'Pretext to seize control': Trump admin engaged in 'lawless' campaign of 'federal coercion' over midterm election after being 'thwarted' by Congress and the courts, lawsuit says

The Trump administration is engaged in a "lawless" campaign of "federal coercion" intended to make sure Republicans win the upcoming midterm elections, according to a lawsuit filed this week.

"For over a decade now, President Donald J. Trump has bombarded the American people with lies and misinformation about American elections and voter fraud," the lawsuit begins. "While these lies have been debunked at every turn, that has never deterred the President from employing them as a pretext to seize control over elections."

In a 44-page complaint, several groups led by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) allege that two "recent iterations of" Trump's "disturbing trend" toward obtaining electoral control are of particular importance as the election nears.

The lawsuit draws attention to a monthslong effort to have states "review shoddily compiled lists of supposed noncitizens." To hear the DSCC tell it, these lists have often "crumbled upon the barest inspection."

The plaintiffs cite the example of Nevada, where one such "target list" came packaged with a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) "demand" for review of some 16,000 would-be noncitizen voters.

As it turned out, that list later dwindled to 185 claimed noncitizen voters. Then, finally, DHS "failed to substantiate" the lower number after state officials "indicated that every single one of those voters appeared to be citizens," according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also points to a recent dispute over similar allegations in California, as Law&Crime has previously reported.

In the Golden State, DHS provided a local elections official in Los Angeles with a list of some 20,000 purported noncitizen voters. Roughly 48 hours after demands to inspect the list were rebuffed, the Trump administration sued and asked a judge to "segregate and refuse to count their ballots."

Again, the DSCC says, the government's claims quickly fell apart.

"That list, too, has proven remarkably slapdash—upon just a cursory sample review, the Los Angeles County Registrar found that many of these registrations had already been canceled and that more than a quarter of the sample reflected individuals who listed a birthplace within the United States, among many other errors," the lawsuit reads.

The Trump administration, in a secondary and related effort, has also been simply threatening officials to force them to comply with the underlying election-focused demands, the DSCC says.

"DHS officials have sought to bolster their interference efforts through a persistent stream of threats and intimidation directed toward state and local election officials across the country," the lawsuit goes on.

The filing cites a recent Truth Social post in which Trump himself put California officials on notice they could "go to jail for a long period of time" unless they cooperate with the attempted purge of those aforementioned voters.

But Trump is not acting alone, the plaintiffs say.

The lawsuit elaborates:

DOJ officials in other States have eagerly latched on to the policy of threatening election officials endorsed at the highest levels of government: On October 19, the first day of early voting in Texas, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas Aaron Reitz posted a video on social media threatening to "hunt … down and prosecute" voters and local election officials alike[.]

"This pattern of intimidation is not rooted in any legitimate belief that election officials are engaged in misconduct," the lawsuit goes on, "rather, it is meant to frighten officials into complying with the administration's demands to unlawfully remove voters from the rolls; to deny ballots to lawfully registered voters; and to segregate lawful ballots cast by registered voters based on spurious and unreliable claims."

The lawsuit alleges the combined force of the Trump administration's midterm push violates the U.S. Constitution as well as the Voting Rights Act.

"None of this is lawful," the lawsuit continues. "The Executive Branch enjoys no authority to superintend state voter list maintenance, to supplant state determinations of who is qualified to vote, or to dictate who gets a ballot or whose ballot gets segregated."

The complaint repeatedly describes the government's behavior as "lawless" and claims various Democratic Party-affiliated groups, elected officials and voters writ large "are directly harmed by Defendants' lawless actions."

To that end, the plaintiffs say it is incumbent on the court system to step in and stop the government's alleged overreach.

From the filing:

This lawlessness did not arise in a vacuum. It comes as courts across the country have broadly enjoined the President's Executive Orders concerning elections, forbidden his attempt to nationalize rules for voting by mail, and refused his demands that States turn over their unredacted voter rolls … Thwarted in Congress and the courts, the administration has now simply disregarded the tools Congress provided it and fashioned its own cudgels instead.

"It once more falls to the judiciary to staunch the resulting lawlessness," the lawsuit says.