Federal prosecutors have sent grand jury subpoenas to election offices in Los Angeles and Orange counties as part of a criminal investigation into alleged voting by noncitizens, days before the November 3 midterm election, according to CBS News, CalMatters and the Orange County Register. A grand jury subpoena orders a person to turn over records or testify; it does not accuse them of a crime, and a person who receives one may simply have information relevant to the investigation, a U.S. official told NBC News. "Receiving a subpoena doesn't mean you are a target," Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels told CalMatters. "In fact, generally, the DOJ doesn't subpoena targets." Los Angeles County's registrar, Dean Logan, called the department's approach "confrontational" and "adversarial," saying, "Threats and intimidation have no place in elections." In Washington state, Secretary of State Steve Hobbs has refused a separate federal demand to set aside ballots, keeping them uncounted until citizenship is checked, from about 400 voters the department says it identified as noncitizens "with high confidence." Hobbs says a first review found that "many of the persons on your list are United States citizens," though he has not said how many.
What the subpoenas ask for
Three employees of the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder's office, its executive liaison, an assistant registrar-recorder and its records custodian, received subpoenas between October 21 and 24 ordering them to appear at the federal courthouse in Santa Ana on November 4, the morning after Election Day, the Orange County Register reported. The subpoenas seek correspondence between California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter, records of the office's "methods for screening for unlawful voting by aliens," and, according to CalMatters, "records relating to or involving evidence collected by your agency which tends to indicate an alien has voted in a federal election." On Thursday, Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page received a subpoena for unredacted registration records of 60 people, issued "in connection with an official criminal investigation being conducted by the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations." Page said his office would "provide responsive documents," as it did in September for subpoenas covering 20 people; three names appeared in both. CalMatters counted at least four election workers subpoenaed in the past week.
Bloomberg Law reported, citing two people familiar with the matter, that Justice Department leadership directed the four U.S. attorney's offices in California to pursue the subpoenas, and that some of those offices objected to a mandate that seeks to interfere with the election; one of the two said the Los Angeles office of First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli has been eager to investigate officials, including the secretary of state. Department leaders have suggested officials could be liable for aiding and abetting if they do not comply with the department's order to review mail ballots it suspects were cast by noncitizens, Bloomberg Law reported. A spokeswoman for Weber did not comment.
Why now, and the court fight behind it
The Los Angeles subpoenas went out the week before Judge David O. Carter's October 28 ruling, and Orange County's arrived the day after it. Carter's ruling denied the department's emergency request to make California set aside mail ballots from about 20,000 registered voters the government calls likely noncitizens; in it he wrote that threats against election workers "must stop." The department says its list was checked against immigration, Social Security and passport records, and that all 28 people it charged in California this month with registration or voting crimes were on it; CalMatters reported that not all of the 28 had voted. Carter found at that emergency stage that the department had not shown the list to be credible, but he has not ruled on whether the people on it are citizens; a hearing on the list's reliability is set for November 13, with a court-appointed technical expert. The department says it is now doing what Carter described. "To be clear, the district court judge explained that voting unlawfully results in criminal exposure," Pels said. "Consistent with this, California also wrote in its filing that the remedy for unlawful voting is through criminal prosecution. Thus, while DOJ maintains that a civil remedy is still available, all agree that noncitizen voting is properly addressed through criminal law." Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Law School, told CalMatters that prosecutors can argue the investigation is legitimate, but that with five years to bring charges for federal voting crimes, "there is no reason whatsoever for them to demand this information now."
Not every California official has rejected the federal lists. San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow said his investigators are examining 63 registrations that federal officials identified as likely noncitizens, along with separate referrals from the county clerk, adding, "Being named on a list is not proof of a crime."
Washington's answer
In a letter on Monday, Neil Floyd, the acting U.S. attorney for western Washington, and Pete Serrano, the first assistant U.S. attorney for eastern Washington, asked Hobbs to review the list "within 24 hours," according to MS NOW, which quoted the letter (CBS News reported a 48-hour deadline), and to tell election workers not to count ballots from those voters until their citizenship was verified, warning that otherwise "the United States will have no choice but to seek emergency relief." The letter said the 405 people had cast more than 1,500 ballots in past elections, some dating back decades, KPTV reported. Floyd said at a news conference that the department had found "over 400 noncitizens who have voted in Washington, and many of them have voted multiple times," identified "with high confidence," though he did not disclose the evidence, Democracy Docket reported. Floyd also said federal agents had spoken with some of the people flagged, and that some said they had received ballots in the mail and believed they were eligible, the Associated Press reported; the department acknowledged that some people on its list may since have become citizens. Hobbs replied Wednesday that the list was "not reliable." He said it arrived as a PDF of a printed spreadsheet without voter ID numbers or addresses, contained duplicates and included people not currently registered, and that "without individualized proof of ineligibility, it would be both irresponsible and illegal for election officials to decline to process a registered voter's ballot." He invited the department to send that proof, and has said Washington has documented 15 cases of illegal voting since 1982. Profoundd found no lawsuit against Washington as of Friday morning. More than 1.3 million Washington ballots had been returned by Wednesday, CBS News reported.
This article reflects reporting through Friday morning, October 30, 2026. For the California lawsuit and Judge Carter's ruling, see Profoundd's earlier report. Sources: CBS News, October 29; CalMatters, October 29; Orange County Register, October 29; NBC News, October 30; Bloomberg Law, October 29; San Luis Obispo County District Attorney, news release; CBS News on Washington, October 29; Washington Secretary of State, response letter; Democracy Docket; MS NOW; KPTV; the Associated Press via the Anchorage Daily News, October 26.
