Democrats Sue DOJ Over Ballot Seizure Records as Trump Won't Rule Out Emergency Powers Before Midterms

The Democratic National Committee sued the Department of Justice on Thursday, August 20, demanding records on any plans to seize ballots, voting machines or election materials before the 2026 midterms are certified. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accuses DOJ of stonewalling a Freedom of Information Act request the DNC filed back in February, according to Democracy Docket.

The DNC says it's been nearly five months with no substantive response. The FBI initially closed one request as too vague; the DNC appealed and says it never got a real answer. A parallel request to DOJ's Criminal Division got bounced around other offices, including the Civil Rights Division, with no records produced.

This isn't happening in a vacuum. In January, FBI agents raided the Fulton County Election Hub in Georgia and seized more than 600 boxes of records from the 2020 election, under a federal search warrant. Fulton County challenged the seizure. In May, U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee declined to order the records returned but called portions of the FBI's supporting affidavit "defective in some respects," "troubling" and "far from perfect," according to Democracy Docket.

Georgia's 2020 results were already confirmed by a full manual audit, a Trump-requested recount, and a state performance review that found no fraud or systemic problems. That review happened years ago. The DNC's actual legal concern now is different and more specific: whether DOJ might try to seize ballots or equipment before certification in 2026, when doing so could disrupt an active count or chain of custody, not five years after the fact.

Seizing records from a closed, audited election is very different from seizing materials mid-count. Whether DOJ has any such plan is unknown. The lawsuit exists precisely because DOJ hasn't turned over records that would answer that question either way.

The emergency-powers question

Separately, Trump has repeatedly declined to rule out declaring a national emergency tied to election security. Asked directly by right-wing broadcaster Wayne Allyn Root whether he'd "declare a national security emergency for elections," Trump told Real America's Voice: "Let me just say, stranger things have happened, OK? I'll leave it at that," according to the Guardian.

Steve Bannon, Trump's former strategist, predicted on his War Room podcast on July 29 that Trump will declare such an emergency, telling listeners to "block the last week of August out." As of today, August 23, no such declaration has been made.

Election law experts cited by the Guardian, including Aria Branch of the Elias Law Group, say a national emergency declaration would not override the Constitution's assignment of election administration to the states. No president has ever tried to invoke emergency powers to control voting.

Former CIA Director John Brennan told MS NOW he thinks Americans "should be very worried" about Trump using presidential authority to interfere if Democrats look likely to retake a chamber, and said he wouldn't be surprised if Trump "pulls out all stops," according to Breitbart's coverage of the interview.

What's actually driving this

The underlying numbers matter here. A Reuters/Ipsos poll put Trump's approval at 33%, and Democrats hold roughly a seven-point lead in generic congressional polling, according to TPR. Decision Desk HQ's polling average, cited by the Epoch Times, shows Democrats "somewhat favored" to retake the House, with Republicans slightly favored to hold the Senate.

Trump himself has acknowledged the headwinds. He told Punchbowl News on August 7 that voters are "angry at Republicans" but "not angry at me," and said the core GOP problem is turnout without him on the ballot, per the Epoch Times.

DOJ has also announced plans to deploy roughly 1,000 election monitors, described by TPR as a record number. Federal election monitoring under the Voting Rights Act has bipartisan history and isn't new or inherently improper. Critics, including Hasen, question whether monitors deployed by an administration that has repeatedly made unsupported fraud claims can be seen as neutral. That's a fair question about optics and trust, not evidence of wrongdoing by the monitors themselves.

No widespread voter fraud has been documented in U.S. elections despite years of searching by Trump allies, a finding TPR and the LA Times both note comes from election officials in both parties. Concerns about ballot security, chain of custody, and mail-ballot integrity are legitimate governance questions on their own merits. They don't require, and shouldn't be conflated with, unproven fraud claims to be worth debating.

A federal judge has already blocked key provisions of Trump's March executive order restricting USPS delivery of absentee ballots to voters on state-approved federal lists, per TPR, with litigation ongoing. Whether the DNC's FOIA suit forces DOJ to disclose anything concrete, and whether Trump follows through on emergency-power rhetoric before Election Day on November 3, are yet to be seen.