Trump admin demands Detroit 2024 ballots for voter fraud probe

• The Justice Department demanded all ballots and related materials from the November 2024 presidential election in Wayne County, Michigan.
• Michigan officials for years have decried Trump’s accusations of election fraud in the state.

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration is once again ratcheting up its investigations into alleged voting irregularities in past elections, this time demanding all ballots and related materials from the November 2024 federal election in Wayne County, Michigan.

Michigan officials, including state Attorney General Dana Nessel, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson are pushing back against the demand, in which the Justice Department seeks all ballots, ballot receipts and ballot envelopes in the Democratic-leaning county that includes Detroit.

"Michigan’s elections are safe and secure, and any attempt to suggest otherwise is an attempt to take away Michiganders’ constitutional right to vote," Whitmer, who has been talked about as a 2028 presidential candidate, said in an April 19 statement by the three statewide Democrats.

The DOJ demand was contained in an April 14 letter by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who oversees DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and its Voting Section, which has been actively investigating alleged voter fraud nationwide, often in Democratic strongholds.

In her letter, Dhillon gave Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett 14 days to respond, and said she would seek a court order if the county does not comply.

The Justice Department is investigating "individuals who may have registered to vote or voted" in the 2024 election in violation of various federal election laws, Dhillon wrote.

Why the DOJ said it's investigating

In recent years, Dhillon said, "there have been a number of recorded allegations and convictions in Wayne County of election fraud," including one woman who forged a signature on an absentee ballot "and received payment to influence vote" and two other people who she said impersonated someone else to vote in an election.

In 2020, Dhillon said, Wayne County and the city of Detroit were sued based on accusations of election-related fraud, including election officials who allegedly processed and counted ballots from voters whose names were not in a database of qualified voters and "systematically used false information to process ballots, such as using incorrect or false birthdays."

In that civil suit, city and county officials also allegedly instructed election workers "to not verify signatures on absentee ballots, to backdate absentee ballots, and to process such ballots regardless of their validity," Dhillon wrote.

The current demand for 2024 ballots is "based on this history of fraud convictions and other allegations" in Wayne County, Dhillon wrote, as well as "for the purpose of ensuring that the foregoing federal election laws were not violated in the November 2024 federal election."

The Justice Department declined to comment beyond Dhillon’s letter.

Trump’s longstanding grievances with Detroit voting

President Donald Trump has said for years − without evidence − that election fraud and mismanagement cost him the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden, including that such fraud in Detroit cost him the key swing state of Michigan that year.

A 2021 report from the Michigan State Senate, at the time controlled by Republicans, found "no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud."

An April 2025 report by the Michigan Secretary of State's office identified 15 people who allegedly were not U.S. citizens but still cast ballots in the 2024 presidential election in the Great Lakes State. Those potentially illegal votes represented less than 0.0003% of the 5.7 million total ballots submitted, according to The Detroit News part of the USA TODAY Network.

Trump continued to air similar grievances even after winning Michigan in 2024 by a margin of 49.7%-48.3% en route to a national Electoral College victory.

On Feb. 3, Trump alleged that there is "horrible corruption" in Detroit's handling of elections and suggested that federal officials take over local responsibilities of administering elections.

The president, who cited no evidence for his comment, made the allegation while flanked by congressional leaders at a bill-signing ceremony in the Oval Office. The comment came a day after Trump said in an interview with right-wing podcaster and former FBI official Dan Bongino that Republicans should "take over" and "nationalize" voting.

Trump said at the signing ceremony that "the federal government should get involved" in elections by deploying "agents of the federal government to count the votes" in cities like Detroit.

"If they can't count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over," Trump added.

'The latest in a troubling pattern' of election fraud accusations

Michigan officials for years have decried Trump’s accusations of election fraud in the state.

In an April 19 statement, the Michigan officials called the demand for Wayne County 2024 ballots "the latest in a troubling pattern of DOJ search warrants and demands for election material in Arizona, Georgia, and Missouri."

In March 2026, federal authorities subpoenaed records from the Arizona Senate relating to its partisan recount of Maricopa County’s 2020 ballots.

Trump’s own social media post about the action in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, said the "voting probe expands," referring to an FBI raid of 2020 election records held by authorities in Fulton County, Georgia in January 2026.

The Michigan officials said DOJ was attempting to justify its request for the 2024 ballots by citing three isolated instances of state-prosecuted voter fraud cases related to the 2020 election, and a "discredited" civil case that was dismissed by a state judge from the Wayne County Circuit Court.

"Each of the criminal cases were identified as suspicious by local clerks, referred to Michigan’s Bureau of Elections for investigation and successfully prosecuted by the Department of Attorney General," Nessel, Whitmer and Benson said in their joint statement.

Nessel and Benson first disclosed the DOJ demand in an April 19 guest column in the Detroit Free Press. "It’s not going to work with us," they said, "and it’s not going to hold up in court."

And the accusations of voter fraud in the 2020 election contained in the civil case Dhillon referenced, Costantino v. Detroit, were found to be "incorrect and not credible" by the chief judge of the Wayne County Circuit Court, Timothy Kenny, in November 2020, they said.

"None of the cases highlighted as examples of fraud were from the 2024 election cycle," they wrote.

"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," Attorney General Nessel, an outspoken critic of Trump, said.

 "This request is as absurd as it is baseless," Nessel said, noting that Trump won the battleground state in 2024.

Taking Trump 'at his word' about his interest in seizing federal control of elections

In an eight-page response to Dhillon, Nessel detailed how Michigan courts, election officials and the state Legislature have rejected similar accusations of election fraud in past elections.

"Accordingly," Nessel wrote, "Michigan stands ready to defend against these claims and any attempt to interfere in Michigan’s elections."

Oliver Hall, legal counsel for the Center for Competitive Democracy, told USA TODAY on April 20 that DOJ’s demand was part of a broader and "relentless effort" by Trump to undermine trust in the American electoral processes since he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.

"What's really troubling is the 'evidence' the demand cites is not credible on its face," Hall said, citing the court’s rejection of the civil case as being "unsubstantiated and incorrect."

"Trump has floated the idea of nationalizing or even canceling the elections in 2026 and 2028," Hall said. "We should take him at his word."

Conservative groups have praised Trump's efforts to investigate past elections that he lost for voter fraud, and have supported the president's aggressive push to enact a federal "Save America Act" to require far more proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.

One, the Heritage Foundation, maintains a database of what it says are 1,546 "proven instances of voter fraud."

"The SAVE Act would make sure non-citizens can’t vote in American elections," the think tank said in a Jan. 22 Facebook post. "If you oppose that, you’re probably trying to cheat."

Contributing: Grant Schwab of the Detroit Free Press