Virginia’s Attorney General Catches Trump’s DHS Breaking the Law to Spy on Voters

WASHINGTON, DC — Virginia Democratic Attorney General Jay Jones sent DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin a letter Thursday warning that the department’s hunt for “noncitizen voters” likely broke Virginia election law, and demanded it stop immediately. The warning follows a whistleblower report partially confirmed by the DOJ that Homeland Security agents posed as individual voters on state websites to pull private voter records, even as Trump claims to be fighting fraud.

Virginia’s voter portal requires anyone who logs in to certify they’re looking up their own record or one they’re authorized to access, and warns that accessing someone else’s file is a crime. Jones cited three state criminal statutes, and said Homeland Security agents needed a court order, but obtained protected information without one. He also flagged that DHS’s chief counsel reportedly told agents they’d face no personal liability for the searches as evidence that the Trump administration knew exactly what it was doing. The bottom line: Trump’s administration built this so-called “Unlawful Voter Initiative” on a lie, and pulled agents off trafficking and terrorism cases to go fishing through Virginians’ private voter files.

“Trump’s DHS broke Virginia law by illegally posing as voters to access their private information, all to manufacture a crisis that decades of evidence says doesn’t exist. Federal agents are being pulled off real investigations into trafficking and terrorism to break into voters’ data,” said Mally Smith, Try And Stop Us Spokesperson. “In state after state, Republicans keep telling on themselves: they can’t win a fair fight, and they’re willing to break state law to rig the game and scare eligible voters into staying home. It won’t work. Virginians will show up this November, no matter how many laws Trump’s agents break trying to stop them.”