Democrat politicians and officials always believe, unfortunately because it almost always is true in practice though not in principle, that they are above the law. But a United States attorney is reminding California Democrats that if they think they are above election laws, he is happy to give them a reality check.
It happens to be against federal law to process a ballot which you know or strongly suspect belongs to a noncitizen. Therefore, every California politician and official involved in approving and processing noncitizen ballots could be held liable under the law.
The Trump administration meticulously combed through all the California election records they could access, despite aggressive interference from Democrats in charge of the state. The feds identified at least 20,000 noncitizens on the rolls who are already receiving a ballot for voting this year. Again, it is possible that other noncitizens are voting; these are just the noncitizens who already are getting ballots. But Democrats are panicked about the popularity of Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, and determined not to lose their grip on power in California, so of course they have absolutely no intention of stopping the fraud.
This is the methodology behind our list of 20,000+ likely noncitizen registrants in California: data cleaning, identity matching, removal of citizens and deceased individuals, manual USCIS review, supervisory sign-off, and law-enforcement screening. Sworn declarations in today's TRO filing detail each step.
— F.A. United States Attorney Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli) October 19, 2026
The San Francisco Chronicle’s Sara Libby talked about the Trump administration contacting registrars and warning them in California as if somehow the federal government had no jurisdiction and was shockingly harassing innocent individuals.
BREAKING: In an escalation from the DOJ, prosecutors sent demand letters to individual registrars across California, giving them 48 hours to sequester the ballots of suspected noncitizen voters. https://t.co/p2gbXZ4757
— Sara Libby (@SaraLibby) October 23, 2026
Related: Watch: Pro-Katie Hobbs Canvassers Are Willing to Let Noncitizens, Felons Vote
This, of course, is pure bias framing, as Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli explained. “It's simple. California does not verify citizenship status,” Essayli posted Friday. “We did the work for them. We obtained the registered voter list and told them who we believe are noncitizens on their rolls. Knowingly processing noncitizen ballots is a federal crime under 18 U.S.C. §§ 611 and 2. We will hold election officials accountable. No one is above the law.”
Democrats such as California Attorney General Rob Bonta have been all over the media and social media, claiming over and over that actually there was no evidence of noncitizens voting, because the noncitizens said they were citizens and that should be the end of the story. Los Angeles did admit, apparently without realizing how damaging this was, that it has no independent way of verifying the citizenship of its registered voters. And by simply ignoring all of the detailed explanations the feds have released to the public about how they identify the noncitizens, Democrats have been able to say blithely that they have no evidence to support the Trump administration’s demands. It is amazing what evidence you don’t see if you refuse to look.