DOJ Charges Over a Dozen in New Election Fraud Cases Across Five States as Whistleblower Says DHS Agents May Have Broken State Voter-Roll Laws

Since the Justice Department announced a wave of noncitizen-voting and identity-fraud cases in recent weeks, prosecutors have added more than a dozen new defendants this week alone, spread across California, Kansas, Louisiana, Texas and Massachusetts.

The highest-profile case comes out of Louisiana, where prosecutors charged mayoral candidate Bridget Johnson with fraudulently registering Jamaican national Michael Wedderburn to vote. According to court documents, Johnson submitted an electronic voter registration in Wedderburn's name on July 14, 2024, falsely declaring him a U.S. citizen. Wedderburn then allegedly voted in the 2024 federal election and in the same mayoral race Johnson was running in. Johnson faces up to five years in prison on charges of fraudulent voter registration and voting by an alien; Wedderburn faces up to one year for voting by an alien, according to federal prosecutors.

In Texas, federal prosecutors filed seven separate cases they say will "send a clear message" that laws barring noncitizens from voting will be enforced. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said anyone "gaming the election system, voting illegally or committing voter fraud" will be prosecuted. White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told Fox News Digital that "the evidence of noncitizens registering and voting in our elections continues to pile up" and that offenders "will be arrested and held accountable."

A separate Justice Department release detailed charges against six people in California, Kansas and Louisiana for illegal voting, fraudulent registration and identity fraud, and noted five more people in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Wisconsin were charged this week over alleged illegal voting in the 2022 or 2024 elections. The department's Civil Rights Division also said it filed federal lawsuits against five states, Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia and New Jersey, though the announcement did not detail the specific allegations against each state.

The Skid Row Petition Case

A different kind of fraud surfaced in Los Angeles, where federal prosecutors arrested James Brass, 47, of Victorville, who goes by "Lord" and runs a company called Pinnacle Brass LLC. According to an indictment reported by the LA Times and Courthouse News Service, Brass and two associates, Courtney Price of Jacksonville, Florida, and Jateisha Herron of Boron, California, paid homeless people on Skid Row to copy stolen identities of registered voters onto ballot initiative petitions between February and August of this year.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said the men "used people, including members of Skid Row's vulnerable homeless population, to try to cover up their tracks." Prosecutors say Brass collected roughly $41,600 for the scheme and instructed Herron by text to tell petition coordinators the signatures came from Torrance or Inglewood, writing, "NEVER EVER SAY DOWN TOWN LA." Brass pleaded not guilty and was released on $10,000 bond; his trial is scheduled for November 2. All three face up to five years in prison per count if convicted. The case echoes a May guilty plea from Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, who admitted paying Skid Row residents $2 to $3 to sign registration forms.

The Whistleblower's Allegation

While DOJ touts these prosecutions, a separate controversy is brewing over how federal agents are hunting for unlawfully registered voters in the first place. A whistleblower represented by the nonprofit Democracy Defenders Fund gave a report to Senate Democrats Alex Padilla of California and Chuck Schumer, made public this month, alleging that DHS's "Unlawful Voter Initiative" may have committed "thousands" of state-law violations.

The whistleblower says agents were plugging citizens' personal information into public-facing state voter-lookup websites, several of which, including Virginia's, require the user to attest they are the registered voter or have that voter's authorization. If agents made that attestation falsely to search someone else's record, the report argues, that could violate state law.

The report also describes a production quota: at least five subjects reviewed per hour, 40 per day, giving each agent roughly 12 minutes to determine citizenship status. A DHS spokesperson pushed back, telling NPR: "The Department accessed publicly available data from states' voter rolls and cross referenced them with known aliens in our systems. It's not rocket science; it's an easy step to secure our elections." The New York Times first reported on the DHS initiative earlier this month, and NPR notes DHS has separately acknowledged that noncitizen voter-roll numbers it previously touted publicly were inflated.

Supporters of the DOJ's approach point to specific charges and court documents. Bridget Johnson is an actual mayoral candidate, Michael Wedderburn is an actual noncitizen who cast an actual ballot. Critics, including the whistleblower and Senate Democrats, counter that a rushed quota system searching for a problem DHS itself overstated raises real questions about whether the hunt for fraud is generating its own legal exposure.

No charges have been filed against any DHS agent, and no court has ruled on whether the Unlawful Voter Initiative's methods violated state law. The whistleblower's claims remain unproven allegations. Padilla's office has not said whether it will seek a formal Senate inquiry, and DHS has not said whether it will change its verification quotas ahead of the midterms.