Fears of election day interference fizzle, but federal war on voter fraud could continue

Federal immigration agents didn’t swarm polling locations. FBI agents didn’t storm processing centers or seize ballots. A thousand federal election monitors caused little fuss. And President Trump — the nation’s election denier in chief — responded to a shellacking for his Republican Party by saying he’d work with Democrats as they take power in Congress in January.

In many ways, the unprecedented fear and months of warnings from top officials in California that the Trump administration would seek to disrupt Tuesday’s midterm elections fizzled. But that does not mean an end to the administration’s war on alleged voter fraud by noncitizens — a cornerstone of its election interference efforts in California, and one that has threatened criminal sanctions not just against individuals who illegally cast ballots, but local elections officials who counted such votes.

Since the weekend, California elections officials in the Bay Area — in both Sonoma and Santa Clara counties — received the latest criminal subpoenas from federal prosecutors demanding information about alleged noncitizen voters, but also internal records related to how they had reacted to earlier Justice Department requests that they set aside ballots from potential noncitizens.

Los Angeles County elections officials had previously received such subpoenas.

Even as ballots were being cast Tuesday, the Trump administration was fighting in federal court for the right to demand that California set aside 20,000 ballots from voters whose citizenship it questions, and to threaten election officials and workers with criminal prosecution if they refuse. And the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals delivered it a win late Monday and early Tuesday, lifting a lower court order that had barred such actions.

A separate court — backed by another 9th Circuit panel and the U.S. Supreme Court — had previously rejected the Trump administration’s effort to force California officials to comply with its demands ahead of Tuesday, with multiple judges finding that the U.S. Constitution gives the states and Congress power to shape elections, not the executive branch.

They also found that other federal law precludes such systematic vetting of voter rolls in the immediate lead up to an election, and that federal authorities have other avenues for addressing concerns about alleged noncitizen voters — namely through criminal prosecutions of individual offenders.

In the days since, Trump administration officials have zeroed in on the latter point.

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, wrote on X that the courts “have made it clear that the preferred remedy for election law violations is criminal prosecution,” and that federal authorities intend to build on their campaign to ferret out voter fraud — dubbed “Operation Protect the Vote” — by “investigating and charging those who violate election laws or assist in their violation.”

Acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter on Tuesday cited the observation from U.S. District Judge David O. Carter — in his denial of the administration’s effort to block the California ballots — that the federal government already had a remedy of criminal prosecutions. McCotter quoted Carter as telling federal authorities to “get busier” on those, instead of pushing civil litigation against the state.

“That’s what we intend to do,” McCotter warned. “Anyone who’s voting unlawfully, voting illegally, they will be caught and we will prosecute them.”

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin recently echoed that thought, saying, “If you vote illegally, we will find you.”

Teaming up

A day before the election, Essayli held a news conference to announce federal charges against another six lawful permanent residents in Los Angeles County who were accused of illegally registering to vote and voting — adding to a previous list of 28 lawful permanent residents charged with similar offenses statewide.

All 34 were drawn from the larger list of 20,000 voters federal authorities had flagged to state and local officials.

“Our goal is not to charge all 20,000 people,” Essayli said. “Our goal is to get California to not count the votes of non-citizens.”

He also said that federal authorities “obviously ... don’t have the ability, the resources, to go and arrest all 20,000 people,” so were “teaming up with our local law enforcement” and with local district attorneys in the state “who are going to take on some of these cases in their own communities.”

San Luis Obispo County Dist. Atty. Dan Dow stood alongside Essayli to announce the first criminal case he’d filed since receiving a federal list of 63 alleged noncitizen voters in his county: a felony complaint against a 31-year-old man charging him with voter registration fraud, perjury and fraudulent voting.

Dow, who has served as the district attorney since 2014, said his office had 16 more investigations that were “nearing a charging decision,” and that “election integrity is not a Republican or Democrat issue, it is an American issue and a California issue.”

On Tuesday, Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer also posted on X that election fraud in his county “will be prosecuted.”

Essayli said it was “very encouraging to have local law enforcement leaders stepping up to join us in this effort to protect our elections.”

The fight ahead

Elections experts said the lack of federal interference Tuesday didn’t mean the threat was never there — but that massive efforts to forestall such intervention worked.

“[T]he fact that there are no ICE (or other armed) federal agents at the polls and no federal takeover of elections is not because we are ‘lucky’ or our system is ‘strong,’” Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law, posted Tuesday. “[I]t took a ton of hard work from lawyers, election administrators and civil society.”

On Wednesday, Hasen said the Trump administration’s pressure campaign on California and its local elections officials didn’t work, thanks in part to the courts, and it’s unclear whether Essayli and others will continue to pursue cases against elections officials in the face of that — and of potentially waning interest from the president.

If cases against elections officials do persist, Hasen said California officials won’t be “cowed,” will fight in court and will win.

Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan said his office “will continue to respond to further inquiries or actions on the part of the United States Department of Justice in alignment with state and federal election law while ensuring the accuracy, transparency, and security of this election.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said the results of the election show Americans “are fed up with the Trump Administration’s baseless conspiracy theories — including its debunked claims of widespread voter fraud — and its relentless attacks on their rights, their freedoms, and the rule of law.”

If the administration “continues its attacks on California, we’re ready to keep fighting and defeating them in court, as we have time and again,” Bonta said.

The Sonoma County registrar’s office, for its part, said it was continuing to “evaluate” the subpoena it received over the weekend, and would “respond appropriately while remaining steadfast in our commitment to protecting the integrity of our elections and opposing unwarranted federal intervention.”

An attorney for Santa Clara County said it also was evaluating the subpoena, and “will respond appropriately while maintaining our opposition to federal overreach.”

Hasen said he expects Essayli and other federal prosecutors will continue prosecuting the cases they have already brought against alleged illegal voters, but it’s unclear if they will continue pursuing new cases. Essayli will probably follow Trump’s lead, as he often does, Hasen said — but should “get back to prosecuting real crime.”

Tears in court

Emotion ran high as some of the most recently charged voters appeared for the first time in federal court Monday. As one defendant appeared, shackled at the waist, a loved one cried from a couple rows back. When another who’d been shackled at the ankles was released, her family hugged her as she sobbed.

Moria Dahan, 35, an Israeli national living in West Hills, appeared shackled by the ankles, using a Hebrew interpreter and facing charges of making false statements on her naturalization application to become a U.S. citizen. Prosecutors alleged she illegally registered to vote, voted in 2024, and later falsely stated on naturalization papers, under penalty of perjury, that she had never claimed to be a U.S. citizen or registered to vote in the U.S.

Tiffany Feder, Dahan’s attorney, told reporters after the hearing that voter forms were mailed to Dahan’s home, and were confusing given her language barrier. “I don’t think she really knew what they were,” Feder said.

Feder said Dahan — who has since withdrawn her naturalization petition — “did not intend to defraud, or intend to conceal, or intend to falsify any kind of document. She didn’t know what she was filling out.”

“It’s not as black and white as it seems,” Feder said. “We need to not look at it in a vacuum and give these people the benefit of the doubt and question whether they really knew what they were filling out.”