judge

For a time, Chad Bianco was one of the front-runners in the race for California governor — or at least as front-runnery as a Republican can get in this cobalt-blue state.

Polling in the primary showed the Riverside County sheriff drawing support in roughly the mid-teens, which — while nothing to shout about — was still enough in a jumbo-sized field to place Bianco among the top contenders.

His main rival among Republicans was Fox talk-show host Steve Hilton. The question was which of the two GOP hopefuls would President Trump bless, ensuring their advancement to certain defeat in November. That made their competition a bit like jousting for the last berth on the sinking Titanic, or elbowing for the opportunity to go before a firing squad.

But whatever.

Bianco, being a sheriff outfitted with a badge and gun and all, played his Trump card, mindful of the president’s monomaniacal obsession with nonexistent voter fraud. Acting on flimsy pretenses, Bianco arranged in February for the seizure of hundreds of thousands of Proposition 50 ballots, questioning the integrity of the election months after the fact.

Never mind that Riverside County voters approved the Democratic gerrymandering measure by a comfortable margin. Hitching himself to the president’s favorite hobbyhorse, Bianco’s performative policing was an obvious attempt to curry favor with the nation’s election denier in chief.

Alas for Bianco, the ploy didn’t work. Trump endorsed Hilton, who finished second in the June primary and was predictably crushed Tuesday by California’s governor-elect, Xavier Becerra.

Now the bill has come due.

Not surprisingly, Bianco’s unlawful actions resulted in litigation. Lawsuits brought by California’s attorney general and UCLA’s Voting Rights Project went all the way to the state Supreme Court, which scorched the sheriff in a September decision calling his actions illegal, perplexing and “a substantial risk to election integrity.”

Naturally, that legal skirmishing cost money, so Bianco asked the county Board of Supervisors to pony up and pay the bills arising from all his sheriffy swaggering, ballot confiscating and Trump pandering. The board said no, in a 4-1 vote in April. So last month, Bianco filed a claim seeking damages.

“If the County rejects the claim, Sheriff Bianco will have the right to sue the County … which he intends to do,” Bradley Hertz, Bianco’s attorney, wrote in an email to Times reporter Iris Kwok. Bianco’s actions, Hertz said, “arose out of his official actions.”

Which they most certainly did, if one defines “official actions” as going before a judge who touted Bianco’s endorsement when he ran and securing a warrant based on the claims of nutty political activists, all so Bianco could promote his political interests and advance his long-shot run for governor.

Does Bianco have a leg to stand on?

“In California, officers are entitled both to the cost of representation and to settlements and judgments against them for conduct in the course and scope of their employment,” said Joanna Schwartz, a professor at UCLA Law School and an expert on indemnification and qualified immunity, to use the legal terms. “How that gets sorted out in individual cases depends.”

Which suggests the case of Bianco vs. the County of Riverside will very likely wind up before a judge. (And result in more needless, court-clogging litigation.)

One of the most insidious aspects of Trump’s ruinous rule is the use of public office, taxpayer dollars and the color of authority to advance the president’s personal and political self-interests.

His thoroughly corrupted Justice Department blatantly acted to subvert Tuesday’s balloting. His Interior Department installed new signage in national parks to present Trump’s whitewashed version of history. His Federal Communications Commission has persecuted TV networks and sought to muzzle late-night comedians who bruise the president’s ever-so-fragile feelings.

And on it goes.

Judges around the country, that thin, black-robed line of defense, have repeatedly pushed back on Trump’s false election claims. And they’ve sanctioned some who’ve used their office or breached the rules of professional conduct to aid and abet the president’s reckless attempts to despoil our democracy.

Tina Peters, the former Colorado elections clerk who allowed tampering with her county’s election machinery in a harebrained scheme to show the 2020 election was “rigged,” received a stiff prison term and served 20 months before Gov. Jared Polis commuted her sentence and freed Peters to cause more mischief.

Attorneys have been fined and sanctioned for peddling Trump’s stolen election claptrap and presidential factotums Rudolph W. Giuliani and John Eastman were disbarred for their efforts to overturn the 2020 result. Giuliani was also slapped with a $148-million libel verdict for smearing two election workers in Georgia.

Despite those sanctions, the administration continues pressing phony claims of rampant voter fraud. Although Tuesday’s vote went smoothly and Trump accepted the results — as well he should — more of his enablers need to be held to account, as a means of deterrence. That’s a concept that Bianco, a law enforcement professional, surely understands.

There’s a saying in the retail industry, dealing with those who damage the merchandise: You break it, you buy it.

Grasping to advance his political ambitions, Bianco recklessly used and abused his authority as county sheriff to vandalize California’s election system and betray the public trust.

He broke it, he owns it.

Now Bianco needs to pay up.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge late Thursday blocked the Trump administration from breaking ground on a towering memorial arch for 14 days.

The temporary restraining order by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan halting the work represents a major setback for one of President Trump’s most prominent projects in his vision to remake Washington.

The decision followed a series of steps taken earlier Thursday by the government, including the final approval of the arch by the National Capital Planning Commission in an 8-4 vote after a 9 ½ hour hearing where scores of witnesses opposed the construction.

The administration said the work could begin as soon as the approval and the Interior Department issued a final decision authorizing construction and the proper notification was published by the National Park Service.

In approving the temporary stop, Chutkan said Virginia and the District of Columbia had shown that the immediacy of the construction would cause real harm to the plaintiffs.

“The harm is certain,” she wrote. “Defendants initially notified the court that construction could begin as early as November 5, 2026, if the NCPC approves the project at its meeting that day and the Department of the Interior authorizes construction.” In their filing, Virginia and D.C. warned of traffic pattern distortions as well as concerns about the impact on mutual aid emergency calls if the arch were to proceed.

“Second, the District and Virginia will incur significant unrecoverable costs. As soon as construction begins, DDOT will need to expend staff time and operating resources to affirmatively and proactively manage temporary detours, crashes or disabled vehicles,” Chutkan wrote.

The judge ordered the government to provide a status report next Monday to ensure they are complying with the order.

The judge’s decision came just over an hour after the National Capital Planning Commission hearing ended. The vote by the commission broke along federal and local lines. Those in favor work for the administration or are connected to the president, who was pushing for the immediate construction. Opponents represented the city of Washington.

The remote, call-in hearing — which crashed repeatedly in the first few hours and was accompanied by a nearly universally negative comment section — drew witnesses who gave impassioned comments opposing an arch they said will destroy the solemnity of the nearby Arlington National Cemetery, where hundreds of thousands of fallen service members and military veterans are buried.

The panel’s Trump-appointed chairman launched the meeting with a gushing appraisal of the towering monument and lauded Trump for wanting to build it.

“President Trump understands as president and a superb builder that it’s important to our national identity to display who we are through grand monuments,” said Mark Paoletta, the commission’s chairman.

As Trump has often remarked, “the great cities around the world have arches: Paris, Rome, London,” said Paoletta, who also serves as general counsel for the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Commissioner Paul Ingrassia, a lawyer for the General Services Administration, said the arch was “not about politics. It’s about remembrance. It’s about celebrating our history. It’s about commemorating veterans. And it’s really something that’s a noble tribute to our nation and something that we can all rally behind.”

But D.C. City Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, who also serves on the planning panel, said the project has not received required approval from Congress, nor has Congress appropriated any money for it. The plan submitted to the commission does not include a reference to military use cited by Trump and other administration officials, Mendelson said.

“We cannot approve final site and building plans until we have the final site and building plans,” he said.

The commission oversees construction on federal land in the city and began reviewing the arch plan in June.

The arch is one of several projects around Washington that the Republican president has undertaken as he alters the capital to his tastes — from renovating one of its storied public golf courses to threatening to demolish the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Those projects could soon face intense scrutiny after Democrats gained control of Congress in the midterm elections this week.

Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat who is set to chair the House Natural Resources Committee, called the project ill-advised and illegal.

“This arch would dishonor America,” Huffman told the commission. He called the proposed arch “a tribute to Donald Trump,” not veterans as Trump administration officials claim. The monument is similar to those built for emperors or kings, Huffman said, adding that Trump was using veterans as a pretext to build a memorial to himself.

Other critics, including the plaintiffs, argue that the Trump administration must seek congressional approval. The administration maintains that Congress cleared the way for a monument at Memorial Circle decades ago.

Several members of the Planning Commission used that logic in approving the project. Paoletta said it was a “national disgrace” that a memorial arch had not been placed there, despite a 1925 law that designated such a memorial, he said.

Chutkan rejected that argument in her ruling: “The sheer improbability that a 100-year-old statute would contain authority, unknown to every previous administration, to erect a 250-foot arch at a principal location in the Nation’s capital indicates how far defendants must stretch to justify this project.”

Daly and Fields write for the Associated Press. AP videographer Nathan Ellgren contributed to this report.

Russell Brand tried to block rape trial before it even began

Russell Brand tried to smear journalists as “criminals” in a doomed bid to avoid standing trial, it can now be revealed.

