The Trump DOJ’s Threat Against California’s Vote Is a Bluff

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When it started to become clear that President Donald Trump’s chosen candidate in Los Angeles’ mayoral race—reality star turned MAGA hero Spencer Pratt—was headed for defeat, he wasted no time pivoting to his old playbook. “There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California,” Trump posted two days after the state’s primary election, citing not a single piece of evidence. Within 24 hours, the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli announced his office was conducting numerous election fraud investigations. It’s more than likely a smoke-and-mirrors show that accomplishes two things, neither of which have anything to do with fraud: Seed doubt in California’s elections and every state across the country while working a practice round for phony prosecutions that are likely to come up again during the upcoming midterm election cycle and beyond.

California held its nonpartisan primary last week, and one of the most closely watched contests was the Los Angeles mayoral race. Incumbent Democrat Karen Bass was up against progressive City Council member Nithya Raman and Pratt, who is a registered Republican. California uses “blanket” primaries, which means the top-two vote-getters advance to the general election regardless of party. The race was shaking out to be mighty close, and as the first initial votes were tallied, Pratt was leading Raman for the second spot behind Bass, but by Sunday Raman began to pull ahead. Come Monday she was leading Pratt by nearly 22,000 votes and was being declared the second finalist for November’s general election. This delayed overtaking of Pratt by Raman was largely expected, because California’s vote-by-mail system accepts ballots postmarked on or before Election Day and received within seven days of the election. Yet, on Monday, Trump weighed in to say, “Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had.”

Indeed, it was possible for Pratt to have lost, as Republicans tend to vote in person and those ballots are counted first. Democrats tend to vote early and by mail, ballots that are counted later in the vote tallying process, which is why Raman’s lead over Pratt took a few days to register. Now, Trump is deeply familiar with this process but simply does not like it, and he’s been actively trying to limit mail voting and federalize U.S. elections, despite the Constitution explicitly giving states the power to facilitate their own elections. (A lawsuit is currently challenging Trump’s executive order on mail voting). Anyone who attempts to take action based on Trump’s words, namely Essayli in this context, is doing so purely to appease the White House and without any real end goal in mind.

“When the government has a case, it brings an indictment, and serious law enforcement investigators almost always keep their investigation under wraps until the indictment is issued,” Chad Dunn, legal director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project, told me. “Whenever I see the government, whether it’s in the voting context or otherwise, broadcasting it has an investigation, I’m immediately suspicious that this is performative.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom echoed a similar sentiment, his office telling Politico that “Credible prosecutors don’t comment on ongoing investigations, including whether an investigation exists at all. We’re not surprised the First Assistant doesn’t operate similarly.”

When Essayli announced his office “has multiple election fraud investigations underway,” he also made sure to criticize California’s vote-by-mail procedures, accusing the state of having serious structural vulnerabilities and no voter ID requirements. This is deceiving, as California does require identification when eligible residents register to vote for the first time. It’s also allowed vote by mail for decades, expanding it during the COVID-19 pandemic so that every registered voter in California receives a mail ballot. It’s also worth noting that Los Angeles County is the single largest in the country, home to 10 million people, which means the ballot-counting process will inherently take time. “There have been no credible investigations in California and Los Angeles that suggest there’s any widespread voter fraud. There’s none,” Matt Barreto, professor of political science at UCLA and faculty director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project, told me.

What’s really happening here is that Trump has a bone to pick with California, the most Democratic-leaning state in the country helmed by the outgoing Newsom, who is not only one of Trump’s biggest antagonists but is rumored to be a 2028 contender for president. Oh, and it’s also home to former Vice President Kamala Harris. The Los Angeles mayoral race was considered a lock for Democrats, but with the incumbent mayor facing unpopularity after her perceived botched handling of the Palisades Fire in January last year, the race was suddenly competitive. Pratt, who has never held elected office before, jumped into the race as an outsider demanding to shake up the system, embodying the same spirit that buoyed Trump to political success. Two weeks before California’s June 2 primary, Trump endorsed Pratt. “I’d like to see him do well. He’s a character. I heard he’s a big MAGA person. He’s doing well.”

After California’s primary day came and went, and poll workers continued to count mail ballots, as per state law, Pratt’s loss became more apparent. This is exactly what happened during the 2020 presidential election, as Joe Biden edged out Trump in the days following Election Day. And that was far from the first time an election was not immediately called, as the 2000 election between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush took nearly two months to be decided.

Despite this being a completely normal process for U.S. elections, Trump seems perennially ready with bogus, unsubstantiated claims of fraud. “He claims, like a sore loser, that when he loses there must be fraud,” Barreto said. “But when he wins, everything’s fine.”

Barreto believes the current slate of primary elections happening across the country is a testing ground to see how far Trump can push to disenfranchise voters and trample on democracy. Today it’s California, but tomorrow it can very well be another state that produces an election result that the president doesn’t like. As Republicans and Trump face historically low approval ratings, they are growing increasingly desperate to salvage their power, hence the ongoing redistricting war and, possibly, more federal investigations like Essayli’s.

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“The single most dangerous threat to democracy is not California taking a week to count its ballots, the single greatest threat to democracy is the president and his followers trying to undermine confidence in our accurate and legal electoral system,” Barreto said.

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Elsewhere in Jurisprudence

• On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick unpacks a new Supreme Court decision that vastly expands Louisiana v. Callais by making it nearly impossible to challenge racist voting maps designed to suppress Black voters. Dahlia also speaks with Andrew Weissmann, law professor at New York University and a veteran federal prosecutor, about President Trump’s latest nomination for attorney general and the state of the $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund.

• Dahlia chats with Mark Joseph Stern about the Supreme Court’s apparent urgency in dismantling voting rights for nonwhite people in this week’s Amicus bonus episode. They examine the details of another shadow docket decision that greenlights racial gerrymandering in Alabama and how it signals the high court’s willingness to rewrite long-established legal rules without transparency or accountability. 

• Friend of Slate Felipe De La Hoz, an immigration journalist and journalism teacher, wrote about the recent frenzy over Trump’s green card policy that seemingly forces applicants to apply for U.S. residency from their home country. It has sparked massive confusion, which is by design, as the Trump administration continues to take a hard line on allowing immigrants into the country.

• A federal judge in Georgia was reprimanded for having sex with a law enforcement officer in her chambers over a two-year period and lying about it. Beyond this egregious act of misconduct, though, is a larger issue of transparency and accountability within the U.S. judiciary. Friend of Slate Aliza Shatzman, president and founder of the Legal Accountability Project, writes how this case shows weaknesses that Congress should have fixed long ago with legislation and oversight.

• Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty as constitutionally permissible in the landmark case Gregg v. Georgia. Friend of Slate Austin Sarat, professor of law, jurisprudence, and social thought at Amherst College, explains how since then, capital punishment has been applied in a chaotic and discriminatory way where the race of the victim plays a powerful role in determining who gets a death sentence. 

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