Newsmax: The Trump administration is putting new emphasis on investigating alleged voter fraud with the midterm elections just weeks away, deploying hundreds of federal investigators and attorneys while warning that arrests and prosecutions will increase in the final weeks before Election Day.
The Justice Department has designated the effort a top priority as President Donald Trump presses his administration to identify noncitizens who may have registered to vote or cast ballots illegally.
“This initiative is a tier one priority,” a Justice Department official told reporters Tuesday, according to Axios.
A Homeland Security Investigations official said the administration has about 1,600 potential voter-fraud cases nationwide and has made about 160 arrests stemming from those investigations.
The Justice Department said it has charged 70 people since the beginning of the administration with unlawful voting or registration offenses, plus noting that the 160 HSI arrests include cases that resulted in related charges such as false claims to citizenship or false statements rather than illegal voting itself.
DOJ officials also said the number of prosecutions is expected to “rise significantly each week” between now and the Nov. 3 elections.
HSI agents have been combing through publicly available voter data and investigating potential cases involving noncitizens who registered to vote or cast ballots when they were ineligible.
The FBI also has been involved in the investigations, while some Homeland Security personnel normally assigned to other immigration-related duties have been redirected to examine voter-registration records for potential cases.
The administration’s stepped-up enforcement comes after the Justice Department announced charges against 16 people last week in cases involving alleged illegal voting, illegal voter registration, and related election crimes across multiple states.
The cases include allegations that noncitizens voted in federal elections or falsely claimed U.S. citizenship to register or vote, according to the Justice Department.
Federal prosecutors also announced Tuesday that a former U.S. Postal Service worker was indicted in Utah for allegedly discarding about 300 pieces of mail, including mail-in ballots intended for registered voters. The indictment alleges criminal conduct, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
The enforcement push is occurring alongside a broader administration effort to increase federal involvement in election administration, including efforts to verify voter citizenship and impose new requirements on mail voting.
Some of those broader efforts, however, have been blocked by the courts.
The Supreme Court last week left intact a lower-court order preventing the administration from implementing new Postal Service rules that would have imposed significant changes on mail-ballot procedures for the 2026 elections. The administration argued the rules were necessary to address potential fraud and strengthen election security.
The high court’s action means states will continue using their existing mail-voting procedures for the November elections while the underlying legal fight continues.
The administration also is seeking to gain access to federal immigration records to help states identify potential noncitizens on voter rolls, but that effort remains tied up in litigation, with the Justice Department asking the Supreme Court to intervene in a case involving access to the federal SAVE database.
Trump also has pushed legislation requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo identification at the polls, adding another front to the administration’s effort to increase election-security requirements.
With early voting already beginning in some states and mail ballots going out across the country, the administration’s decision to accelerate voter-fraud investigations and prosecutions puts election enforcement at the center of its midterm strategy.