However, his bid failed when the judge simply ruled the jury could be made up of people who had not seen the 2023 media reporting. He rubbished Brand’s claim that the former comedian’s reputation had been “destroyed”, pointing to a sell-out Wembley show he performed after being publicly accused of rape.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Monday dismissed a criminal complaint against two former FBI officials accused of making false statements to Congress about Hunter Biden, saying the investigation that produced the charges was rushed, overtly political and dogged by “critical mistakes.”

“What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said in a scathing ruling from the bench that dismissed the case against former officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides.

He noted that the investigation was opened a day after a primetime speech by President Trump in which he rehashed grievances over his 2020 election loss and that it was mandated and closely tracked by FBI Director Kash Patel. He also pointed out that the Justice Department could have brought the case, which arises from statements made in 2023, at any time but opted to do so two weeks ago, in the run-up to Tuesday’s midterm voting.

“I will not bury my head in the sand and pretend that I cannot read a calendar,” Faruqui said.

The decision followed a dramatic hearing in which he scolded prosecutors for their unorthodox maneuvers and an FBI agent who worked the case testified that he had been concerned the investigation would be seen as “political.”

The Justice Department may still have an opportunity to pursue a grand jury indictment against the two former officials, whose lawyers had pressed for dismissal of the charges. But the judge’s ruling nonetheless represents an unmistakable setback for the Justice Department, particularly given the difficulty it has had in persuading grand juries in the nation’s capital to return indictments in politically charged prosecutions like this one.

The judge’s concerns about the case were apparent almost immediately, when he raised questions about why the Justice Department had charged the case through a criminal complaint — which is more typically done when investigators have a pressing need to take a defendant into custody — as opposed to an indictment that requires a grand jury’s approval.

Then, at a preliminary hearing last week, he criticized the Justice Department for filing overnight an amended complaint with an additional criminal charge straight to the docket instead of first clearing the new charge with the court — something he said he had never seen before.

The hearing also featured testimony from an FBI agent who worked the case, who said that the investigation had been opened right after Trump gave an election security speech last July and that it had been mandated by FBI Director Kash Patel, who kept close watch on it.

The case accused the two former FBI officials of misleading Congress in 2023 about their involvement in, and knowledge of, efforts to investigate a laptop the Justice Department says was dropped off by Hunter Biden, former President Joe Biden’s son, at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019.

But it also sought to echo longstanding grievances by Trump and his Republican allies that the FBI attempted to suppress information during the 2020 presidential campaign that was seen as potentially harmful to the Biden family. Candidate Joe Biden, a Democrat, ultimately defeated Trump, the Republican incumbent, in the 2020 election.

The Justice Department’s case noted, for instance, how Floris and Benavides had given lawmakers in 2020 a “defensive briefing” that Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have said was used to undermine their investigation into the Biden administration and link it to Russian disinformation.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.

Nov. 1, 2026 11:10 AM PT

JUNEAU, Alaska — A federal judge on Sunday dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to block certification of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses.

Sullivan, an ally of President Trump, faces Democratic former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola in one of the country’s most closely watched races, with Senate control at stake. Tuesday’s ranked-choice election also includes two candidates who have done little campaigning, one of whom shares the incumbent’s name.

The lawsuit, filed less than two weeks before the election and with early voting underway, called for an investigation into whether votes for retired teacher Dan J. Sullivan were intended for the senator. The state said the case lacked merit and argued there would be no way to determine that without violating voter privacy.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason wrote in the order that the relief the United States seeks is “infeasible” because many voters have already cast their ballots. She said the cast ballots have been mixed together to the point where they cannot be matched to specific voters.

“More fundamentally, the United States provides no workable plan as to how it proposes to segregate ballots cast for Daniel J. Sullivan on Election Day and then conduct a court-ordered unspecified ‘investigation’ of those ballots in a manner that would preserve voter secrecy,” she wrote.

Attorneys for the Republican-led state government, Peltola’s campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee argued that the case lacked any legal basis and amounted to interference. The senator and his allies, including Trump, for months have portrayed Dan J. Sullivan as a sham candidate intent on confusing voters and helping Peltola.

In the week before election day, the New York Times reported that Peltola’s campaign was involved in efforts to recruit the challenger Sullivan. Dan J. Sullivan in June, shortly after entering the race, said he’d had no contact with the campaign about running. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

Peltola’s campaign responded by saying the campaign “has no involvement with either Sullivan campaign” — a statement similar to one it released after Dan J. Sullivan launched his bid.

“I am not interested in tricking voters,” she said during a recent campaign event.

State courts, including the Alaska Supreme Court, rejected Republican-backed efforts to block the retired teacher from the August open primary ballot on which he appeared as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., with no party affiliation. The senator was listed as Dan S. Sullivan, Republican and incumbent.

Both Sullivans appear the same way on the general election ballot. Peltola placed first in the primary, followed by the senator. Dan J. Sullivan received about 2.5% of the primary vote, but that was enough to finish within the top four and qualify for the Nov. 3 ranked-choice election.

Attorneys for the Alaska Department of Law, led by Republican acting Atty. Gen. Cori Mills, represented state elections officials in the case and asked Gleason, who was appointed by President Obama, to toss the lawsuit. They filed a scathing response to the federal government’s complaint, calling it “meritless.”

Alaska also said the state had taken “significant steps” to distinguish the two Sullivans on the ballot. Voters who still might be confused could ask for help or look up candidate biographies and other information in state-distributed election pamphlets.

Gleason wrote that the administration’s attempt to block certification ran counter to the Constitution, which gives states the authority to run elections. She also cited the Supreme Court’s Purcell principle, which holds that federal courts should generally not change election rules too close to an election.

Alaska’s ranked voting system also offers a solution to possible confusion, the state wrote, allowing voters to rank the Sullivans as first and second choices, if they choose.

“That way, if the voter’s first-ranked Sullivan is eliminated, his vote would transfer to the other Sullivan,” attorneys Rachel Witty, Margaret Paton Walsh and Laura Fox wrote. “The voter’s vote would not ‘be transferred to Peltola’ as the complaint asserts, unless the voter chose to rank Peltola as his next choice instead of the other Sullivan.”

Trump for years has railed against Alaska’s use of ranked-choice voting in general elections. Republican state leaders have said that while they don’t like ranked voting, they want voters to “rank every Republican” candidate on this year’s ballot, especially with a high-stakes governor’s race featuring one Democrat and three Republicans.

On Thursday, the Justice Department escalated a criminal investigation over the same-named candidates on the Alaska ballot, issuing a raft of new grand jury subpoenas, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press. The FBI also has begun contacting people who donated to Dan J. Sullivan, some of whom told the AP that the agents were asking if they had been misled about which candidate they were supporting.

Riccardi and Bohrer write for the Associated Press. AP photographer Lindsey Wasson in Anchorage contributed to this report.

Oct. 30, 2026 8:59 PM PT

A federal judge in California on Friday barred the Justice Department from threatening or coercing election workers to stop processing ballots.

The order issued by U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson in the Northern District of California was in response to a suit filed earlier Friday by labor unions seeking to bar the Justice Department from intimidating election workers.

Notably, the emergency order was issued without the Department of Justice weighing in on the case.

“Election Day is around the corner,” wrote Thompson, who was nominated by former President Biden. “Ballots have already been issued. Americans have already begun voting. Workers have already begun processing ballots. Given the consequences of inaction, the Court sees no reason to delay its ruling.”

It also bars the Justice Department from demanding local election officials segregate or not count ballots that the federal government deems may have been cast by ineligible voters.

“This ruling is a victory for the workers who make our elections possible and the communities they serve,” April Verrett, president of the Service Employees International Union, said in a statement Friday night.

The top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, Bill Essayli, has warned that “any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy.”

On Thursday, the Associated Press obtained subpoenas issued to election officials in Los Angeles County. The subpoenas request any documents and communications related to letters sent in July and October by federal officials to state election officials outlining the allegations about noncitizen voters. They also seek any information about efforts to prevent noncitizen votes from being counted. At least three L.A. County election officials have been asked to appear before a grand jury the day after the election.

It is unclear whether the Justice Department intends to bring criminal charges against anyone. The department does not typically subpoena people whom it regards as targets of a criminal investigation to appear before a grand jury.

Outside groups win access to the disputed list

In another Friday ruling, another federal judge ordered the Trump administration to share the disputed list of names with lawyers for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and the UCLA Voting Rights Project. They want to examine who is on the list and assess its impact on eligible voters.

It will be the first time that a nongovernmental organization will have the opportunity to evaluate the merits of the list of some 20,000 names. The federal government promptly appealed the decision on Friday evening.

The Democratic candidate for California governor, Xavier Becerra, is an advisor to the UCLA Voting Rights Project.

The two groups sued the Homeland Security Department in early October to prevent it from using federal immigration data to challenge state voter rolls. The lawsuit cited examples in other states where the federal government’s data have been proven to mistakenly include thousands of citizens. It argued that the data-matching methods risk disenfranchising or deterring citizens from voting. On top of that, plaintiffs argued, the lists could disproportionately target naturalized citizens who are legally entitled to vote.

The Justice Department argues that there is just as much to lose if the ballots aren’t separated.

