#justice-department

On Sunday, November 1, U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason dismissed the Justice Department's suit seeking to block certification of Alaska's Senate race if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan lost to Democrat Mary Peltola. She called the relief "infeasible" because many people had already voted, said the government offered "no workable plan" to investigate ballots for the second candidate, retired teacher Daniel J. Sullivan, while preserving voter secrecy, and wrote that the effort ran counter to the Constitution's grant of election authority to states. The department filed notice it will appeal. AP also reports the department escalated a criminal investigation with new grand jury subpoenas.

After Tuesday's vote the race was uncalled at the cutoff; NBC called it too early to call, and Sullivan said he was "confident when all the votes are counted." On Truth Social, President Trump said votes for Daniel J. Sullivan and candidate Gerald Heikes "should be immediately given to the REAL Dan Sullivan." Alaska uses ranked-choice voting: if no one tops 50%, last-place candidates are eliminated and their voters' next choices counted. A separate measure to repeal ranked-choice voting was too early to call in NBC's tally.

Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general who ran the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, resigned on Thursday, November 5, Attorney General Todd Blanche announced on X. NPR says she is the first senior department official to leave since Democrats won Congress. In her resignation letter, seen by CBS, she says she told White House chief of staff Susie Wiles in early October that she would step down after the midterms; two sources told CBS that President Trump had demanded she be fired after her October 18 "60 Minutes" interview, and officials stalled.

Under Dhillon, more than 75% of the division's staff departed (CBS), and it shifted toward priorities such as ending DEI programs, transgender athletes in girls' sports, gun rights and campus antisemitism. It filed 31 lawsuits against mostly Democratic-led states and D.C. seeking unredacted voter rolls (CBS); NBC reports federal judges dismissed 27 of them. On Election Day it sent more than 1,000 monitors to polling sites, a record.

The White House said she did a "fantastic job." Stacey Young of Justice Connection, a group of department alumni, called her "the most destructive, lawless, and hateful head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ history."

On October 22 the Justice Department sued Alaska's Division of Elections in federal court, asking it to block or delay certification of the U.S. Senate race if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses to Democrat Mary Peltola but would have won had the votes for a second candidate, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. of Petersburg, gone to him. President Trump said he ordered the suit. The state's Department of Law answered that the suit "has no legal basis": the ballot labels the senator as the Republican incumbent, voters can rank both Sullivans, and probing voter intent would breach the secret ballot. Peltola's campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee moved to dismiss. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the department "should have never filed this lawsuit."

On October 28, AP reported that The New York Times had obtained texts in which Peltola campaign members discussed recruiting people named Dan Sullivan. Trump said Peltola and the other Sullivan "should be prosecuted"; Murkowski said Alaskans "deserve the honest truth." Peltola's campaign says it "has no involvement with either Sullivan campaign," the DSCC denies involvement, and Dan J. Sullivan has long denied any contact with Peltola's campaign. Legal experts told AP the report won't change the lawsuit. Election Day is November 3.

On October 28, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter denied the Trump administration's request that California set aside the mail ballots of up to 20,000 registered voters that Homeland Security agencies flagged as likely noncitizens. Carter wrote the request "would wreak havoc and disrupt the election that is already underway" and that "if the Executive can discount votes and threaten an ongoing election due to unproven allegations, then our democracy is in danger." More than 3.7 million Californians had already voted, and Los Angeles County said over 500,000 ballots had been separated from their envelopes. Prosecutors filed an appeal the same evening; the 9th Circuit had dismissed an earlier appeal 2-1 on October 26 because Carter had not yet ruled.

On October 29, Carter appointed a special master to examine the federal list, which both sides agree includes an unspecified number of citizens. AP also reported that federal prosecutors subpoenaed Los Angeles County election staff to appear in court on November 4, citing a Homeland Security criminal investigation.

On October 26, U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden unsealed a criminal information, filed October 5, charging former FBI Director James Comey with transmitting national defense information and conspiracy to do so. Prosecutors say Comey directed staff to talk to a New York Times reporter about the accuracy of an earlier Reuters report, which they say passed on classified information that appeared in an October 5, 2016 Times article about Yahoo and email surveillance.

