Posted on 10/18/2026 7:51:51 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Trump administration lays groundwork to challenge unfavorable midterm results.
First came the letter from acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter — just three weeks before the Nov. 3 election — demanding that Los Angeles County’s top election official launch a sweeping investigation into thousands of voters the Trump administration alleges are “likely noncitizens” and withhold their ballots in the meantime.
The letter arrived with a thumb drive purporting to contain the list of voters in question, and a handwritten note providing the password. Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office, said accessing the device would break security protocols, and he wouldn’t open it.
Then came an Excel spreadsheet, listing some 20,000 voters by name, date of birth and address. It appeared to include voters from across California, not just L.A. County, and provided no information on the Trump administration’s methodology for questioning those voters. Logan’s office again pushed back.
“We cannot withhold or refuse to count ballots based solely on unverified allegations, nor can we disregard the legal requirements governing our election — and we certainly have no authority to act on records that are outside of our jurisdiction,” Logan said.
On Friday, the back and forth escalated yet again, when the Justice Department warned in a letter to L.A. County attorneys that county election officials who tabulate ballots from the flagged voters could face criminal prosecution for being “aiders and abettors to a federal crime.”
For the last week, Trump administration officials and California election leaders have been locked in a fiercely contentious standoff over alleged election fraud that independent election experts say is like nothing they have seen before.
First came the letter from acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter — just three weeks before the Nov. 3 election — demanding that Los...
(Excerpt) Read more at enewspaper.latimes.com ...
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Preemptive election-denial.
It's about time.
WTH? A HANDWRITTEN NOTE with the password? I would be VERY leary myself of getting a letter, a thumb drive and a handwritten password. Why couldn't the US Attorney in LA personally deliver it to assure security?
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I bet that I could cross-check that list on the thumb drive with the government database of citizens and do it in under an hour.
Find a data point to use as a match field for both databases and search for anything that has no match.
If they aren’t citizens, there will be no match. What the hell is so hard about that?
Access to the government database.
The Federal government cannot remove the voters from the rolls, the State must do the investigation themselves and remove them, correct?
This issue isn't access to that Federal Database, if I understand it correctly. I believe that would be freely given by the Federal government. That is what I believe they want them to do.
It is that the state is just refusing to investigate to buy time to cheat, and trying to buy the time, stalling the Feds by asking them how they know this list of 20,000 people is something to be investigated.
Right? Am I reading this correctly?
They know the election is coming up, and want to get one more round of electoral cheating under their belts to try to maintain their grip on power. If they force a lawsuit by the DOJ, it won't get resolved before the election.
This was their entire plan in 2020. They knew they could engage in election fraud, and once the election is held, the clocks all start ticking, and they are just stalling.
I thought it would be clear I meant the state’s database.
Ah. Okay. Thanks for the clarification. Even more so, the State is the one that must clean them up.
I see it as a stalling tactic by the State that wishes to engage in illegality.
“We cannot withhold or refuse to count ballots based solely on unverified allegations, nor can we disregard the legal requirements governing our election — and we certainly have no authority to act on records that are outside of our jurisdiction,” Logan said.
He is right. However allegations by their very nature are unverified. Trump and the administration will be stopped by the court if it looks like he is on a fishing expedition. That is why it is so important there is a final favorable ruling to use an expanded federal database containing citizenship information. The SCOTUS ruled Trump could continue using it while the case made its way through the lower courts.
Maybe because he is a keystone cop like Bondi and Patel.
Accessing the thumb drive would break security protocol?
Seems a few reports of election places doing things with machines prior to elections when they shouldn’t, but that’s ok?
County election officials willfully invalidating the election results.
> The SCOTUS ruled Trump could continue using it while the case made its way through the lower courts.<
SCOTUS also let stand the part of the EO that reminded government and election officials that they would be held criminally liable for an illegal that votes.
The admin is giving these people every inch of rope possible to let them hang themselves.
EC
Ye shall know them by their fruits.
Deep State keeps telling us who and what they are.
Believe them when they tell us.
8 USC 1324, Lock them up!!!
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