump administration. The lawsuit alleges a coordinated effort to violate the 10th Amendment, which places individual states in charge of elections.

A White House spokesperson said the Trump administration is taking decisive, lawful action to protect our elections. Bill Essayli, the lead federal prosecutor in L.A., said the thumb drive list was compiled using public voter registration records and some sort of third-party data, but he will not explain what that data is. Federal authorities say they have overwhelming evidence that 25,000 voters all together are ineligible.

The problem is that similar lists handed over to other states have been proven to be full of errors. Nearly all the names have been valid voters. L.A. County took a sample of 200 of the names and found many were U.S. citizens born in the United States, or were people not even registered to vote. The acting Deputy Attorney General, who attacked California on Monday, acknowledged "there may be some names on there who it turns out ultimately are citizens."

Decades of evidence shows instances of non-citizens voting are exceptionally rare. The White House points to federal charges filed in California this week against 23 people, all legal residents, accused of election crimes. But those allegations amount to a micro-fraction of the 94 million ballots counted over the past few elections, and have not been proven. Similar allegations in other states have fizzled.

Wednesday, a federal judge in California ordered the Department of Homeland Security to stop field operations focused on supposedly uncovering voter fraud. The judge wrote that the government's target list contains errors and includes people who have the right to vote, and revealed that Homeland Security has been conducting surveillance, covert operations, and interrogations of staff at nonprofits and churches trying to conduct voter engagement in California.