“Every ballot cast by an ineligible voter cancels out the vote of an American citizen,” Kiersten V. Pels, a spokesperson for the department, wrote in an email. “The Department makes no apology for protecting those votes.”

In a separate but related 9th Circuit Court decision on Friday, a panel of judges ruled that federal investigations into illegal voting by noncitizens will remain on hold in nine states until after election day.

The judges, all nominated by Democratic presidents, found that the aggressive and public investigations led some citizens to decide not to engage in election-related activities out of fear of being wrongly targeted.

The judges said the investigations, which are looking into alleged illegal voting in past elections, can resume after the midterms wrap up Tuesday.

Riddle, Mulvihill and Swenson write for the Associated Press. AP writer Swenson reported from New York; Mulvihill reported from Haddonfield, N.J.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge said Friday she would open a “formal inquiry” to investigate if attorneys for the Trump administration violated ethical boundaries during a legal dispute about a golf course project — one in a pair of plans that are revealing the breadth of the president’s attempts to mold parts of the District of Columbia to his own vision.

The two cases, unfolding at the same time in the same federal courthouse, also showcase the underlying executive authority claims that lie beneath them — a glimpse into the uses of presidential power under Donald Trump.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes’ declaration that the court would appoint a “special master” into whether agency officials, and Justice Department attorneys, had made misrepresentations in the court is a far cry from her relationship with the government until this month. She had rejected numerous motions from the plaintiffs to step in, saying she trusted the government attorneys.

The cases involved are an impending shutdown and reconfiguration of a historic public golf course and the construction of a monumental arch that, at 250 feet, would be 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty is from its base to the top of the torch. The two projects are barely three miles apart.

The hearing on the golf course change began as other recent ones have: Reyes questioned Associate Atty. Gen. Stanley Woodward Jr. over how Trump’s desires to turn the golf course, near the National Mall, into a world-class facility have become urgent plans that match his public pronouncements.

Reyes stopped the hearing several times and adjourned to her chambers to check previous transcripts of the trial as she questioned Woodward. Among things she wants examined: Was a National Park Service official told to exclude details in a court declaration? Did witnesses offer misleading testimony about the extent of plans in place for the course’s closure and renovation?

At one point, Reyes read the code of conduct to government attorneys on presenting erroneous or false information during a hearing.

Reyes ordered Friday’s hearing after multiple Truth Social posts by Trump indicated that there were plans for the golf course and construction was expected to begin Nov. 15. Trump said the park would be closed for 15 months while work goes on.

The presidential posts, which began Oct. 18, created a tense dynamic in multiple court hearings afterward when officials from the Interior Department, Justice and Park Service could not confirm the existence of the plans under questioning from Reyes. She eventually asked whom she should trust. The Justice Department filed notice Wednesday night that the plans were real.

“On Friday, October 30, 2026, the National Park Service will submit to the National Capital Planning Commission for review a rendering designed by Tom Fazio for a World Class, championship-level golf course that is capable of hosting major events,” the notice said.

Reyes locked in on the filing and Trump’s multiple Truth Social announcements as she questioned Woodward.

At one point, as they talked about plans that Woodward said came about only this week, he slipped and included tree cutting as part of the preparation for the closure.

Reyes responded immediately: “News flash.” She allowed him to correct himself that the tree cutting, which occurred earlier this month, was not part of the plan to close the East Potomac Park Golf Course.

The golf course lawsuit was one of two cases in court Friday dealing with the Trump administration’s push to expand its executive authority as the president remakes the federal areas of the capital near the National Mall and along the Potomac River.

Three courtrooms away, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan was to hold a hearing on a motion asking that she call a temporary halt to plans to begin construction as early as Nov. 5 on the memorial arch. The arch is opposed by a small group of veterans and an architectural historian who sued in federal court in Washington, saying Congress must endorse the project.

“The public interest leans heavily against allowing defendants to blaze ahead,” the plaintiffs said in seeking the injunction. “This court should enter a preliminary injunction blocking defendants from beginning construction on Memorial Circle in the hope that they can render the arch a fait accompli before this Court has made a final determination.”

Legal experts who have been watching the numerous cases underway say that what might appear at first glance to be vanity projects are in truth cases that test the limits of presidential power.

Past administrations pursued legal theories that were sometimes legally sound, sometimes not, said David Super, law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.

“But there was always the assumption that you would try to do things that were legal,” he said. “What we’re seeing here now is that if you think the federal courts can’t stop you,” you can break the law.

That’s ”going to do long-term damage to the country,” Super said.

Fields writes for the Associated Press.

Voters decide four runoff contests for Superior Court seats on Nov. 3, choosing who will preside over criminal and civil cases across the region.

Seat 131

The candidates

• Donna Tryfman, a deputy public defender, serves in the major cases unit, where she handles homicide and other high-profile defendants. She also has extensive experience in juvenile cases.
• David Ross is an alternate in the Torrance branch of the public defender’s office and also works in Bellflower and Long Beach. He claims to have represented more than 10,000 clients at hearings and in trials.

Dive deeper

The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. rates both attorneys as “qualified” for office. Ross said his mix of legal and life experience and his time as a journalist, when he “listened to real people, gathered the facts and told objective stories,” provide a unique perspective. Tryfman has served as a Superior Court judge pro tem, handling traffic and small claims cases. She has proctored teen courts at Dorsey and Hamilton high schools.

Seat 64

The candidates

• Maria Ghobadi is an L.A. County deputy district attorney. As a child, Ghobadi fled Iran with her family during the Islamic Revolution and settled in Southern California. She joined the L.A. County district attorney’s office in 2015 and has handled misdemeanors, felonies and domestic violence cases. She’s spent seven years in the gang homicide division.
• Rhonda Haymon is an L.A. County deputy public defender. She grew up in Southern California and became an attorney in 2001. She started in the Orange County public defender’s office before moving to L.A. County, where she’s spent 23 years as a deputy public defender. She has been assigned to a restorative justice drug court and consulted on police misconduct cases.

Dive deeper

The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. ranked Ghobadi as “well qualified” and Haymon as “qualified.”

Seat 87

The candidates

• David DeJute, who defended President Obama against the so-called birther claims, spent a decade as vice president of litigation at Sony Pictures Entertainment. He now works in litigation at a private firm. An adjunct professor at Pepperdine’s Caruso School of Law, he’s taught ethics, antitrust, copyright and patent law. After last year’s wildfires, he returned as director of the disaster relief clinic, where he instructed students who provided pro bono legal services to victims of the Palisades and Eaton fires.
• Anthony “A.J.” Bayne’s background includes nearly two decades serving in the Compton Courthouse, where he for a time served as deputy in charge. He’s now handling serious felony cases at the Torrance branch. Bayne is an inventor, with patent-pending applications for artificial intelligence tools that automate legal workflows. One helps with closing arguments; another uses court reporter transcripts to generate cross-examination questions.

Dive deeper

DeJute is rated “qualified” to serve by the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. Bayne is rated a notch higher, “well qualified.”

Seat 65

The candidates

• Justin Allen Clayton is in charge of the Inglewood branch of the public defender’s office and has defended three cases with life sentences. Clayton said a priority is improving court efficiency through pretrial preparation and “firm but fair enforcement of deadlines.” Clayton said running a public defender branch office gives him a “comprehensive understanding” of the courtroom.
• Anna Slotky Reitano represented juvenile and adult clients, many of them accused of felonies, before joining the county counsel’s office. Reitano focused on mental health diversion and treatment, aiming to support rehabilitation when possible. A former child actor, she volunteers with local schools and, according to her website, mentors “future lawyers” through moot court competitions.

Dive deeper

The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. considers both qualified to serve.

US District Judge Richard Stearns sided with 25 states and the District of Columbia which sued the administration.

A federal judge has ruled against enforcing a new rule by the administration of US President Donald Trump that would require chronically ill people on Medicaid, a public health insurance programme for low-income individuals, to prove themselves “medically frail” to qualify for work exemptions.

US District Judge Richard Stearns blocked the rule on Thursday, siding with 25 states and the District of Columbia, which had sued the Trump administration in June over the change, arguing that it unlawfully limits exemptions for people with serious medical conditions.

The law says the definition of medically frail must include people who are blind or disabled, have substance use disorders or disabling mental disorders, have certain disabilities that significantly impair daily activities, or have serious or complex medical conditions.

‘Significantly impair’ abilities

But the administration’s rule went further, requiring people in those categories to show that their conditions also “significantly impair” their ability to comply with the law’s work requirements.

The plaintiffs argued that the stricter rule would prevent eligible Americans from accessing the care they need, and that it oversteps the law’s text.

“The states have met their burden of showing irreparable harm for which monetary damages would provide inadequate compensation – they face the burden of costly and intensive alterations to their eligibility verification systems,” Stearns said in his 16-page ruling.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the agency that adopted the rule, declined to comment.

Medicaid is a public health insurance programme for low-income people, funded by state and federal governments.

