Justice Department Charges Six More People with Voter Fraud in California, Five Arrested

The US Department of Justice has charged six more people in California with alleged voter fraud crimes. The new cases were announced on Monday, on the eve of the midterm elections, in an escalation of the Trump administration's campaign against the state's election processes.

Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles and a close ally of the president, announced on Monday that his office was prosecuting six lawful permanent residents. They are accused of unlawfully registering to vote and casting fraudulent ballots.

According to criminal complaints filed in federal court, all six defendants are green card holders. That means they are immigrants who have legal status in the United States, but are barred from voting.

The Justice Department filed similar charges against 28 people across California last month. In that round, one 72-year-old defendant was arrested in a dramatic on-camera operation, and the footage was edited into a Justice Department promotional video.

Essayli said at a press conference on Monday that five of the six people charged in the latest round have been arrested. The six defendants include people originally from Mexico, Israel, the Philippines, Canada and Iran, prosecutors said.

All six are accused of a single charge each of making false statements on a naturalization application. Affidavits allege that they unlawfully registered to vote, and then, when they later applied for citizenship, falsely claimed that they had never previously registered. The complaints said the defendants cast ballots in recent years, but they are not facing charges specifically relating to fraudulently voting.

The defendants face a maximum of five years in prison, according to prosecutors. The charges were outlined in initial complaints written by Department of Homeland Security agents. The defendants have not been formally indicted, and it was not immediately clear whether any of them had obtained lawyers. The federal public defender's office in Los Angeles did not immediately respond to an inquiry.

One 52-year-old defendant from Canada was accused of voting unlawfully twice, then seeking to cancel his registration. The complaint says he has been in the US for more than 40 years. A 43-year-old defendant from the Philippines has been in the US since 1992 and was accused of voting several times since 2020.

The latest arrests come as the Justice Department pushes ahead with its lawsuit seeking to force California election officials to set aside roughly 20,000 ballots that federal prosecutors say may belong to noncitizens who fraudulently registered. The department has said the ballots should not be counted until California can confirm their citizenship status. State election leaders have countered that the prosecutors' list and methodology were unreliable, that complying in the middle of an election would be logistically impossible, and that it would risk disenfranchising US citizens. Multiple judges have rebuffed the department's efforts as unconstitutional and a threat to democracy, and the US Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Trump administration's appeals.

Experts say voting by noncitizens is extremely rare, and that when noncitizens do end up on the voter rolls, it is usually due to confusion. Experts have also said it was extraordinary for the Justice Department to bring these cases in the middle of an election, when federal prosecutors traditionally avoid steps that could be seen as politically motivated or as potential interference with an upcoming race.

Essayli said the newly arrested defendants were on the federal prosecutors' list of 20,000 voters who might be fraudulently registered, arguing that the cases further supported the push to stop ballots from being counted. But an immigrants' rights group, which sued the government over its use of federal immigration data to challenge voters, analysed the list and said in a filing over the weekend that more than 40 percent of the people flagged as potentially fraudulent voters could not be found on the state's voter rolls. The 20,000 names represent a tiny fraction of the more than 23 million registered voters in California.

When questioned about the prosecutors' list on Monday, Essayli told reporters the government had used 'third-party databases' to identify potentially fraudulent voters, and that it 'may not be 100 percent' accurate, but there was a 'very, very high confidence rate'. At a press briefing during the first round of arrests last month, Trent McCotter, the acting US deputy attorney general, said there may be some names on the list who ultimately turn out to be citizens, adding: 'We're not perfect.'

In recent days the Justice Department has also repeatedly threatened to criminally prosecute election officials who process fraudulent ballots, prompting a rebuke from a federal judge on Friday, who blocked the administration from continuing to threaten election officials. Essayli has continued his campaign against California's elections even after a federal judge ruled last week that he was 'unlawfully' serving as head of the US attorney's office, since he was not formally appointed and confirmed by the Senate; the Justice Department is appealing that ruling.