Trump pursues last-ditch hunt for voter fraud

The Trump administration says Americans should prepare between now and Election Day for a wave of new arrests and prosecutions over alleged non-citizen voter fraud. Why it matters: The Trump administration is deploying hundreds of federal investigators and attorneys to pursue President Trump's long-running fixation — and test a broader Republican claim that tougher enforcement will uncover far more illegal voting. "This initiative is a tier one priority," a Justice Department official told reporters on Tuesday. "It's a top priority for the attorney general and for the White House." The big picture: Across the country, there are now 1,600 open cases of potential voter fraud and 160 people have been arrested, a Homeland Security Investigations official said Tuesday. HSI agents have been requesting and combing through publicly available voter data to find cases of non-citizens registering to vote or voting when they're ineligible. The FBI has been working on these cases too. DOJ has charged 24 immigrants this calendar year following the prioritization, according to agency press releases. The accused are a mixture of undocumented immigrations and legal residents. The number of prosecutions will "rise significantly each week going forward from now until the election," the DOJ official said. Zoom in: To support these investigations, which the HSI official called agent-time intensive, Homeland Security staff have shifted work time from other priorities. HSI agents typically investigate smuggling, trafficking, financial fraud and sexual exploitation crimes. The intrigue: Staff usually focused on finding immigration fraud at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the office for legal immigration, have also been tasked with searching for possible non-citizens registered in state voter files. This staff sent referrals to HSI to investigate, according to the New York Times, and flagged the potential non-citizens by the thousands to state election officials. For three weeks, the fraud team was tasked with reviewing voter files and not allowed to do other work, a person familiar with the agency's work told Axios. The other side: Instances of mistaken registrations and cases of non-citizen voting are rare, but they've long been investigated by the federal government. The extent of this administration's efforts to prioritize searching for these cases is novel for the federal government and the local election officials involved. "It's not typical and it's not appropriate," a former senior Justice Department official told Axios in July. Between the lines: New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherril revealed in July that 6,600 non-citizens were registered to vote through a software error. The DOJ official said there are also similar system errors registering people who aren't intending to register in other states. But they declined to say whether any government officials or vendors responsible for these errors would be held responsible as individual voters now are. The bottom line: "These investigations and these indictments are a major deterrent for this election" against illegal voting, Mike Davis, founder of the Article III Project, a legal affairs-focused nonprofit closely aligned with the president. "There's a new sheriff in town: His name is Donald Trump, and if illegals vote in our elections, they will be prosecuted and deported."

Read it at Axios ↗

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