By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
PHOENIX -- A top official at the U.S. Department of Justice is threatening to prosecute election workers in Arizona who knowingly leave noncitizens on voter rolls or facilitates them receiving and casting ballots.
In a letter Tuesday, Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the agency's Civil Rights Division, told Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes that federal law "obviously makes it unlawful for noncitizens to vote in federal elections.'' But she warned that criminal liability does not in there.
"State election officers, including the chief election officer of the state, could be criminally prosecuted'' for aiding and abetting violations of various federal laws, like letting aliens falsely and willfully represent themselves as citizens, as well as actually voting in federal races.
And if that's not enough, Dhillon said that election officials also could be prosecuted under laws that make it illegal for two or more persons conspire to dilute the votes of others, meaning U.S. citizens.
Fontes, in a prepared statement, called it "insulting'' for Dhillon to say that election workers in county recorders' offices are not doing their jobs correctly. He called them "everyday Arizonans who spend their time making sure that our elections are accurate and run smoothly'' and that they are "not only the backbone of Arizona's election system but also of democracy.''
It isn't just Fontes -- and Democrats like he is -- who got a letter Tuesday from Dhillon.
Election officials in other states also have been targeted.
"Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,'' Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson posted on Threads. She is a Republican.
"I'm sure I'm not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ's demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts,'' she posted. "This is truly bizarre behavior by the federal agency that is supposed to be protecting civil rights.''
And Capitol Media Services has been able to determine that a letters to Jocelyn Benson of Michigan and Shenna Bellows of Maine, both Democrats, are virtually identical to the one that went to Fontes.
Dhillon does not allege that her office has any actual evidence that Fontes or various Arizona election officials actually have violated any federal laws. And Fontes has said Arizona has some of the strongest election laws in the country, including not just proof of citizenship but checking voter registration rolls against various state and federal databases "where authorized by law.''
But the letters do not exist in a vacuum.
The move comes as President Trump is one again raising unsupported accusations that those not here legally have affected prior elections and could affect the upcoming congressional races where he is trying to maintain and possibly increase the Republican control of the House and Senate.
And having the Department of Justice fire warning shots at state and local election officials through the mailings avoids legal challenges that have been made -- often successfully -- to the president's efforts to impose restrictions he said will protect against noncitizen voting.
Last week a federal judge blocked the Postal Service from implementing the president's executive order that it only transmit ballots for states that have first submitted a list of their mail-in voters to the agency. U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan said that would block access to voting simply because a state "declines or fails to certify a list.''
And that came weeks after another federal judge blocked the administration from overhauling the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database to make it easier for states to use it to compare to their voter registration rolls. U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan said there are problems with the SAVE database, saying federal officials "haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable.''
That ruling resulted in an announcement by Arizona Republican Congressman Abe Hamadeh that he will file articles of impeachment to remove Sooknanan from the bench.
"Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan's egregious overreach ruling blocking President Trump's common-sense effort to verify the citizenship of those who want to vote in our elections was the final straw,'' Hamadeh wrote on his congressional X account.
All this also comes against a backdrop of the Department of Justice demanding -- and largely not succeeding -- in demanding that states turn over their unredacted voter registration lists. Federal judges in 11 states, including Arizona, have ruled that the agency is not entitled to that information.
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On X, Bluesky, and Threads: @azcapmedia