A letter from Trump’s attorney general just killed DOJ’s own case in court

A federal judge in Oregon on Friday issued a strong rebuke of the Justice Department's lawsuits to seize state voter rolls, including personally identifying information.

The law firm run by voting rights lawyer Marc Elias wrote about it Friday for Democracy Docket, pointing to the judge's comments. According to U.S. District Court Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai, a letter sent by Attorney General Pam Bondi's to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) led him to doubt the candor of the DOJ.

Bondi's letter told Walz that she would ensure all federal agents were removed from his state if he handed over the state's voter rolls.

“The context of this demand within a letter about immigration enforcement casts serious doubt as to the true purposes for which Plaintiff is seeking voter registration lists in this and other cases, and what it intends to do with that data,” Kasubhai wrote.

The ruling was a brutal takedown of the DOJ's actions and public statements, which eroded trust between the court and federal law enforcement agencies.

It is the second time since Thursday that a judge has cited the Trump administration's own words in decisions against the DOJ since.

In Chicago, the DOJ asked to suppress text messages from a Border Patrol agent who shot one woman five times. The Department of Homeland Security issued several statements that made false claims about the incident, prompting the judge in that case to rule that the text messages should be released to determine the truthfulness of those claims.

“The presumption of regularity that has been previously extended to Plaintiff that it could be taken at its word — with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes — no longer holds,” Kasubhai said in the ruling. “When Plaintiff, in this case, conveys assurances that any private and sensitive data will remain private and used only for a declared and limited purpose, it must be thoroughly scrutinized and squared with its open and public statements to the contrary.”

But the most notable portion of the ruling, wrote Democracy Docket's Yunior Rivas, came not from the loss but in his condemnation of the DOJ's "public conduct." That behavior now undermines the “presumption of regularity,” the judge said, that the Department of Justice has long held.

Kasubhai wrote that he was concerned the DOJ was going to use voting rolls to gather personal data it can use to target immigrants. Some municipalities allow immigrants to vote in local elections. They are already banned from federal elections and most state elections.

“Plaintiff’s words and actions outside of the four corners of its Complaint in this case, including statements that it intends to create a nationwide database of confidential voter information and use it in unprecedented ways, including immigration enforcement efforts, is chilling,” Kasubhai said in the ruling. “The possibility that Oregon’s voter registration list could be used to further these efforts in the absence of congressional action, may very well lead to an erosion of voting rights and voter participation.”

This ruling extends beyond Oregon. The New Mexico attorney general informed a judge that the facts in their case are nearly identical.

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