{"id":74192,"date":"2025-07-17T12:32:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T19:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=74192"},"modified":"2025-07-28T12:32:56","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T19:32:56","slug":"padilla-durbin-welch-colleagues-condemn-dojs-baseless-voter-fraud-investigations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=74192","title":{"rendered":"Padilla, Durbin, Welch, Colleagues Condemn DOJ\u2019s Baseless Voter Fraud Investigations"},"content":{"rendered":"

On John Lewis National Day of Action, Senators request access to Civil Rights Division Memo that changes mission statement to investigating voter fraud<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Senators: \u201cTaken together, the Department is clearly pursuing an anti-voter, partisan agenda aligned with 2020 election deniers and conspiracy theorists\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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WASHINGTON, D.C.<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 Today, on John Lewis National Day of Action, U.S. Senators Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) led 13 Senators in\u00a0raising the alarm<\/a>\u00a0on the Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division\u2019s policy shift to focus on unsubstantiated voter fraud investigations. The Senators pushed Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon to share the recent staff memorandum reportedly changing the mission statement of the Civil Rights Division Voting Section away from defending voting rights. The Department of Justice has repeatedly refused Ranking Member Padilla\u2019s oversight requests to access this memo.<\/p>\n

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The letter comes as the DOJ\u2019s Voting Section made a\u00a0sweeping request asking Colorado<\/a>\u00a0to provide all 2024 federal election records and maintain any remaining 2020 election records, in addition to\u00a0seeking voter rolls<\/a>\u00a0from at least nine other states. The Voting Section is also pursuing cases in Arizona, Wisconsin, and North Carolina based on baseless claims of election irregularities or fraud. They also criticized the Voting Section for abandoning efforts to protect voting rights, including\u00a0dropping its lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0challenging Georgia\u2019s Senate Bill 202,\u00a0withdrawing<\/a>\u00a0its claims in redistricting cases in Texas, and revoking its requests to orally argue before the Supreme Court for Louisiana redistricting cases.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe write out of grave concern for the reported changes to the mission and work of the Civil Rights Division\u2019s Voting Section, which appear to redirect the Section\u2019s focus towards the extremely rare instances of voter fraud and noncitizen voting. Since its creation by the\u00a0Civil Rights Act of 1957<\/em>, the Division has been charged with enforcing the civil and criminal provisions of federal laws that protect the civil rights of Americans, including the right to vote,\u201d\u00a0wrote the Senators.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201cTaken together, the Department is clearly pursuing an anti-voter, partisan agenda aligned with 2020 election deniers and conspiracy theorists. We urge you to change course and take a nonpartisan approach to protecting voters\u2019 rights that is grounded in facts and the law, not unfounded speculation and conspiracy theories,\u201d\u00a0continued the Senators.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The Senators also expressed concern about the reduction of lawyers in the Voting Section as well as the appointment of Acting Chief Maureen Riordan, a former line attorney in the Section, who has been associated with election skeptics and worked for the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a leading anti-voting legal group. Riordan has appeared on \u201cStop the Steal\u201d architect Cleta Mitchell\u2019s podcast and made accusations of political bias in the Voting Section, while voicing her disagreement with the Section\u2019s pursuit of cases aimed at protecting voting rights and access to the ballot box for racial minorities.<\/p>\n

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Additionally, they highlighted the DOJ\u2019s attacks against election officials, wasting limited resources to examine how existing laws could be used to criminally charge state and local election officials.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis clear attempt to intimidate these hardworking individuals, whose work holds up our democracy will not go unchallenged,\u201d\u00a0added the Senators.<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cThe Department must abandon this effort and instead focus on working on actual problems facing election officials, which includes protecting these officials from the ongoing threats and harassment.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In addition to Senators Padilla, Durbin, and Welch, the letter was also signed by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Angus King (I-Maine), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).<\/p>\n

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Earlier this year, Padilla and his Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee colleagues\u00a0demanded answers<\/a>\u00a0from the DOJ concerning the Trump Administration\u2019s efforts to dismantle the Department\u2019s Civil Rights Division. The Senators separately called for Senator Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, to immediately hold an oversight hearing with Assistant Attorney General Harmeet\u00a0Dhillon, a San Francisco-based lawyer leading the DOJ\u2019s Civil Rights Division, on its politicization. During her Senate Judiciary Committee nomination hearing in February, Senator Padilla\u00a0criticized\u00a0Dhillon<\/a>\u00a0for her alarming track record of restricting the right to vote, spreading disinformation about the 2020 election, and perpetuating discriminatory laws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On John Lewis National Day of...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74193,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74192\/revisions\/74193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}