A letter from Harmeet Dhillon, who heads President Donald Trump’s DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, is demanding that Georgia officials explain within five days how they are preventing illegal voting in the state — despite the fact that illegal voting is not a legitimate problem in U.S. elections.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports the U.S. Department of Justice has also warned officials in the increasingly swingy Peach State that they could face criminal prosecution if noncitizens cast ballots, something that is already illegal.
Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who has a bumpy relationship with Trump, pointed out that his office has already cracked down on cases of noncitizen voting, which studies show is exceedingly rare, reports AJC. Raffensperger’s spokesperson, Robert Sinners, said the SOS conducted the first statewide citizenship audit of Georgia’s voter rolls, improved a federal election database and even pressed Congress to enshrine citizen-only voting in the Constitution.
The AJC reports Trump’s threat arrived the same day a federal judge in Atlanta “sharply questioned the Justice Department’s attempt to revive Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud in Georgia’s 2020 election.”
Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Billy Ray II threw out a sweeping subpoena seeking information on thousands of Fulton County election workers and found that the five-year statute of limitations for crimes linked to the election had “long expired.” However, Trump’s DOJ issued the threat after a devastating Fox News poll revealed Democrats are destroying Republicans in most of the former red state’s most contentious races.
“In the Georgia governor’s race, Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms has a 5-point edge, with 52 percent support compared to 47 percent for Republican Rick Jackson,” reported AJC, citing the Fox poll. Additionally, Lance Bottoms’ supporters are more certain of their vote than Jackson’s by 80 percent vs. 75 percent
That same poll revealed Republicans in this swing state, which Trump lost to Biden years ago but reclaimed in 2023, also have a more favorable view of incumbent Democratic candidate John Ossoff, who Republicans will need to unseat in order to easily maintain their Senate majority.
Nearly 6 in 10 voters have a favorable opinion of Ossoff, which is much higher than the 4 in 10 for Republican Collins, or even Trump — who only gets 42 percent favorability — down 5 points in the 2024 Georgia Fox News Voter Analysis.
Worse, Georgians are six points more likely to say they are “extremely or very concerned” that Collins is too close to Trump than the Democratic incumbent is “too liberal.”