Two restrictions upheld

Starting January 1, 2027, Medicaid expansion enrollees aged 19 to 64 must show that they work or do community service at least 80 hours a month, or are in school at least half the time. There are exceptions for those considered medically frail or in addiction treatment programmes, among others.

Notably, while the ruling will make it easier for some Medicaid recipients with qualifying medical conditions to obtain an exemption from the new work requirements, Stearns’s decision does not strike down the work requirements as unlawful.

Stearns serves in the District of Massachusetts and was appointed by President Bill Clinton.

His ruling upheld two other federal restrictions on how states can verify medical frailty that the states and the District of Columbia had also contested.

Trump administration issues more than 100 subpoenas across 13 states as search for alleged noncitizen voters ramps up.

A United States judge has rejected a Department of Justice request to temporarily halt California from counting mail ballots from a list of 20,000 alleged noncitizens just six days before the country’s midterm elections.

US District Judge David Carter’s ruling on Wednesday came as US President Donald Trump expands efforts to search for alleged noncitizen voters, with subpoenas issued in at least 13 states.

“Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch,” Carter wrote on Wednesday.

The judge, a 1998 appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton, said the Justice Department’s last-minute request to exclude more than 20,000 ballots ran afoul of “longstanding constitutional principles mandating that states have control over their elections”.

The Justice Department swiftly appealed the decision to the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals and did not immediately respond to requests for comment by the Reuters news agency.

The Justice Department filed the lawsuit on October 15, a rare intervention in the voting process weeks before Tuesday’s election, when voters will choose which party controls Congress as well as their state and local representatives.

Escalating efforts from Trump

The decision marks the latest setback in Trump’s effort to expand the federal government’s role in elections ahead of the legislative midterms, as his Republican Party fights to retain control of both houses of Congress.

The Trump administration issued more than 100 subpoenas demanding records on tens of thousands of voters in at least 13 states, both Republican- and Democratic-leaning.

Most of the subpoenas Reuters documented were issued to state and local election officials in the past three months, though some date to the start of the year. Many were previously unreported, revealing a federal effort to identify potential noncitizen voters that is broader than publicly known.

It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in US federal elections. Legal experts say the records could be used to contest close midterm results, despite scant evidence that noncitizen voting is widespread.

‘Deeply flawed process’

Also on Wednesday, Democracy Docket, a US media platform that tracks election litigation, reported that the Department of Justice list of alleged noncitizen voters “appears to have been created using a deeply flawed process” that could disenfranchise US citizen voters beyond California.

In a court filing, a government whistleblower revealed that voters were being scrutinised nationwide, not just in California, as part of the federal government’s “Unlawful Voter Initiative” investigation, the group reported. The whistleblower warned that “the current process is knowingly sweeping known US citizens in as potentially ‘unlawful voters’”.

California has said the state’s safeguards against noncitizen voting are robust. It said the Justice Department’s assertions relied on “suspect data” and that complying with its demands would risk disenfranchising eligible voters. Democracy Docket reported that in Los Angeles County, one in four voters on the “noncitizen” list were born in the US.

A federal judge in Los Angeles denied a Trump administration request Wednesday to immediately block California elections officials from counting the ballots of 20,000 voters whose citizenship the administration questions in a blistering opinion.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ruled that the administration’s allegations were “not credible” and that the intervention it sought would violate a host of federal laws, sow chaos in the ongoing midterm election, likely lead to the disenfranchisement of legitimate voters and foster future political meddling in elections.

“This request violates longstanding constitutional principles mandating that states have control over their elections,” Carter wrote. “If [the Trump administration’s] last-minute request for relief were granted, either party could create chaos for their own political purposes to disrupt the election process.”

Carter, an appointee of President Clinton, wrote that never in American history “has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch,” and that, in bringing its suit, the Trump administration was asking the court to “believe that it reigns as a sole sovereign.”

“But California and its people are sovereign, too,” Carter wrote.

Carter’s ruling was the second to deny the Trump administration a temporary restraining order against the state and Los Angeles County this week, after a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the government’s emergency request in a separate order Monday.

Carter ruled following a 3½-hour hearing Tuesday, where a slew of attorneys for the state, county and independent voting rights groups argued against the administration’s demands.

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli — who is the top federal prosecutor in L.A. and argued for the Trump administration at Tuesday’s hearing — did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling Wednesday. After Tuesday’s hearing, he suggested the administration was likely to appeal Carter’s ruling if it didn’t immediately halt the counting of the flagged ballots.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

MINNEAPOLIS — A man who played a major role in defrauding a federal food program in Minnesota was sentenced Wednesday to 30 years in prison, the latest punishment in a sprawling scheme to collect millions of dollars during the COVID-19 pandemic by claiming to have fed needy children.

The depth of fraud in Minnesota — dozens of people have been convicted — has repeatedly drawn the attention of President Trump, who ridiculed the Democratic governor for failing to stop it and partly cited it as grounds for an extraordinary immigration crackdown in the state’s largest cities.

Salim Said operated Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis, which specialized in dishes from Somalia. He was accused of vastly overstating the number of meals when seeking payment for providing food. The government said he was responsible for $44 million in fraud, some of which was committed by others he recruited.

Said was claiming a “ridiculous daily distribution of 6,000 meals” while FBI cameras showed 40 people a day collecting food, prosecutors said in a court filing.

“The defendant and his sites did not serve thousands of children; he served a calculated, lucrative lie,” prosecutors said in court documents.

Said, a native of Somalia, denied the allegations while testifying at trial in 2025. He described his restaurant as a go-to spot for Somali immigrants in “Little Mogadishu” and said many meals were delivered.

“If you’re making good food,” Said told the jury, “people will come to you.”

Said’s attorney didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment on the decades-long sentence ordered by U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel. A sentencing memo filed ahead of the hearing by his lawyer, Samuel Savage, was unavailable to the public.

COVID-19 brought changes to a federal program that typically fed children through schools. Restaurants could participate, and food distribution was extended to places outside schools.

“For 21 consecutive months, Said made thousands of fraudulent reimbursement claims, day after day, month after month,” prosecutors said. “Each submission represented meals purportedly provided to underprivileged children, yet the listed children themselves were entirely fictitious.”

The government said Said hit the jackpot: He bought a $1.2-million home, commercial real estate and an $87,000 pickup truck.

Said was convicted of a raft of charges in 2025, along with Aimee Bock, the leader of a Minnesota nonprofit, Feeding Our Future. She is serving a 42-year prison sentence for devising the overall plan to recruit Said and others to join the federal food program during the pandemic.

State auditors found that the Minnesota Department of Education received numerous complaints about Feeding Our Future, but often told the group to police itself. In January, Gov. Tim Walz said he would not run for reelection after being pounded by Trump about theft in programs that rely on federal cash.

Groups that provide legal services to immigrants filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to stop the Trump administration’s new policy of hiding the locations of tens of thousands of detainees with final deportation orders.

The policy, adopted suddenly last month to expedite deportations, interferes with immigration lawyers’ rights by making it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to locate their clients, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston. It asks a judge to issue an order blocking the “unlawful and inhumane” change.

“No one should be denied a meaningful opportunity to defend their rights because the government has made it impossible for their lawyer to find them,” said Jacquelynne Bowman, executive director of Greater Boston Legal Services, one of the four groups listed as plaintiffs. “This arbitrary new administrative change leaves hundreds of thousands of people at risk of potentially life-altering consequences without essential legal help.”

The lawsuit challenges U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s decision, first reported by the Associated Press, to remove the locations of people facing final removal orders from its Online Detainee Locator System and to instruct staff not to reveal their whereabouts. As of last month, the move affected more than 16,000 of the nearly 69,000 detainees who were in ICE custody.

ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the lawsuit.

The agencies have not publicly confirmed the change, but have said they are prioritizing people with final removal orders for deportation. They have also said they are facing a “historic number of injunctions” from courts blocking their efforts. The agencies have denied that they are disappearing detainees, saying they remain free to make phone calls.

Since 2010, lawyers and family members have used the online system to track detainees as they get moved from facility to facility through ICE’s sprawling detention network.

Approximately 1.4 million people living in the U.S. are subject to final orders of removal, which means an immigration judge has ruled they should be deported and the decision has been upheld on appeal or not appealed.

Those individuals still have several options to challenge the conditions of their detention and looming deportations, including asking to reopen proceedings, seeking relief from removal to third countries and challenging violations of their rights. Federal judges have ruled thousands of times that detainees should be released or granted bond hearings.

Since the change went into effect, lawyers have been unable to find clients and potential clients and have spent “significantly more time” tracking down others, the lawsuit says. Calls to ICE, including to its Detention and Removal Information Line, “lead to long wait times on hold, sudden hang-ups, a general lack of information or no answer at all,” it says.

As a workaround, some lawyers have tried to find their clients through an ICE program that schedules legal calls, but only a small percentage of detention centers use it, the lawsuit says. The result has been delayed or missed legal filings and fewer cases taken, according to the organizations.

The lawsuit argues the change violates the Administrative Procedure Act because it was adopted without explanation and the First Amendment, which protects lawyers’ ability to advise people of their legal rights and seek prospective clients.

Foley writes for the Associated Press.

