President Donald Trump is reportedly leaning on prosecutors to bring cases against noncitizens accused of illegally voting, even though such offenses are extremely rare.
A top Justice Department official reportedly said it was “crystal clear” the more than 90 open investigations into such offenses were a top priority for the administration, The New York Times reports.
The push reportedly came from Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh during a May 13 conference call with dozens of prosecutors around the country, according to the paper.
The Independent has contacted the DOJ for comment.
The administration has repeatedly called for a crackdown on voting by noncitizens, which evidence suggests is extremely rare.
A recent federal review of about 49.5 million voter registrations found no evidence of widespread voting fraud by noncitizens and only referred about 10,000 cases to Homeland Security Investigations for further inspection.
Nonetheless, the president and his allies regularly describe noncitizen voting as both widespread and an existential threat to election integrity, often echoing a racist conspiracy theory that Democrats and other elites are intentionally fostering illegal immigration to boost their chances in elections.
In a Truth Social post on Thursday, the president accused Democrats without evidence of “stealing the Vote” and urged Republicans to pass the Save America Act, legislation that would impose stringent new proof of citizenship requirements for voters.
The Justice Department has also sued states seeking detailed access to their voting records.
The president has also pushed to largely end mail-in voting altogether, which he often baselessly accuses of being fraudulent, even though he himself votes by mail.
The Republican often links his claims about illegal immigration to his conspiracy theories about voting, and he has refused to rule out having troops or ICE agents stationed outside of polling places this midterm season, framing the move as important for election integrity, though critics say this could lead to intimidation of legal voters.
Beyond the voter ID fight, the administration has pushed its Republican allies to pursue unusual mid-decade redistricting ahead of the midterms in an effort to create more GOP seats.
The campaign has set off a nationwide redistricting war as red and blue states alike seek to rewrite their maps before November.
The conservative majority on the Supreme Court recently gave the Republicans a boost with a decision that gutted what remains of the landmark Voting Rights Act and rejected a Louisiana election map that created a majority-Black voting district likely to go for the Democrats.