Comey's lawyers have moved to dismiss, arguing the 10-year deadline required a grand jury indictment, not an information filed by prosecutors; the Justice Department says filing an information to pause the clock is a widely recognized practice. Comey can't be tried on the information alone unless he waives indictment. His lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, says two earlier prosecution teams declined to charge anyone over the article; Comey called the case "an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice" and said he is innocent. It is his third federal case: the first was dismissed and an April case over his "8647" seashell post is pending. The same day, a judge ruled his daughter, prosecutor Maurene Comey, was unlawfully fired and ordered her reinstated.

The Justice Department began notifying counties this week that it plans to send monitors on Election Day, NPR reports; counties in Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Texas and Washington have been told so far. Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon said last month the department would send 1,000 observers nationwide, which she called the largest monitoring effort in its history. In the last midterm year, 2022, the department monitored 64 jurisdictions in 24 states. A DOJ spokesperson said details will be shared closer to the election and that the department prioritizes places with competitive elections.

Officials in three states told NPR they were not initially notified alongside their counties, as in past cycles; after NPR asked the department, several said they then received notice. In Colorado, Adams County's Democratic clerk said he suspected political motives because the neighboring Republican-run county that shares a toss-up district was not contacted. Wyoming's Republican governor had raised concerns about monitors' behavior in the August primary, which the DOJ disputes.

The New York Times reported on October 20 that the family of Venezuelan banker Julio Herrera Velutini hired Alina Habba, Trump's former personal lawyer, as general counsel of Concord Partners, a Florida company set up by his daughter. Herrera had been charged over an alleged scheme to bribe Puerto Rico's governor and in August 2025 pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor campaign-finance violation. According to the Times, the deal guaranteed Habba more than $50 million over four years including bonuses, and was finalized while she was still U.S. attorney in New Jersey. She started on January 1, 2026; weeks later Trump granted Herrera a full and unconditional pardon. The Times reports his daughter had given $3.5 million to a super PAC tied to Trump.

Habba said any suggestion her job had to do with securing a pardon is false. The Justice Department said she "did not speak to anyone about a pardon," and a White House official said she "had nothing to do with the pardon."

A week after federal agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar's Washington home, White House border czar Tom Homan told Fox News that the Minnesota Democrat could be stripped of her U.S. citizenship and deported if investigators prove immigration fraud. He said he was not familiar with the details of the Justice Department's investigation but had been told the case was strong. The probe reportedly examines whether Omar or her father misrepresented her birth year on immigration paperwork decades ago. Omar has not been charged, denies the allegations and calls the investigation politically motivated.

On October 20, asked in the Oval Office about deportation, President Trump said "she could also go to jail," calling it his opinion, and disparaged Somalia, where Omar was born. Former President Barack Obama wrote that agents had raided her home "to try and uncover a nonexistent smoking gun from 20 years ago." The White House denies weaponizing the Justice Department, and Trump and Vice President JD Vance have denied involvement in the investigation.

The Justice Department has sued California and asked a federal court to make the state segregate ballots from about 20,000 registered voters that federal officials call "likely noncitizens." On October 19, Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter announced charges against 28 green-card holders, all on that list, and acknowledged it may include some citizens. In an October 20 filing, state Attorney General Rob Bonta called the suit "a reckless political stunt." Los Angeles County officials reviewed a sample of 200 names; of those with a reported birthplace, 38.9% indicated they were born in the U.S., NPR reports.

Separately, on October 21 U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín barred Homeland Security officers in nine states from field operations aimed at people they know or should suspect are citizens, or based only on USCIS data matches, writing that the effort likely violates the Voting Rights Act's ban on voter intimidation. DHS said it has "no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be U.S. citizens." The order runs through election night unless it is appealed.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter told Justice Department employees to use "super intelligence" and "SI" instead of "artificial intelligence" and "AI" "to the maximum extent permitted by law" in public communications, policy documents and other official records, and in court filings "when appropriate," according to a memo seen by Reuters and Bloomberg Law. It follows President Trump's September 29 executive order requiring the switch across federal agencies, which says government terminology "should reflect the transformative capabilities" of the technology.