The Justice Department’s top Civil Rights official pledged the Trump administration will pursue every provable case of illegal voting under what she described as a “broken windows” enforcement strategy, marking a sharp shift from prior administrations as the DOJ intensifies scrutiny of voter rolls following revelations that noncitizens were registered to vote in New Jersey.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon told Fox News Digital the department’s approach is to investigate every credible lead and prosecute every case supported by the evidence, rejecting what she described as the prior view that only widespread fraud or election-altering misconduct warranted federal action. The pledge follows revelations from Democratic New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill that thousands of noncitizens ended up on the state’s voter rolls through the motor-voter system.
“What’s different, first of all, is the people in charge — and ‘people are policy’,” Dhillon said when asked why the DOJ under previous administrations often uncovered alleged election-related wrongdoing but rarely secured convictions.
“[Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche] and I and the other fine career and political lawyers at the Department of Justice are dedicated to enforcing our federal civil rights laws. It is correct that in prior years, there has been this attitude that, unless there’s some kind of wholesale fraud, or it changed the outcome of the election, it isn’t going to get prosecuted, but that’s not our attitude.”
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Dhillon said her prosecution philosophy follows a “broken windows” strategy, originally popularized by then-New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, which focused on enforcing minor offenses to deter more serious crimes.
“We need to go after every single one of these violations … I can’t talk about a lot of what we’re doing publicly, but activists and others are giving us leads. Local officials are giving as leads. And we are carefully running down each of these leads.”
Dhillon emphasized prosecutors will bring charges only when supported by evidence that is “100% correct.”
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“If one does not lead to a conclusion that that person voted illegally, and I’m glad I did my due diligence rather than shooting from the hip.”
When noncitizens are found to have voted illegally, Dhillon suggested the DOJ will pursue penalties such as barring them from future naturalization.
A former vice chair of the California Republican Party, Dhillon considered whether New Jersey’s figures could be extrapolated to other states, including California.
“I think there are more than 400 [illegal votes cast in New Jersey] I’m willing to bet. New Jersey is a small state. I came from California where I lived for the last 25 years. I’m going to predict if I were in prediction market mode that the figures there are orders of magnitude higher,” she said.
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“And the system is frankly rigged in such a way that officials don’t want know. People check off a box. Nobody checks whether people are citizens or not. And nobody checks duplicates. It’s a sloppy mess in most of the United States, and we Americans deserve better.”
When asked about Dhillon’s comments regarding California, an official in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office said the Democrat does not administer elections, count or certify results and hopes vote tabulation can be completed faster following June’s marathon primary period.
Newsom recently signed the state’s FY-2027 budget, which includes about $40 million for increased county staffing, technology upgrades and voter outreach, and approved a bill cutting the vote-count deadline from 30 days to 13.
Fox News Digital reached out to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber for additional comment.
Dhillon said the New Jersey situation underscores why other states should partner with the federal government and turn over their electronic voter data.
Many Democrat-led states have balked at such requests and are being sued in turn. Dhillon said the national problem lies in automatic registration policies combined with a “flood of illegal aliens.”
Dhillon said the DOJ sent “election monitors” to key Arizona counties during Tuesday’s primary and confirmed the agency will deploy federally trained monitors to several jurisdictions nationwide going forward.
When asked what happens at the end of the five-day window her letter gives Sherrill and New Jersey Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell to respond with voter data, Dhillon said her staff has filed an additional pleading in an ongoing suit against Caldwell as to why turning over the rolls is necessary.
“With respect to this five-day window, we’re looking for voluntary enforcement and what your viewers need to understand is that through a variety of court doctrines, there’s window. After which you can’t update the voter rolls,” she said, noting most states’ 90-day windows are closing.
Meanwhile in Trenton, state Senate Oversight Committee member Joe Pennacchio sent a letter to Blanche asking the DOJ to not only probe voter rolls but the entire motor-voter framework blamed by Sherrill for the problems.
The French vendor that provides the technology for the system pushed back on Sherrill on that front, saying the issues do not lie in their systems but in the Department of State.
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“The People of New Jersey deserve more than empty assurances from the same government that oversaw this foreseeable failure,” said Pennacchio, R-Boonton.
“They deserve an independent investigation that follows the evidence wherever it leads and provides a complete and transparent accounting of the facts so that any vulnerabilities that led us here can be fully and immediately remedied.”
Asked about the new demand, Dhillon suggested it simply widens the net of scrutiny, remarking, “we’ll get to the bottom of it for sure.”
Fox News Digital’s Hannah Brennan contributed to this report.
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