Trump's DOJ asks a judge to weigh criminal contempt for lawyers who found errors in its voter list
CHIRLA's analysis found 8,880 of the 20,930 names weren't on California's voter rolls. The department called it "political grandstanding."
The Trump Justice Department on Sunday asked a federal judge to consider whether an immigrant rights group and its lawyers should face a criminal contempt investigation. Their offense, in the department's telling: publishing an analysis that found thousands of errors in its list of California "noncitizen" voters.
The department filed its response Sunday, Nov. 1, before Chief Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, in the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights' (CHIRLA) lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, Trujillo v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:26-cv-03072), the Associated Press reported. It suggested Boasberg refer the matter to the Justice Department to investigate possible criminal contempt of court. Contempt is the court's power to punish someone for defying its orders; a criminal contempt case can carry fines or jail.
What CHIRLA found
Boasberg ordered the department on Friday to give CHIRLA's lawyers its list of about 20,000 people it says are noncitizens registered to vote in California. He barred the group from disclosing any names and said it could use the data only to argue it has standing, the legal right to bring the case.
On Saturday, CHIRLA's lawyers at the UCLA Voting Rights Project filed their analysis. Of 20,930 names, 8,880, about 42%, could not be found in California's current voter file, Democracy Docket reported. The experts, political scientist Matt Barreto and data scientist Michael Rios, identified 22 CHIRLA members, likely naturalized U.S. citizens, as certain matches on the list and 66 more as "near certain."
They also said the file the department produced had only eight data fields and left out the California voter ID number, which they called the "single most critical column." They did not claim the department broke the court's order, Democracy Docket reported.
What each side says
The department's filing defended the list as accurate and argued the analysis had nothing to do with standing. It called the report "political grandstanding," according to the AP. It also argued that "whether or not any CHIRLA citizen members appear on the challenged list is irrelevant" unless the group ties them to fears about voting, Democracy Docket reported.
"Plaintiffs' counsel and their experts fully complied with the Court's orders," Alberto Lammers, a spokesman for the UCLA Voting Rights Project, said in a statement to the AP.
The department has used this list to demand that California set aside ballots and to threaten election workers. A federal judge and the Ninth Circuit have refused its demand to set the ballots aside, and on Friday a federal judge in San Francisco barred the department from threatening election workers with prosecution over it.
Who's at risk
The people on this list are California voters, many of them naturalized citizens, who could face ballot challenges or investigations if the department's errors stand. The lawyers and data experts who checked the list now face the threat of a criminal referral for doing so.
What's next
Boasberg has not ruled on the contempt suggestion, and no hearing on it had been reported as of Monday morning. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3. California voters can check their ballot's status at Where's My Ballot?
Sources
- Justice Department urges sanctions for database analysis critical of its noncitizen voting claims (Associated Press, via PBS NewsHour)
- DOJ withheld key data from court-ordered voter list disclosure, experts say (Democracy Docket)
- Trump DOJ flagged 20,930 Californians as possible noncitizen voters. 8,880 aren't even on the rolls. (WorkersRights.News)
- Judge orders Trump DOJ to hand over its list of 20,000 California voters it calls noncitizens (WorkersRights.News)
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