In the run-up to the 2024 election, Donald Trump complained that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s detailed overview of the evidence against him in the January 6 case constituted “Election Interference.” The Department of Justice had a policy of not taking any potentially influential action so soon before an election, Trump rightly noted in a social-media post, and Smith, Trump argued more debatably, had just violated those rules.
Trump seems a great deal less worried about DOJ’s propriety now. Over just the past few weeks, DOJ has sued multiple states challenging their election processes, charged more than 100 people with alleged voter fraud, and launched a barrage of criminal charges and investigations against Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar, former FBI Director James Comey, and other figures hated by MAGA. Smith’s 2024 preelection filing was not actually election interference—but these last-minute schemes certainly seem to fit that description.
DOJ began its election offensive months ago, pressuring states to hand over sensitive voter information. So far, this effort has failed utterly in court: Every one of the more than two dozen courts that hav ruled on the issue has rejected the Justice Department’s argument. DOJ, though, had other ideas. In mid-October, the department sued California and Alaska over their election-administration decisions. California, DOJ argued, risked sending out mail ballots to as many as 20,000 potential noncitizens who might illegally vote; Alaska, the department claimed, risked confusing voters by allowing the Independent Senate candidate Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. to appear on the ballot alongside Republican Senator Daniel S. Sullivan. (The New York Times reported this past week that Democratic operatives had been involved in encouraging Daniel J. Sullivan to run.) At first, DOJ asked the court to block certification of the Alaska Senate race if Senator Sullivan loses, but it later requested that Alaska somehow set apart ballots cast for either Sullivan. Never mind that the federal government had no obvious authority to bring either the California or the Alaska lawsuit; that the department was suing at the last minute; that other states had already shown DOJ’s tally of supposed noncitizen voters to be unreliable; that there is no feasible way for California or Alaska to segregate particular ballots; or that the Alaska Supreme Court had already considered, and rejected, arguments against allowing the other Daniel Sullivan on the ballot.
“I’m the one that said do it,” Trump told reporters of the Alaska lawsuit. After the Times’ reporting about Democratic involvement in Daniel J. Sullivan’s campaign, Trump posted that the party had engaged in “VOTER FRAUD” and wrote that the Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola should not be allowed to run. Despite Trump’s suggestion, however, the development does not affect DOJ’s lawsuit in the state. Even accepting DOJ’s suggestion that it can sue over potential voter confusion regarding the two Daniel Sullivans, the election-law expert Rick Hasen writes, the question of “why voters might face confusion over the two Dan Sullivans” is “irrelevant” to that of whether the confusion itself is legally actionable.
Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska dismissed DOJ’s lawsuit on the grounds that the Justice Department “provides no workable plan” for how election officials could segregate ballots for Daniel J. Sullivan “in a manner that would preserve voter secrecy.” The government has indicated that it plans to appeal.
[Paul Rosenzweig: Using the power of the government to win elections]
DOJ has likewise encountered legal setbacks in California. On October 28, Judge David Carter of the Central District of California rejected the Justice Department’s request to segregate ballots from supposed noncitizens in the state. Twice, an appeals court has refused to force California to comply. Rather than backing down, though, DOJ sent out grand-jury subpoenas to California election officials, raising the prospect of criminal prosecutions. (In an additional twist, a judge ruled this week that the lead federal prosecutor apparently conducting the investigation was illegally serving in the role, although that order has been stayed to allow DOJ to appeal.) State election officials across the country received letters from DOJ warning them of potential criminal liability for violating election law, Votebeat reported on Friday. And more civil lawsuits may be coming. Last week, DOJ wrote to Washington State authorities claiming that it had identified 400 alleged noncitizens registered to vote in the state—which might indicate a windup to a case against Washington as well.
Along with badgering states about their voter rolls, DOJ has sought to combat supposed noncitizen voting through criminal charges against the voters themselves. A recent Washington Post analysis found that DOJ has charged 180 people with illegal voting since January 2025, and 130 of those cases have been filed since September 2026. In mid-October, federal authorities in California conducted dramatic arrests of 28 people on charges relating to allegedly voting or registering to vote illegally. On Thursday, DOJ posted photographs of handcuffed defendants in similar illegal voting cases in North Carolina, their faces blurred.
The actual numbers of supposed unlawful votes are minuscule compared with the total number of votes cast in those states—consistent with expert estimates that illegal voting is extraordinarily rare and does not sway election results. Analysts with the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, however, suggest that this cascade of news from DOJ about alleged noncitizen voting reflects “a larger strategy of creating an attention-grabbing spectacle to foster a false perception of widespread fraud ahead of the midterm elections.” This might be a useful way to understand the California and Alaska lawsuits too. Even if DOJ does not win in court, it can seed the idea among Trump’s supporters that the election results can’t be trusted, whether because of illegal votes or Democratic trickery.
[From the October 2026 issue: The election deniers’ long game]
And then there are the attacks on Trump’s enemies. On October 12, federal agents searched the home of Omar, who is up for reelection Tuesday—reportedly as part of an investigation into alleged immigration fraud regarding her naturalization as a citizen after her family moved to the U.S. from Somalia. On October 22, DOJ announced an indictment of Louise Lucas, a Democratic state senator in Virginia, on charges related to her family’s cannabis business. (The investigation of Lucas reportedly began under the Biden administration, but Justice Department alumni have raised questions about the decision to bring a criminal case weeks before Election Day.) The next day, DOJ unveiled opaque and procedurally bizarre charges against two former FBI officials over allegations that they had lied to Congress during 2023 testimony. In court hearings this week overseen by Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui, an FBI agent who signed off on the charges acknowledged that he had received direct pressure from agency leadership to move forward with the case, which some in his office viewed as a “witch hunt,” he said.
At those hearings, another DOJ official stopped by to notify Faruqui that the department had failed to secure an indictment in another case—which turned out to be an attempted prosecution of Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump White House aide who testified before the House January 6 Committee. This past week also saw a third attempt by DOJ to charge Comey, this time over an alleged leak to The New York Times in 2016. This prosecution is likely to be short-lived, simply because the incident in question happened too long ago. DOJ took a shortcut to charging Comey first, without securing an indictment from a grand jury, and the statute of limitations has arguably already expired.
These investigations and prosecutions don’t directly affect the mechanics of elections. But, like DOJ’s other actions, they provide grist for MAGA influencers online—in this instance, to remind them of their vendettas against the Democrats and the deep state, and perhaps to encourage them to turn out to vote for Republicans. “This crackdown on the weaponization of government is ongoing right now,” Dan Bongino, the podcaster and former FBI co–deputy director, said last week on his show. He went on, mockingly, “If you want this fraud, political violence, and political weaponization to continue, vote blue. The Democrats are for you.” DOJ’s activity might also frighten people and dissuade them from turning out to vote: The presence of DOJ poll monitors, a normal part of the government’s election-season work, has raised anxieties among election officials because of the department’s politicization.
Attorney General Todd Blanche has heatedly rejected the suggestion that DOJ might be seeking to place a finger on the scale of the upcoming election. “That is crazy,” he scoffed on CNN when asked by Dana Bash whether the Justice Department was “laying the groundwork” for “a situation where President Trump tries to overturn the election.” But in a podcast interview earlier this month with the conservative New York Post columnist Miranda Devine, Blanche dismissed what he termed the “lie” of DOJ independence. “I work for President Trump,” he said. The department’s recent actions leave little doubt as to which of these statements to believe.
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