A federal judge on Tuesday seemed skeptical of a Trump administration request to immediately block California officials from counting about 20,000 ballots from voters whose citizenship the administration questions, but said he would not issue a ruling until Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter questioned how the administration had derived its list of suspect voters, worried about disenfranchising eligible voters, said the demands would represent a “monumental change” to California elections and suggested federal prosecutors bringing the case had other means of holding illegal voters accountable.

But just one day after a federal appeals court rejected the same request, Carter said at the conclusion of a 3½-hour hearing in Los Angeles that he needed more time to rule — except on one related issue.

“This court believes it would be wise — that it would be wise — that any threats to state and county elected employees cease immediately,” he said — a clear reference to federal authorities threatening elections officials with criminal penalties if they count any of the flagged ballots.

After the hearing, First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles who argued on behalf of the Trump administration, said he had made it “abundantly clear that American voters are being disenfranchised in real time,” and that the administration will wait to see what Carter says Wednesday but was likely to appeal the matter back up to the appellate court.

He also denied threatening state officials, despite the Justice Department having sent formal letters to election officials statewide last week warning them of criminal punishments, and Essayli reiterated that position Tuesday.

Carter’s hearing came after Monday’s decision from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — the reverse of what’s normal — because Justice Department attorneys had tried to go over Carter’s head after he didn’t acquiesce to a deadline they’d set for him to rule on their request for a temporary restraining order against the state last week.

However, when the three-judge appellate panel — composed of two appointees of President Trump and one of President Biden — ruled 2-1 Monday that it had no jurisdiction to hear the case given Carter hadn’t yet had the chance, the case returned to Carter’s courtroom.

And there, Carter — an appointee of President Clinton — seemed loath to rush to judgment, despite the Trump administration’s claims of urgency. He said the administration’s method for arriving at its list of potential noncitizen voters was unclear and that he would like to develop the record further, including by bringing in an expert for the court.

“What are these systems? What are the algorithms? How was this derived?” he said.

He also seemed unmoved by the Justice Department’s argument that the ballots must be segregated immediately to prevent noncitizen votes from being counted, and more focused on whether noncitizens who illegally vote can be identified and held accountable while avoiding disenfranchising legitimate voters in the process.

For those who do vote illegally, “you’ve got a remedy, for goodness sakes,” he told Essayli. “Go out and indict.”

The Justice Department sued California, Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan on Oct. 15, two days after Acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter gave Weber and Logan 48 hours to set aside the ballots for the 20,000 flagged voters, whom McCotter described as “likely noncitizens.”

During the hearing, Essayli argued on behalf of the Trump administration that its demands on California and L.A. County were not onerous, could be complied with easily and did not call for ballots to go uncounted. Essayli said the federal government was in court “on a very narrow request for an injunction to separate ballots of those suspected of being noncitizens” only until the state can prove their citizenship.

He argued that the “reliability and credibility” of the federal government process for flagging the 20,000 voters is unquestionable — while also telling Carter, “We’re never going to stand here and tell you that everything is 100%.” He said every vote counts, as some elections “are decided by a handful of votes,” and that the federal government is simply asking California not to break existing federal law barring noncitizens from voting.

“We’re not telling California what they have to do. We’re telling them what they can’t do, which is just count these ballots without doing more to ensure whether they’re citizens or not,” Essayli said.

Essayli — who has aggressively sparred with California officials on social media for weeks — also argued to the court that the federal government has maintained a collaborative “tone” since first asking the state to segregate the ballots, and that he was surprised at how “adversarial” state elections officials have been on the issue.

Attorneys for Weber and the state said the Trump administration’s demand on the state “distorts several legal doctrines beyond recognition” and is clearly illegal, particularly during an ongoing election. They said the administration has provided no evidence that the 20,000 voters aren’t citizens, and has used “data and methods known to be unreliable.”

Michael Cohen, a deputy attorney general for the state, said the Trump administration questions California law that allows voters to attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury, while ignoring the fact that standard was set not by the state but by Congress.

Anne Bellows, another deputy attorney general, said California has an established framework for running elections, and the Trump administration is trying to “sweep it off the table and replace it with a new, unclear procedure in which the federal government can issue a list and require California to change the way a subset of its voters’ ballots are received, and whether or not they are tabulated,” which she said was illegal and a “recipe for disenfranchisement” of thousands of legitimate voters.

“The stakes here are enormous,” she said.

Attorneys for Logan said the Trump administration has made its demands “without any credible argument” as to how it is legal, that the “proposed remedy” it is demanding from the state is “vague and unworkable,” and that if it wants to question California’s existing processes, “the proper audience for that argument” is Congress — not the federal court.

Several attorneys for voting and civil rights groups also argued against the Trump administration during the hearing, including by arguing that its reliance on third-party data sets — including from Lexis Nexis — was not a trustworthy way of identifying whether voters are citizens.

The litigation is just one part of a much wider battle by the Trump administration to intervene in state-run elections nationwide, and particularly in California, including on the notion that state elections have insufficient guardrails to prevent noncitizens from voting. Elections experts say such fraud occurs, but is exceedingly rare.

While the 9th Circuit panel’s unsigned ruling Monday rejected the Trump administration’s appeal for lack of jurisdiction, both judges in the majority — Mark J. Bennett, a Trump appointee, and Gabriel P. Sanchez, the Biden appointee — wrote independently to make clear that they would have rejected the case on its merits too.

They said it ran afoul of federal law barring interventions in voting in the immediate lead-up to elections, and the U.S. Constitution, which reserves control of elections for the states and oversight for Congress, not the executive branch.

Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, the other Trump appointee on the panel, also wrote independently in dissent — arguing the federal government must “have the power to stop this potential attack on the integrity of our elections.”

Carter previously rejected an administration lawsuit demanding California’s unredacted voter rolls as “unprecedented and illegal” — a decision similar to those made by dozens of other federal judges in other states. Federal prosecutors recently charged 28 lawful permanent residents in California with election-related crimes, including illegally registering to vote. Some of those charged expressed confusion, said they had no recollection of registering or had never voted.

There are more than 23 million registered voters in California.

Last week, Justice Department officials sent letters to election officials in counties across California demanding they sequester any flagged ballots in their jurisdictions, and warning them that they could face criminal penalties if they don’t. State officials denounced the letters as a legally baseless intimidation tactic.

Federal judges also have slapped back executive orders in which President Trump demanded new nationwide voter ID and citizenship requirements, and blocked a Trump administration plan to empower the U.S. Postal Service to vet mail ballots for the first time.

Beyond the courts, Democrats and voting rights groups have been strategizing for months on how to prevent the Trump administration from interfering in the midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress. The Trump administration has said it is merely trying to enforce the law and ensure that noncitizens do not illegally vote and negate the ballots of U.S. citizen voters.

Oct. 27, 2026 12:06 PM PT

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Tuesday scolded the Justice Department for its unorthodox handling of a criminal case against two former FBI officials accused of making false statements to Congress about their knowledge of a laptop the Justice Department says belonged to Hunter Biden, the son of former President Biden.

U.S. Magistrate Zia Faruqui struck from the record an amended criminal complaint filed in the middle of the night by the Justice Department that added a new obstruction charge against the two former officials, Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides. Such charging documents require sign-off from a judge that probable cause exists that a crime was committed by a defendant, and this complaint lacked that.

“It is not our court’s practice — and I think it is appropriately not our practice — that unsigned complaints are filed on the docket,” Faruqui said.

He later added: “I want to know why the United States is reticent or averse to putting before a probable cause determination that you must believe is righteous. Why today on this one case have you changed the entire history of how you charge cases?”

The dismissal of the superseding complaint was an embarrassing setback for a Justice Department that has undertaken a series of splashy and politically charged investigative actions in the run-up to next week’s midterm elections. But the original false statements case against the former officials, announced Friday, remained intact as Faruqui proceeded Tuesday with a preliminary hearing.

The case says officials falsely minimized what they knew

The case accuses the former officials of falsely playing down their knowledge about a laptop the Justice Department says Hunter Biden abandoned at a computer repair shop in 2019.

But beyond that, it represents a Trump administration broadside against a since-disbanded FBI task force that was set up to monitor foreign influence. Congressional Republicans have long criticized the task force, saying it tried to discredit their own investigations into the Biden family.

Defense lawyers were set to challenge the case at the preliminary hearing Tuesday in Washington’s federal court, including by highlighting the unusual fact that the ex-FBI officials were charged via a criminal complaint signed by a magistrate judge rather than an indictment voted on by a grand jury. The Justice Department repeatedly has struggled in high-profile cases to persuade grand juries in the nation’s capital to return indictments.

Hours before the hearing, the Justice Department added a new obstruction charge that said the former officials’ alleged false statements allowed them to avoid questioning about their knowledge of Hunter Biden and impeded an investigation by House lawmakers into the Bidens.

“What is going on at the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office?” lawyers for Floris asked in a statement early Tuesday. “In the middle of the night, the government filed an unsigned and unsworn complaint attempting to fix the issues with their original charge against Ms. Floris and adding a new charge just as meritless as the first one.”

