After facing a series of setbacks and outright dismissals in its legal battle to try to seize sensitive voter data from multiple states throughout the country, the Justice Department is asking courts in 13 states for permission for a redo.
For months now the Justice Department has been engaging in an overreach campaign, demanding sensitive voter information — including drivers licenses and social security numbers — from at least 44 states and Washington D.C. be turned over to the Trump DOJ. As justification for this unprecedented demand, the Justice Department has been citing provisions from the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (CRA). These statues do not give the federal government the authority to demand this type of protected information without any basis, though, as experts have told TPM.
The majority of these states have refused to comply and the Justice Department has sued 30 states to try to access the data — both Democratic and Republican-led states, with Republican and Democratic election officials, alike. But, in recent months, the DOJ has been hit with a series of losses in court, with judges repeatedly pointing out that the federal government simply does not have a right to this type of information without presenting evidence to show a state has not been complying with federal voting laws.
So far, the Trump administration’s voter data campaign has faced six losses in court, and no wins. Federal judges have dismissed cases in Oregon, California, Michigan, Massachusetts, and most recently as of Friday, in Rhode Island. A federal judge also dismissed a case in Georgia in January because the DOJ filed the lawsuit in the wrong city.
This series of failures led Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon to file nearly-identical notices in 13 states, asking federal courts for permission to send out new demand letters to the states’ election officials.
“…the United States requests that the Court provide leave for the United States to send Defendant a curing elaboration letter rather than dismiss on the merits to avoid unnecessary delay in resolution of the underlying legal issues,” Dhillon wrote in one of the notices this week.
Former President Barack Obama-appointed District Court Judge Leo Sorokin who dismissed the DOJ’s lawsuit against Massachusetts, emphasized in his opinion that the Trump administration had no basis for its lawsuit, calling its argument “facially deficient.”
“The United States’ complaint fails for the simple reason that the Attorney General’s demand did not comply with Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the statute on which it purports to rely,” he wrote.
“The Attorney General’s demand for the Massachusetts statewide voter registration list was facially deficient. It failed to satisfy a simple requirement imposed by Congress as one precondition to obtaining documents under the authority of the Civil Rights Act of 1960,” the order says.
“Mulligans work in golf,” Trump regime lawyers argue.
Why not here? “It’ll look less illegal if we add legal stuff to our verbiage,” Todd Blanche said with a smirk and wink.
“Fascism is a word my neighbors won’t use yet. They are following the law, they say, and the sirens are coming for someone else.” ― Charles Rafferty