Trump's Department of Justice demands Wayne County, Michigan, 2024 ballots

LANSING, Mich.- President Donald Trump's Department of Justice is attempting to obtain all ballots submitted for the 2024 election in Wayne County, Michigan, a Democratic stronghold that's long been a focus of the Republican leader's unproven claims of voter fraud.

Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant attorney general, sent a letter Tuesday to Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett, demanding the records be released to the federal government.

Dhillon wrote that the paper ballots and ballot envelopes from the last presidential election were needed to ensure federal laws were followed because of a "history of fraud convictions" and "other allegations concerning the election procedures in Wayne County."

"Failure to timely produce the requested records may result in the United States seeking a court order for production of such records," Dhillon wrote.

None of the three individual election fraud cases that were cited in Dhillon's demand letter were from the 2024 election.

Michigan's Democratic leaders released Dhillon's letter Sunday, along with a response from Attorney General Dana Nessel. Nessel vowed to fight against "any attempt to interfere in Michigan's elections."

"Once again, President Trump is weaponizing the Justice Department in an attempt to sabotage our democratic process and turn it into his own personal agency to interfere in state elections," Nessel said in a statement. "This request is as absurd as it is baseless."

The revelation of the Department of Justice's move came on the day of the Michigan Democratic Party's convention in Detroit and less than 200 days before the midterm election, in which Michigan will elect a new governor and a new U.S. senator.

A handful of key U.S. House races in Michigan will also help determine which party controls Congress for the next two years.

The letter marked an escalation of the Trump administration's national efforts to investigate the country's voting system. In January, the U.S. Department of Justice raided the Fulton County election center in Georgia, another battleground state.

Trump's Department of Justice has also sought a complete copy of Michigan's registered voter list.

Trump has long contended that there was widespread fraud in Michigan's elections, and he has specifically focused on Wayne County, the state's largest county, where Detroit is located.

After the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden, he personally pressured two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers not to sign the certification of the vote. Trump said Republicans had been "cheated on this election" and "everybody knows Detroit is crooked as hell," according to audio recordings previously reviewed by The Detroit News.

However, in 2021, a Republican-led state Senate committee released a report finding "no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud" in the 2020 election.

Then, after winning a second term in November 2024, Trump said there was "horrible corruption" in Detroit's handling of elections and suggested that federal officials take over local responsibilities of administering elections.

In its new letter, Trump's Department of Justice cited three individual instances of voter fraud and an unsuccessful lawsuit about the 2020 presidential election.

"Your letter is premised on rejected claims and stale allegations unconnected to Wayne County's November 2024 election," Nessel wrote in her response.

In the 2024 election, 864,767 ballots were cast in Wayne County. Trump got 33% of the vote in the county. Democrat Kamala Harris received 62%. Trump won statewide by 1.4 percentage points, 49.7%-48.3%.

Dhillon gave Garrett 14 days to produce the records. But Nessel said the ballots are actually in the possession of 43 local clerks in Wayne County, not Garrett.

In a statement, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, labeled Michigan's elections "safe and secure." Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said the Trump administration was attempting to "sow seeds of doubt about the legitimacy of the results this November and in 2028."

"We won't be intimidated by these tactics," said Benson, who is running for governor this year.

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