Trump admin demands Washington set aside 400 ballots it claims are from noncitizen voters
An election worker opens voter ballots for the midterm elections at the King County Elections headquarters on Oct. 23, 2026, in Renton, Washington. (David Ryder/Getty Images)
The Justice Department is asking election officials in Washington state to set aside hundreds of ballots it says may belong to noncitizen voters, the latest move by the Trump administration to intervene in a state-run election just days before the midterms.
The move sparked backlash from state officials who said the Justice Department’s intention in publicizing these allegations so close to an election was to create “unfounded suspicion.”
Federal prosecutors in Washington state claimed in a statement Monday that the more than 400 individuals on the list represented “only the tip of the iceberg.” The statement accompanied a letter sent by the state’s two U.S. attorneys demanding that election officials set aside any ballots belonging to individuals on the list. ABC News has not seen the letter.
The Justice Department’s messaging in Washington on Monday echoes steps it took ahead of a lawsuit it filed last week against California, where it has sued to prevent the state from counting more than 20,000 ballots it claims may belong to noncitizen voters.
The Trump administration has promoted a number isolated cases of alleged noncitizen voting in recent weeks as evidence of rampant election fraud. But all available evidence suggests voter fraud and noncitizen voting remains exceedingly rare, and certainly not widespread enough to alter the outcome of any election.
A federal appeals court declined to intervene in that matter and said that the “emergency” the DOJ claimed was in part “self-constructed.”
Local officials in Los Angeles said a sampling of the 20,000 ballots surveyed showed a “high percentage” of people who say they were born in the U.S.
“We saw what happened in California and don’t want Washingtonians to be harassed,” Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said in a statement on Monday responding to the Justice Department’s letter.
Hobbs wrote in his response that at least one of the individuals on the Justice Department’s list dates back to 1994. Since then, 113.5 million primary and general election ballots have been cast in Washington, according to the secretary of state’s office.
“The timing of this request — one week before the General Election — is no doubt intended to cast unfounded suspicion on the results,” Hobbs added. “We are carefully reviewing the request and assessing the information sought to ensure that our response complies with applicable state and federal laws.”
The Kennedy Center on Sept. 2, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Finn Gomez/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Tuesday’s meeting of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ board will now focus exclusively on the “necessary closure” of the center, and not on additional ways to honor President Donald Trump, the Trump administration said in an overnight federal court filing.
In their late-night court filing, Justice Department lawyers included an email sent to the board at 7 p.m. Monday by Kennedy Center official Joe LaFauci, indicating that a separate draft resolution proposing ten new ways to honor Trump would not be considered, and that the board “stands by” its earlier vote to recognize the president.
LaFauci in his email said the update to Tuesday’s agenda was due “to the recently exacerbated structural emergencies” at the center, the court filing said.
Late on Monday night, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick separately posted security video of a partial ceiling collapse that occurred during a rainstorm earlier this month. The video shows a chunk of debris crashing onto an empty red carpet.
“If a performance had been underway, patrons could have been killed,” Lutnick said in his post on social media. “People cannot be allowed to go into this building any longer.”
The center voted in December to add Trump’s name on the outside of the building before a federal judge, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, ordered its removal in May.
The board voted 23-3 last month on a resolution to close the facility for two years as part of a $285 million renovation plan, according to a court filing. The board, members of which were largely appointed by Trump, also voted to add Trump’s name back onto the Kennedy Center building as many as two more times, according to the filing.
While Congress already appropriated $257 million for the project, the board has argued that Trump would raise another $100 million for the center.
The board as it voted last month said it would re-add Trump’s name to the building as the man who “renovated and restored” the center, adding, if a fundraising goal is hit, that it had been endowed by the “Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”
But Cooper is currently weighing whether that would violate a statute prohibiting additional memorials at D.C.’s only memorial to former President John F. Kennedy. Cooper is set to hold a 10 a.m. ET scheduling conference on the future plans for the center and the board is preparing to meet privately at 12:30 p.m. ET.
Trustees are expected to vote on Tuesday afternoon on a measure declaring the Kennedy Center’s main building “unsafe for continued occupancy,” and ordering that it be “closed to patrons forthwith.”
Cooper is also positioned to eventually decide whether the board can move forward with its latest plans to close the center, plans that have taken on new urgency following the ceiling collapse and the new claim of center officials that the entity is quickly running out of money to remain operational.