“In our combined decades of DOJ service,” the lawyers said, “we have never seen or even heard of something like this being filed.”

It is a very intricate saga

The prosecution, a rare Justice Department criminal case against a former employee, revisits a tangled saga that roiled the final weeks of the 2020 race after the New York Post revealed the existence of a laptop it said had been dropped off by the younger Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop about a year earlier.

The Post said it obtained a hard drive of the laptop from Rudy Giuliani, a close ally of President Trump, and reported on some of the contents of the computer, including emails that appeared to show some of Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.

The curious circumstances of the laptop’s discovery raised concerns among Democrats and former intelligence officials about the possibility of Russian involvement, particularly when the Trump administration’s own intelligence community had assessed that Moscow was attempting to undermine the candidacy of Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who went on to defeat Trump in 2020, and as Giuliani had traveled abroad looking for dirt on the Bidens.

But Trump’s then-national intelligence director, John Ratcliffe, quickly sought to quell speculation about the laptop’s provenance by saying there were no signs it had anything to do with Russian actors. The FBI said it had nothing to add to Ratcliffe’s statement and investigated the younger Biden on gun and tax charges that later resulted in felony convictions. President Biden pardoned his son in late 2024.

The accused led the Foreign Influence Task Force

The FBI officials under scrutiny, Floris and Benavides, were leaders of the Foreign Influence Task Force, which was established in the first Trump administration to police influence campaigns staged by Russia and other nations aimed at sowing discord, undermining democracy and spreading disinformation.

In that capacity, the FBI officials briefed Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson in August 2020 as the lawmakers were doing their own investigation into Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine. News of the briefing leaked, and the senators lashed out at the FBI, saying their efforts to scrutinize the Biden family had been discredited and falsely linked to Russian disinformation.

The criminal complaint accuses them of lying to lawmakers in 2023 by denying contemporaneous knowledge of the Biden laptop or participating in internal FBI conversations about it. Their lawyers have denied any allegations of wrongdoing.

The task force was disbanded in February 2025 by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Tucker, Kunzelman and Richer write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is attempting to prosecute James Comey for what it calls a decade-old leak of classified information, an effort the former FBI director’s lawyers immediately dismissed as legally invalid and outside the legal time limit for when the Justice Department can file a criminal indictment.

The allegations from the Justice Department were revealed Monday in newly unsealed court documents that shed light on a closed-door fight that represents an unmistakable escalation in the administration’s targeting of Comey, a longtime critic and foe of President Trump who has faced two other criminal cases since the Republican returned to the White House last year.

The effort to prosecute Comey is also part of a series of politically charged investigative actions the department has undertaken in the run-up to next week’s midterm elections.

“Well, they’re back — again,” Comey said in a video statement Monday. “It would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice — one that we cannot become numb to. Nothing’s changed with me; I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid of these people — and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary.”

The Justice Department said it had filed what’s known as a “criminal information” to extend the statute of limitations for charges in the case.

“Filing a criminal information to toll the statute of limitations is a widely recognized practice in federal court and has been approved by multiple Circuit Courts of Appeals. This is an ongoing criminal investigation, and we will not comment further,” a department spokesperson said.

Asked about the Comey case, Trump told reporters upon arriving back to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland late Monday following his rally in Mississippi that “I don’t know much about it. I just heard about it.”

He added, “He’s a dirty cop, James Comey. But I know nothing about it.”

An information can be filed without the approval of a judge or a grand jury’s finding of probable cause to a court. Comey’s lawyers made clear that they intend to fight the charges as invalid because the Justice Department did not file an indictment, which must be voted on by a grand jury, inside the 10-year statute of limitations required under the law.

“For the third time in little more than one year, the Department of Justice has attempted to charge Mr. Comey with a federal crime. Mr. Comey steadfastly maintains his innocence,” his attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, said in a statement.

The allegation was previously investigated

The latest allegation concerns an October 2016 New York Times story related to a secret court order that required Yahoo to scan emails for messages potentially linked to a foreign terrorist organization. The story cited two government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the order from a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that Yahoo was barred from publicly disclosing.

Federal authorities, including prosecutor John Durham, began investigating the disclosure in early 2017. Durham, who later investigated the FBI’s conduct as it scrutinized potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, wrote a classified memo in December 2018 recommending no criminal charges against anyone in connection with the disclosure, Comey’s attorneys said in a recent court filing.

In January 2019, the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia opened a second investigation of the same matter under the code name “Tropical Vortex.” But that investigation was closed without any charges filed in February 2020.

“Both times the Government determined that no charges should be brought against anyone. Now, ten years after the article was published, the Government filed an “Information” against Mr. Comey that was not approved by a judge nor issued by a grand jury. It purports to charge Mr. Comey with crimes that he did not commit,” Fitzgerald said.

Prosecutors in a newly unsealed filing said investigators found evidence that Comey “sought to correct misinformation which had appeared in the press by way of Reuters the day before” that New York Times story was published, directed his staff to speak to a journalist at the newspaper related to accuracy concerns “and thereby illegally transferred classified information.”

The criminal information was filed under seal on Oct. 5, 10 years after the 2016 story was published. “But,” Comey’s lawyers said, “the applicable statute of limitations explicitly demands an indictment within 10 years of the offense; an information does not suffice.”

They have asked a judge to dismiss the information, a request that is still pending.

Trump and Comey have a long and uneasy history

The first criminal case against Comey, filed in federal court in Virginia, accused him of having lied to Congress in 2020 but was dismissed by a judge who concluded that the prosecutor who brought the charges was illegally appointed. A separate pending indictment charges the former FBI director with threatening Trump through an Instagram photo of seashells in the numerical arrangement of “86 47,” a case Comey has sought to dismiss.

The prosecutions are part of a Trump retribution campaign that has even extended to Comey’s daughter, Maurene, who was fired from her job as a Justice Department prosecutor in New York last year in a termination that a federal judge on Monday ruled was illegal.

Comey was the FBI director when Trump took office in 2017, having been appointed by then-President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and serving before that as a senior Justice Department official in President George W. Bush’s Republican administration.

But the relationship was strained from the start, including after Comey resisted a request by Trump at a private dinner to pledge his personal loyalty to the president — an overture that so unnerved the FBI director that he documented it in a contemporaneous memorandum.

Trump fired Comey in May 2017 amid an FBI investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s campaign. That inquiry, later taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller, found that while Russia interfered in the 2016 election and the Trump team welcomed the help, there was insufficient evidence to prove a criminal collaboration.

The two men have been bitterly at odds ever since Comey’s firing.

Comey in 2018 published a memoir, “A Higher Loyalty,” that painted Trump in deeply unflattering ways, likening him to a mafia don and characterizing him as “untethered to truth.” Trump, for his part, has repeatedly claimed that Comey should face charges for “treason” — an accusation Comey dismissed as “dumb lies” — and called him an “untruthful slime ball.”

The Justice Department has made a series of splashy moves in recent weeks , including a criminal complaint last Friday charging two former FBI officials with lying to Congress about their participation in investigations concerning Hunter Biden, and the search by federal agents of the Washington home of Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

Tucker, Richer and Kunzelman write for the Associated Press. AP writer Will Weissert contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge agreed Monday to extend an order blocking the Trump administration’s renovation plans for a century-old public golf course in the nation’s capital.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes issued a preliminary injunction that temporarily bars the government from removing or damaging any additional trees on the East Potomac Golf Course. The administration must give 10 days’ notice in writing before making any “irreparable modification” to any “forms or features” of the course while the lawsuit is active.

“The Court earlier stated, ‘I am not the Lorax. I do not speak for the trees.’ The Court still does not speak for the trees. It speaks only for the rule of law,” Reyes wrote.

Reyes expressed astonishment that the government has asked her to “not to believe the sitting President” and disregard Trump’s statements about his plans for the golf course renovations.

“This started as a case about golf. That good walk spoiled. But it has become much more,” Reyes wrote. “It now forces the Court to reconcile assertions by President Donald J. Trump with the sworn testimony of multiple government employees and the argument of senior Department of Justice attorneys.”

On Oct. 18, Trump announced plans on social media to close the golf course for 15 months, starting Nov. 15, and redevelop the 106-year-old park and course despite a court challenge by the D.C. Preservation League and two golfers. A day later, Trump posted that the work would start immediately.

Reyes, who was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Biden, previously ordered the administration to suspend work on the project until at least Oct. 26.

Trump was asked about the case late Monday night as he arrived back at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland following a rally in Mississippi and indicated that work on the golf course will proceed as planned.

“It has the go-ahead. The judge feels that she would like to approve it as it goes along. And I didn’t know she was an architectural critic of golf courses,” Trump said sarcastically.

He added of the judge: “She knows nothing about that, so we’ll appeal that” while also calling his planned overhaul a “beautiful project for Washington, D.C.”

Trump later in a social media post reiterated a statement he made Oct. 18 that the course would close for 15 months. “We are closing the East Potomac Golf Course Site as scheduled on November 15th in order to renovate and rebuild for Competitive (with other such projects!), Safety, Modernization, and Aesthetic reasons,” he wrote.

