Two of Michigan’s top officials, Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, both Democrats, fired back at the Justice Department after the DOJ expanded its baseless investigation of past elections into Michigan.
Last week, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon — who is also reportedly eyeing the open attorney general gig — sent a letter to Wayne County Clerk, Cathy Garrett, claiming there “have been a number of recorded allegations and convictions in Wayne County of election fraud.” She then demanded that Garrett hand over 2024 ballots, including absentee and provisional ballots, as well as receipts and envelopes “for the purpose of ensuring that the foregoing federal election laws were not violated in the November 2024 federal election.”
The demand for 2024 voting records marks yet another escalation in the DOJ’s ongoing effort to access sensitive voter information ahead of the midterms. For months now, the DOJ has been trying to get its hands on sensitive voter roll data, including drivers license numbers and Social Security numbers, from at least 44 states and Washington, D.C.
Alongside this campaign to access voter information from the states, the DOJ has also seized voter data and voting records in counties that became hotbeds for MAGA’s 2020 election conspiracy theories — Fulton County, Georgia, and Maricopa County, Arizona. It all appears to part of an effort by Trump administration officials to work with the DOJ to try to reverse engineer evidence of voter fraud for a president who believes he won an election he lost — and that multiple legal challenges and investigations by his previous attorney general showed he lost.
The DOJ has demanded records related to the 2020 election in both Fulton County and Maricopa County. And because Wayne County, the most populous county in Michigan, has also been ground zero for election disinformation, it’s no surprise that it is now being targeted.
While there has not been any indication that any wrongdoing has been uncovered as part of this Trump administration effort to sow distrust in how key counties administer their elections, FBI Director Kash Patel said on Sunday during an interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that the DOJ would soon be making arrests related to the 2020 election.
“We’re working with our prosecutors, the Department of Justice, and the Attorney General Todd Blanche, and we are going to be making arrests, and it’s coming, and I promise you, it’s coming soon,” he said.
Although Dhillon’s demands relate to the 2024 election, they are based on long-debunked election conspiracy theories from 2020.
In an op-ed for the Detroit Free Press on Sunday publicly responding to Dhillon’s letter, Nessel and Benson described the effort as “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 also about the upcoming elections in November and in 2028, which he is working to discredit by sowing doubt as to the security and fairness of the process,” they wrote.
Nessel and Benson also fact-checked parts of Dhillon’s letter, in which she cites supposed instances of 2020 election fraud. The cases Dhillon cites in the letter were dismissed in court.
“… Michigan courts have already rejected the stale fraud claims cited in the DOJ’s letter. The court dismissed the lawsuit referenced in the letter challenging the 2020 election, calling the allegations ‘incorrect and not credible,’” they wrote.
“This is how President Donald Trump tries to get his way – by targeting law firms, universities or local clerks, demanding that federal law enforcement issue outrageous, unlawful demands to strongarm his opponents into submission,” they continued.
Nessel also sent a response letter to Dhillon directly on April 17.
“Your letter is premised on rejected claims and stale allegations unconnected to Wayne County’s November 2024 election,” Nessel said. “…a federal investigation of Detroit or Wayne County, like others the DOJ pursued recently, would be a misuse of resources and an unwanted intrusion into Michigan elections.”