An attorney for Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), who has filed a lawsuit challenging the planned closure and renaming, praised the decision not to move forward with another resolution honoring the president.
“Trump & cronies back down on HALF of the crazy,” lawyer Norm Eisen wrote on social media on Tuesday. But Eisen added that the plan to immediately close the center amounts to “foolishness” that he said Beatty’s legal team will fight.
Programming at the Kennedy Center, which normally funds its operations, effectively ended in early July. Ticket sales had reportedly been dropping off for months prior, following the board’s vote last December to rename the facility. Cooper ruled that move unlawful in May.
Despite Congress-approve funding that’s already on the table, center officials last weekend again underscored the need to honor Trump so that he might be enticed to lead additional efforts at raising money and oversee the renovation.
“The Board understands that without such appropriate recognition it is unlikely that President Trump will provide the fundamental oversight of the renovation of the main building and lead the fiscal rescue of the Center,” read the text of a draft resolution that is — according to LaFauci — no longer up for consideration today.
Jay Clayton, US attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), during the Bloomberg Global Credit Forum in New York, US, on Wednesday, June 3, 2026. The event gathers some of the industry’s most influential voices to explore where debt markets go from here. (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump announced on Thursday a permanent pick to head the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, after the uproar over his temporary pick risked derailing the renewal of a key surveillance law.
Trump said that he is nominating the current U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton to head the intelligence agency.
“I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible,” Trump wrote in a social media post.
The reauthorization of the spy program was muddied by Trump’s choice of Bill Pulte to serve as acting director after Tulsi Gabbard announced her resignation. Pulte drew bipartisan concern on Capitol Hill over his lack of previous experience in national security and intelligence.
ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott asked Trump on Thursday about Pulte continuing to serve as acting director given his lack of intelligence experience.
“He’s only there for a little while. He’s running it for a short while we get a very talented person, Jay Clayton, in,” Trump said in the Oval Office.
Apart from the national security cases he oversaw while serving as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Clayton also lacks experience in intelligence gathering and national security matters.
Clayton spent the bulk of his career as a corporate attorney, and prior to his appointment as U.S. attorney last year, lacked meaningful experience in criminal matters.
He has spent the last year overseeing one of the country’s highest profile federal prosecutor’s offices — focusing on drugs, gangs, immigration and fraud cases — and was also tapped to lead an investigation that Trump directly called for into high-profile Democrats such Bill Clinton, Larry Summers and Reid Hoffman’s alleged associations with Epstein. Nothing appears to have resulted from that investigation, and earlier this year acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Justice Department did not have any active cases into Epstein associates.
Clayton also oversaw the unsealing of grand jury materials related to Epstein, prompting complaints from victims about the disclosure of their sensitive personal information. The Justice Department’s push to unseal those materials resulted in little new information about the investigations into Epstein and was criticized by judges as a largely performative effort while the DOJ refused to release their own materials.
Clayton’s office has brought the first two prosecutions of insider trading on prediction markets, including cases against a special forces soldier and Google employee, putting his office at the center of the debate about how to govern the sites that critics say are rife with insider trading.
Clayton was never confirmed by the Senate as U.S. attorney, though his nomination was approved by the federal judges in the district and was seen by many as a steady hand to lead the high-profile office. He was, however, the subject of criticism earlier this week when he appeared on CNBC and opined about baseless claims of election fraud in California.
“There’s a great phrase, ‘opportunity for fraud,'” Clayton said, criticizing the state’s mail-in voting laws.
Clayton spent most of his career at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, where he represented hedge funds, wealthy investors, large banks and massive corporations such as Deutsche Bank, UBS and Alibaba Group. Clayton represented Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis and Barclays when it purchased Lehman Brothers’ assets out of bankruptcy.
During Trump’s first administration, Clayton led the SEC, cracking down on cryptocurrencies and winning $14 billion in monetary remedies, including returning $3.5 billion to investors. While he championed the “long-term interests of the Main Street investor,” Clayton also pushed deregulations — such as removing the requirement that hedge funds publish stock positions and loosening the rules for corporate auditors — that critics said weakened investor protections.
While Clayton generally avoided the political spotlight while at the SEC, a June 2020 proposal to nominate Clayton to serve as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York briefly resulted in political turmoil. The sitting U.S. attorney, Geoffrey Berman, refused to leave his post after then-Attorney General Bill Barr announced he would be replaced by Clayton. The standoff was resolved with Berman’s deputy taking over the position, and Clayton continued to lead the SEC.