The plaintiffs challenging the project, DC Preservation League and two golfers, claim the work is inflicting irreversible damage. At a hearing, the judge excoriated the government after workers cut down at least 400 trees over a holiday weekend with little notice to the plaintiffs.

The course renovation project is part of the Republican president’s aggressive campaign to leave his personal imprint on Washington’s historic landscape. Those plans include construction of a huge ballroom at the White House, a massive arch and the creation of a National Garden of American Heroes in West Potomac Park. DC Preservation League is part of a coalition of organizations, including the Cultural Landscape Foundation and one D.C. resident, who have filed lawsuit challenging those plans.

Reyes rejected the administration’s request for her to recuse herself from the case. The government questioned her impartiality and accused her of engaging in “egregious” behavior from the bench during an emergency hearing in the case.

In Monday’s ruling Reyes stressed that she had hoped the parties could have resolved their dispute without judicial intervention. She noted that she had denied plaintiffs’ previous requests.

“The Court would much prefer not to have to resolve Lorax v. Once‑ler redux. Indeed, for months, the Court declined to intervene,” she wrote.

But she said the government forced her hand by bulldozing hundreds of trees without any notice, doing “what it assured all it would not do.”

Reyes quoted from a golf-related opinion written by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon, in stressing the temporary nature of her own decision.

“Here, golf and government have again clashed,” Reyes wrote. “By issuing this preliminary injunction, the Court does not end the round: it simply marks the ball until the parties can fully and fairly litigate this case.

Democracy Forward President & CEO Skye Perryman, whose organization is co-counsel representing the plaintiffs, called the ruling “a big win that will rightly protect East Potomac Park from further irreparable harm.” She added, in an email, that the move will stop activities “while the case continues, and we are eager to argue the case in court.”

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Gary Fields and Will Weissert contributed to this report.

Oct. 26, 2026 9:23 AM PT

NEW YORK — The Trump administration last year illegally fired Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, from her job as a federal prosecutor in New York, a federal judge ruled Monday.

Maurene Comey, who was an assistant U.S. attorney for a decade, was illegally fired in July 2025 despite her work on some of the nation’s highest-profile cases and consistently receiving “the highest accolades from supervisors and peers alike,” Judge Jesse M. Furman found.

After her firing, Comey sued the Justice Department and others, saying her termination violated the constitutional separation of powers, the 1st Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the 5th Amendment.

She asserted that she was fired because she was the daughter of James Comey, whom President Trump has long viewed as an enemy, or because of her perceived political affiliation and beliefs, the judge noted.

Furman rejected the government’s claim that Comey could be fired because federal prosecutors exercise the president’s “conclusive and preclusive” powers.

He said the government’s claim that Congress is barred from regulating the removal of federal prosecutors “flies in the face of nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent.”

Furman added: “Indeed, to accept Defendants’ argument would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system.”

The firing violated the separation of powers, the Administrative Procedure Act and her 5th Amendment due process and statutory rights, the judge ruled.

Furman reserved judgment on Comey’s 1st Amendment claim pending further arguments to be submitted by each side, though he said he was inclined to dismiss the claim because it was largely moot since she is now in private practice and no longer seeks actual reinstatement.

The judge granted Comey retroactive reinstatement and back pay from the date of her firing through Dec. 20 to “make her whole” and ensure that she doesn’t suffer adverse employment consequences for the “unlawful termination.”

Comey’s lawyers, Ellen Blain, Nicole Gueron, Deepa Vanamali and Margaret Donovan, lauded the ruling.

“This hard-earned victory belongs to Ms. Comey, to all civil servants, and to all fighting for the rule of law,” they said in a statement. “As the Court correctly held, to accept the government’s argument about unlimited executive power ‘would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system.’ This decision reaffirms our bedrock system of checks and balances: the President is not above the law.”

The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The Justice Department during the Trump administration has fired scores of career employees, including prosecutors and FBI agents, who participated in investigations of President Trump or who were perceived as opposed to the administration’s agenda. Some of those firings have also resulted in federal lawsuits.

The firing of Maurene Comey was seen as particularly personal, given her father’s longtime adversarial relationship with Trump.

The president fired James Comey as FBI director in May 2017 as the bureau was investigating ties between Russia and the Republican’s successful 2016 campaign for the White House. Trump in the years since has repeatedly called for Comey to be jailed, and his Justice Department has worked with mixed success to make that happen.

An earlier criminal case accusing James Comey of having lied to Congress in 2020 was dismissed by a judge who concluded that the prosecutor who filed the charges was illegally appointed. A separate pending indictment charges the former FBI director with threatening Trump through an Instagram photo of seashells in the numerical arrangement of “86 47,” a case he has sought to dismiss that some legal experts have greeted with skepticism.

Sisak, Tucker, Durkin Richer and Neumeister write for the Associated Press. Tucker and Durkin Richer reported from Washington.

My fellow Californians, let us begin with an intelligence test.

Our great state has been voting since early October. Folks have been mailing in their ballots, dropping them off at collection sites and even showing up at in-person centers.

So raise your hand if you know — or even just assume — elections officials have been doing something with those ballots as they arrive, other than just throwing them in a pile.

Congratulations, hand-raisers. You are now officially smarter than the entire U.S. Department of Justice. Or at least more honest.

On Sunday, the lawyers for the DOJ managed to get a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to convene a rare emergency hearing because, OMG, people are actually voting and California is processing ballots!

Who could have possibly known?

Even though it’s literally law that counties count ballots in a timely manner; even though it’s happened in every other election; even though the daily tallies of how many ballots are received are posted online by the secretary of State; even though there are live camera feeds of ballots being processed in Los Angeles — somehow the U.S. government didn’t know this normal election procedure was happening, it claimed.

It wasn’t until late Friday, when DOJ lawyers read a filing by California DOJ lawyers laying out that L.A. is, like, actually opening mail-in ballots, that the U.S. DOJ realized that ballots are being opened. About 600,000 so far in L.A.

That seemed “absurd on its face,” argued California Deputy Solicitor Gen. Samuel P. Siegel.

Armed with this previously unknowable information, Trump’s lawyers were begging the appeals court to take their flimsy, constitutionally questionable case away from the judge who had already promised to rule on their requests on Tuesday and immediately give them an injunction to further their election conspiracy claims.

Most folks are aware of the background of this drama, but here’s the quick recap.

President Trump for years has falsely but incessantly claimed that Democrats are colluding with undocumented people to help them sneak into the country in exchange for illegally voting in mass numbers for Democrats. This is not happening, but the president is obsessed with this conspiracy, so much so that he is weaponizing the Department of Justice to attack states, California in particular, in a bid to prove his delusions correct, and perhaps as a bonus, undermine democracy.

A few months ago, the DOJ came to the state of California and claimed it had a list of 190,000 people it believed were illegally registered to vote. That list has since dropped to 20,000. But with all the investigative power of the government hard at work on this, only 28 people in California have been indicted by the feds during this no-holds-barred effort, and it looks as though not all of those cases will hold up.

Undeterred, Trump lawyers tried to get a California judge to order the state (and Los Angeles) to set aside ballots that it claims to have doubts about. They asked the judge in that case for a temporary restraining order forcing L.A. County to do that, and the judge agreed to rule on that request early next week, in an already-expedited fashion.

But then the Trump lawyers learned about all that ballot processing and demanded the judge instead rule by Saturday afternoon — though the reasoning here seems iffy. When the federal judge assigned to the case didn’t rule by Saturday, an absurd ask that didn’t even allow enough time for lawyers to file briefs, the feds ran to the 9th Circuit, claiming that failing to rule on Saturday was a de facto denial of their request.

Basically, it seems the Trump lawyers were arguing two things. First, that once ballots are counted, they can’t be uncounted, and if there are illegal ballots, that hurts all voters. Sure, OK.

But again, there is no evidence this is happening in any widespread fashion, and the lists of potential vote scofflaws compiled by the government have been shown to be error-ridden. They may also involve the use of a mysterious non-government “third party” to gather the information that not even the Trump lawyers could identify Sunday.

DOJ lawyers also claimed they had just learned that once a ballot is taken out of the envelope, there was no way to reconnect that ballot to the voter who cast it — because our votes are anonymous. Therefore, the 20,000 ballots had to be grabbed before they were separated from the documents inside.

The lawyers did not explain why they needed to know how a person voted to confirm they illegally voted. The envelopes are retained by county elections officials, but apparently the Trump lawyers feel it’s critical to tie them to particular votes.

But here’s the thing — there are simply not enough illegal voters to sway a Los Angeles election, or a California one for that matter. We have a system to ferrets out problematic ballots right now, and a separate criminal system that can hold illegal voters accountable. Two weeks before an election isn’t a time to demand ballots be withheld — unless you’re trying to undermine trust.

The appellate judges did not seem impressed by the federal laywers’ arguments, questioning more than once if the 9th Circuit even had jurisdiction since states are in charge of elections, not the federal government. There was even some reading of the 10th Amendment. You know, the one the don’t-tread-on-me types love that reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States.”

