The Department of Justice‘s Civil Rights Division has demanded that officials in a Michigan county hand over all ballots from the 2024 election, according to a letter first made public on Sunday.
In the letter, which is dated April 14, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon wrote to Wayne County clerk Cathy Garrett requesting “all ballots (including absentee and provisional), ballot receipts, and ballot envelopes” from 2024.
Dhillon cited a litany of instances of alleged voter fraud in the county, which includes Detroit and is the most populous in the state, in 2020 as the reason for the request. She said the goal is “ensuring that the foregoing federal election laws were not violated in the November 2024 federal election.”
Wayne County has two weeks to comply, giving them until April 28 to hand over the ballots. But state officials are showing no sign of following through.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson blasted the demand in an op-ed on Sunday, claiming “it’s about a weaponized DOJ trying to please a president who doesn’t want to be held accountable at the ballot box by voters tired of the chaos of his administration.”
“It’s not going to work with us, and it’s not going to hold up in court,” they wrote of the DOJ’s action.
The request from the DOJ is the latest instance of the Trump administration scrutinizing federal elections. Officials have previously seized seized ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, and voting machines in Puerto Rico.
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But those were all part of a larger investigation into the 2020 election, a fixation of President Donald Trump’s and one that he has repeatedly claimed was “stolen” from him.
The pivot to the 2024 race, where Trump won resoundingly, appears to be new and comes just months before the crucial midterm elections.