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Originally published at Connecticut Centinal.
CBS News 60 Minutes host Lesley Stahl introduced a segment on election integrity Sunday evening by condemning President Donald Trump’s attempt to ensure non-citizens do not vote in the nation’s elections.
“The midterms are just two weeks away, and President Trump is using his power to intimidate the people who run our elections, putting the voting system under remarkable stress,” Stahl said, citing the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) recent lawsuit against the state of California after determining that its voter list reveals more than 20,000 likely aliens are registered to vote in the state.
“[I]t’s the latest in a sequence of actions that has bred an erosion of faith in the integrity of our elections,” Stahl asserted. “Our story focuses on how state and local election officials are being pressured in a way that is stoking that distrust.”
Stahl started her story with video of FBI agents in Fulton, Georgia removing ballots – a scene that was portrayed in the segment as an alarming invasion by federal law enforcement, even though the official she interviewed admitted that “they had a valid warrant, signed by a judge.”
“There are people who feel that the point is to sow distrust about the whole election system,” Stahl said to Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon. “There are very few people who are noncitizens who end up voting very few. Very few. And so therefore what’s the purpose?”
“The point is actually the opposite of what you were saying – it’s not to sow distrust, the distrust is there,” Dhillon replied. “And, so, all of these kinds of crimes are being prosecuted now for the first time – really in volume. And even the Biden administration prosecuted 13 people for non-citizen voting.”
“Thirteen people,” Stahl scoffed. I mean, the numbers are tiny.”
“So, Lesley, we’ve been in office for less than two years,” Dhillon explained. “We’ve had investigations ongoing for over a year, and it takes time. There are literally thousands of them out there that we are looking at.”
The segment was aired the night before the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) – working throughout the state of California – announced Monday it has arrested 11 foreign nationals who live in the United States and are among 28 individuals charged with federal election crimes.
“Today’s arrests are part of ‘Operation Protect the Vote’ – a coordinated effort among all four California-based United States Attorney’s Offices to combat and root out fraud in U.S. elections and protect electoral integrity,” the DOJ stated.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said the arrests “prove what we have been saying,” and asserted that “California is mailing ballots to noncitizens, and they are refusing to comply with federal law, which makes it a crime for noncitizens to vote.”
As Lumen-News reported, in its complaint against California, the DOJ observed that, for each election in the state, California “automatically sends all registered voters vote-by-mail ballots.”
U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche posted Thursday to Truth Social that the DOJ “sent a list to California election officials of more than 20,000 individuals who USCIS [United States Citizenship and Immigration Services] and HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] identified are likely noncitizens and who are on California’s voter rolls.”
“This is of serious concern because California automatically mails ballots to every active registered voter on its voter rolls, whether a voter has requested a mail ballot or not,” the attorney general added, noting that DOJ “provided California an opportunity to self-correct its records and we requested that it segregate the suspected illegal ballots for the upcoming election. California has refused to comply and intends to facilitate noncitizens in voting, which is a violation of federal law.”
“[W]e filed an emergency court action against California seeking to ensure that noncitizens who received ballots in California do NOT vote in the upcoming election,” Blanche wrote. “Election integrity is a top priority for Americans and the Justice Department.”
While Stahl stressed the number of non-citizens voting illegally is “very few” and even “tiny,” according to survey results from Rasmussen Reports, a majority of voters believe non-citizens are illegally registered to vote - leading to a situation that could shift the results of the midterm elections.
The results from a survey of over 1,000 U.S. likely voters found that 57% say it is likely non-citizens are illegally registered to vote in their state, while only 34% believe it is not likely.
