The Los Angeles U.S. attorney’s office has announced it has opened “multiple election fraud investigations,” citing what it calls “serious structural vulnerabilities” in California’s election system.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli confirmed the investigations late Friday, vowing to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
The announcement came one day after President Donald Trump made baseless claims of mass fraud in California’s extended vote count from Tuesday’s primary election.
Late-arriving Democratic-leaning mail ballots were continuing to cut into vote totals for Trump’s preferred candidates for governor and Los Angeles mayor.
Essayli, Trump’s appointee as the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, also oversaw a visit by an assistant U.S. attorney to Los Angeles County’s main ballot tabulation center on Friday morning.
Mike Sanchez, a spokesman for Los Angeles County’s Registrar-Recorder, said the prosecutor “was provided an overview of the public observation program, and participated in a walkthrough of the ballot processing operations.”
Sanchez added that “election officials routinely host observers representing a wide range of interests,” framing the visit as a routine matter rather than an extraordinary intervention.
Essayli also said his office was “working closely” with Harmeet Dhillon, the U.S. assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, to audit the state’s voter rolls to “verify that only eligible U.S. citizens” are registered.
Essayli criticized California’s mail-in voting policies and the absence of a photo ID requirement at the polls, two practices Trump has long claimed, without evidence, contribute to widespread voter fraud.
Essayli charged that “the state has stonewalled every effort to verify that only eligible U.S. citizens are registered to vote,” escalating rhetoric against California’s election administration.
California’s primary results are taking time to finalize under state laws allowing mail ballots postmarked by election day to be counted if returned to county offices by the following Tuesday.
The prolonged count has made California a recurring target for Trump and his Republican allies, with the president claiming Democrats were attempting to “steal” the races for governor and Los Angeles mayor.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta responded firmly, stating: “My office has a presence on the ground right now, is monitoring the situation closely, and stands ready to protect voters and ensure California’s election laws are followed.”
This is not the first time the Trump Justice Department has scrutinized California’s elections, having previously sent observers to monitor polling sites in five counties during a special congressional map election last fall.