We should expect a ruling sooner rather than later, but the real question remains, why the emergency? The DOJ is involved in another voting lawsuit in Washington, D.C., where the plaintiffs, led by the UCLA Voting Rights Project, have asked for a restraining order of their own stopping the government from creating national lists of who it thinks should vote, and using janky, secretive information gathering to do it.

It’s also true that the original case was reassigned from a Trump-appointed judge to one appointed by Bill Clinton. There has been speculation the switch may have been viewed unfavorably by the feds, though the Clinton-appointed judge, David O. Carter, was given the case because of his experience in the subject matter.

The D.C. restraining order could be decided in the next few days. I’m not saying the cases are related, or that the judge should or does matter, but the Trump DOJ’s argument in California is basically that its list of 20,000 is really solid, reliable information.

If the D.C. federal judge rules first that the government information gathering is potentially both an overreach and sloppy, it makes it that much harder for another judge, or the appellate court for that matter, to rule that the list is so critical that they must step in.

So maybe there is an emergency.

Just not the one the government is claiming.

President Javier Milei’s role in cryptocurrency launch does not translate into a fraudulent scheme, judge says.

An Argentinian federal judge has dropped a criminal investigation into President Javier Milei and his sister Karina Milei over the collapse of a cryptocurrency he promoted online.

Judge Marcelo Martinez de Giorgi issued the decision on Friday, according to court records, ending an inquiry into Milei’s role in the launch of the $Libra token, which crashed after a brief rally.

“The reported events do not constitute a criminal offence,” the judge said in a ruling. He also wrote that investor losses and the rise and fall in the currency’s price were insufficient to establish fraud.

In his ruling, Martinez de Giorgi said that Milei’s institutional standing could have given the launch “greater impact” when he posted about it, but that does not translate into a fraudulent scheme.

Javier Milei recommended the little-known meme coin in a post on X in February 2025. He later deleted the post and denied any link to the cryptocurrency, whose value soon plunged.

The judge also dismissed an investigation into US businessman Hayden Davis, who described himself as a “launch adviser” for the token. Davis has acknowledged that he held close to $100m after the crash and denies any wrongdoing.

“For the first time in history, a President of the Nation was investigated with complete freedom, resulting in absolute proof of his innocence,” read a post shared on X by the official presidential office.

“The question that remains is this: Who will take responsibility for having wasted Argentine taxpayers’ money and the President of the Nation’s time in a failed attempt at an institutional coup?”

Milei’s friendship with Trump

Milei is one of US President Donald Trump’s closest allies. Trump firmly backed him a year ago and has called him his “favourite president”.

Trump made clear the support hinged on a victory for Milei’s party.

“I’m with this man because his philosophy is correct,” he said ahead of a White House lunch with the Argentinian leader last year. “If he wins, we’re staying with him. And if he doesn’t win, we’re gone.”

Earlier this month, Milei urged Trump to emerge stronger from the US midterm elections, saying the vote mattered for the West as a whole.

Austerity at home

Since taking office in 2023, Milei has laid off thousands of state employees, shut ministries, cut subsidies and reduced government-funded programmes. The measures were meant to fight high inflation, which has fallen to about 2 percent a month.

Milei says his plan is working, claiming that Argentina has grown for 27 consecutive months and is expanding at four times its historical rate.

When the coin crashed, Milei said he had acted “in good faith” and accused his political rivals of trying to exploit the situation.

Oct. 22, 2026 8:59 AM PT

MIAMI — A federal judge on Thursday ordered President Trump to sit for a deposition in his $10-billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC by Dec. 11.

The order from U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett came as the BBC’s lawyers complained that Trump had delayed his appearance. Attorney Charles Tobin said that with two months left in the discovery period, “we still haven’t been able to depose the plaintiff.”

He noted there was an agreed-upon date of Oct. 16, but that the Republican president canceled it for a “matter of national importance.” Tobin said Trump was in fact campaigning in Georgia that day.

“He was participating in party politics and prioritized that over sitting for the deposition,” Tobin said.

Lett said Trump must sit for a deposition by Dec. 11, or face sanctions up to dismissal of his lawsuit — unless the discovery period was extended past Dec. 18.

The BBC asked the judge last week to compel Trump to appear. The British broadcaster says Trump is trying to delay his appearance until January 2027. The judge has threatened sanctions if Trump fails to comply with the court’s schedule.

Trump, who has often avoided depositions, filed his lawsuit against the BBC last December, seeking $10 billion in damages. He accused the publicly funded broadcaster of defamation as well as deceptive and unfair trade practices related to a documentary, “Trump: A Second Chance.”

The BBC acknowledged that filmmakers spliced together quotes from different sections of the speech Trump delivered to his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, before the storming of the U.S. Capitol, to make it seem he was directly urging violence. The broadcaster apologized over the editing, and the head of the BBC and its top news executive both resigned. The BBC has denied Trump’s claims that it defamed him.

Trump’s lawyers say Jack Smith ‘lacks personal knowledge’ of issues in the case

To bolster its defense, the broadcaster subpoenaed former special counsel Jack Smith earlier this month. Trump’s lawyers argued, in a joint filing asking for a hearing on the matter, that there was no good reason for Smith, who is not a party to the case, to appear.

“Smith lacks any personal knowledge regarding the issues in this matter,” they argued in the filing. “He was not present when President Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech … was made, nor did he participate in its preparation. Smith does not have any personal knowledge regarding President Trump’s state of mind at the time the Speech was given.”

Trump’s side also argued that “Smith’s testimony would be duplicative,” because he published a lengthy report on the events of Jan. 6 and also testified for many hours. “The entirety of his testimony is publicly available,” it argued.

The BBC countered, in the same filing, that there were few more knowledgeable sources about the events of Jan. 6 than Smith, who studied and investigated them for years.

“It is difficult to imagine a more authoritative source on these issues than Mr. Smith, who spent years gathering evidence on those topics with the force of the Justice Department and the power of the grand jury behind him,” the BBC’s lawyers argued.

“No one forced Plaintiff to file this lawsuit and to dispute that his speech on January 6 incited the violence that followed at the Capitol. But as long as he chooses to maintain the case, he cannot commit the fundamental injustice of preventing the BBC from obtaining the evidence it needs to robustly defend itself on every element of his claim…”

When will Trump sit for a deposition?

In a filing Oct. 13, the BBC’s lawyers said they first requested dates for a deposition in July, and followed up repeatedly, with both sides eventually agreeing on Oct. 16.

After weeks of silence, they wrote, “Plaintiff’s counsel responded on September 28, 2026, indicating that ‘the President is no longer available for his deposition on October 16 due to other matters of national importance’ and that counsel would ‘endeavor to provide you with a replacement date by the end of this week.’ He did not.”

They said they were then told that Trump “has no availability whatsoever for a deposition” before discovery is set to close on Dec. 18, and that Trump would instead make himself available the second or third week of January.

Tobin wrote in the filing, “Those delays have flouted the cooperative spirit of discovery and precluded the BBC from obtaining the evidence necessary to robustly litigate its defense.”

Fischer and Noveck write for the Associated Press. Noveck reported from New York.

Homeland Security targets nine states in a push to identify voting fraud, a move critics denounce as tantamount to voter intimidation.

A United States federal judge has ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to halt operations aimed at finding non-citizen voters in nine states ahead of the midterm elections.

The ruling by US District Court Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin said the investigations likely violate a provision of the Voting Rights Act that prohibits voter intimidation. She further said the DHS may have relied on flawed data in its investigations.

That leads to “an objectively reasonable fear of law enforcement entanglements that intimidates citizens from urging or aiding others in exercising their right to vote”, she wrote.

The order applies to federal efforts targeting California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.

The DHS has publicised what it has described as a push to identify individuals who have committed voter fraud, with some local offices posting photos of agents knocking on the doors of suspects.

The operations come as the administration of US President Donald Trump has sought to highlight instances of voter fraud ahead of the November 3 midterm vote.

While there are recorded instances of fraud in every election cycle, such isolated cases remain exceedingly rare.

There has been no evidence to indicate that non-citizen voters have influenced the outcome of any election at any level in the country.

In a statement following Thursday’s ruling, the DHS maintained that its investigations were aimed at “removing aliens who vote and dilute the votes of US citizens”.

“We have no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be US citizens,” it said.

In their lawsuit challenging the DHS’s efforts, the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United, along with the Voto Latino Foundation, San Francisco and Santa Clara County, said that some US citizens felt they were wrongly identified and questioned as part of the investigations.

A lawyer representing the groups said it was “clear from the start that DHS built its lists on bad data, never checked how often it was wrong, and recklessly sent agents to people’s homes weeks before an election”.

Benjamin Farley, the supervisory counsel for democracy defense at the National Immigration Law Center, said the ruling sent a strong message about voter intimidation ahead of the midterm vote.

“Yesterday’s decision is a clear rebuke of the government’s efforts to scare voters away from the polls this November and a reminder that all US citizens – regardless of color, place of birth, or the nationality of their family members – have the right to participate in American elections free of intimidation,” he said.

“No armed federal agent is going to stop us from casting our vote.”