Federal authorities are investigating cases of alleged voting fraud in California, a day after President Donald Trump alleged Democrats were cheating in California’s primary, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said Friday.
Trump did not cite specific instances of alleged voting fraud in a television interview, but his Department of Justice’s top prosecutor for the Southern California region outlined several areas of possible election law violations.
“California’s election system has serious structural vulnerabilities,” Essayli wrote in a social media post Friday morning. “Universal vote-by-mail with no voter ID requirements creates conditions where fraud can go undetected and unpunished, eroding public confidence. Without commenting on any specific investigation, my office has multiple election fraud investigations underway in coordination with (the FBI). We will follow the evidence wherever it leads and prosecute any violations of federal election law to the fullest extent.”
On Sunday, Essayli said California was “blocking” a federal audit of the state’s voter rolls.
“California allows first-time voters to register using forms of ID that most Americans would find surprising, including: Gym membership card, employer ID card, credit or debit card, prescription drug label, insurance card (California provides free health coverage to undocumented immigrants),” Essayli wrote in a post on X.
“This is permitted when a voter fails to provide a Social Security number or driver’s license at registration. Our office believes this policy deserves a closer look,” he continued. “We also have serious concerns about how California maintains its voter rolls. There are open questions about whether the state is promptly removing deceased voters, people who have moved and individuals convicted of disqualifying felonies.
“On top of that, California allows third parties to collect and turn in ballots on voters’ behalf (a practice known as ballot harvesting) with few restrictions. This makes it difficult to track who actually received, completed, and submitted each ballot,” Essayli wrote.
“For over a year, the Department of Justice has been trying to audit California’s voter rolls. Federal law gives the attorney general the authority to review state voter files and confirm that only eligible U.S. citizens are voting in federal elections. …
“California refused to comply, claiming state privacy laws block the review, an argument that does not hold up because those laws don’t apply to the federal government in this context,” according to Essayli. “We’ve sued California in federal court, and the case is before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
“If California genuinely wants voters to trust its elections, it should open its records, not fight to keep them closed,” he wrote. “What are they afraid of?”
Essayli asked witnesses of potential election fraud to email tips to CAElectionFraudTips@usdoj.gov.
The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The agency confirmed to City News Service that an official from the U.S. Attorney’s Office inspected the county’s main facility for vote processing on Friday.
“Our office was notified late Thursday that the U.S. Attorney’s Office would be sending an Assistant U.S. attorney to the Ballot Processing Center to observe ballot processing activities,” the Registrar’s Office told CNS. “The individual arrived Friday morning, was provided an overview of the public observation program, and participated in a walk-through of the ballot processing operations.
“Ballot processing in Los Angeles County is open to public observation, and election officials routinely host observers representing a wide range of interests, including members of the public, candidates, political parties, advocacy organizations and government agencies,” the statement concluded.
Trump discussed California’s alleged voting irregularities again Sunday, this time in a contentious discussion with journalist Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” When she pressed him for evidence of vote fraud, Trump said “all I have to do is look. … Do you think it’s appropriate that they have an election, and five days later they’re nowhere close to picking (a winner)?”
The president then ended the interview.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said Thursday that residents should expect continued updates in vote totals from Tuesday’s election as outstanding ballots are counted. She noted that California law allows county election officials up to 30 days to complete the official canvass and process eligible ballots that remain outstanding.
Assembly Bill 5, which took effect this year, requires counties to tally and report most ballots by June 15. Ballots exempt from that deadline include provisional, conditional voter registration, signature cure, ballots requiring duplication, ballots forwarded from other counties and some late-arriving vote-by-mail submissions, according to Weber.
Results of the June 2 Los Angeles mayor’s race will be certified June 26, with daily vote updates throughout this week.
Election officials from counties must submit final results to the Secretary of State’s Office by July 3, with certification set for July 10.
LA County woman to plead guilty to paying Skid Row residents to vote
A woman who was a signature collector for ballot initiatives for two decades was expected to plead guilty Monday to paying unhoused people in Los Angeles’ Skid Row and elsewhere to register to vote.
Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, of Marina del Rey, also known as “Anika,” has agreed to enter a plea to one count of paying another person to register to vote, a federal charge that carries a penalty of up to five years behind bars.
According to her plea agreement, for nearly 20 years, Armstrong periodically worked as a “petition circulator” and paid Skid Row residents $2 or $3 for voter registration. Armstrong was paid by coordinators to collect voter signatures on official petitions that qualify initiatives, referendums and recalls for California state ballots. Prosecutors said Armstrong traveled throughout the LA area in search of registered voters to sign the petitions.
After gathering signatures Armstrong returned the petitions to coordinators, who paid her a set amount for each registered voter’s signature. The amount of pay she received was based on the specific ballot initiative and the group coordinating it. Because coordinators only paid for signatures attributable to registered voters, Armstrong endeavored to ensure the people who signed her petitions were registered voters, according to court documents.
Armstrong admitted soliciting signatures in Skid Row, a convenient place to collect signatures because of the large number of people in a relatively small area willing to sign petitions in exchange for cash.
Armstrong regularly paid $2 to $3 as incentive for people to sign her petitions, prosecutors said.
Some people experiencing homelessness did not have an address to put on the forms, so occasionally Armstrong provided her own former address in LA to include on the registration form. Such forms simultaneously registered a person to vote in state and federal elections.
“This is not an allegation, this is not a theory, this is an example of admitted voter fraud,” Essayli said when Armstrong was charged. “We’re going to aggressively prosecute voter fraud.”
A video shot by conservative media figure James O’Keefe and reposted by an account called “Real America’s Voice” shows a woman handing cash to a homeless person. In a post on social media, O’Keefe said his video led to Armstrong being charged.
Essayli said previously that Armstrong’s arrest coincided with arguments in the Justice Department’s appeal of the dismissal of a lawsuit over voter registration records.
The DOJ sued California Secretary of State Shirley Weber last year, demanding the state hand over the unredacted voter file with registered voters’ full names, residential addresses, driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of Social Security numbers.
The lawsuit for California’s voter information claimed the federal government had the right to access the data under legal authority granted by the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act.
In January, a Santa Ana federal judge dismissed the case after finding that the DOJ’s request for the voter data violates federal privacy laws. The state’s defense also included the argument that the Trump administration wants to use the information to help enforce its aggressive immigration policy.
Justice Department attorneys have appealed the dismissal, sending the case to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena.
