Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar’s office said Thursday that it has received seven Department of Justice subpoenas related to elections over the last three months.
A statement from Aguilar’s office said it could not provide additional details about what specific instances the federal government might have been focusing on when it formally demanded testimony or documentation.
Meanwhile, the New York Times, without naming its source, reported Friday that the DOJ was seeking voter information from the state. The DOJ, and the FBI — which issued the subpoenas — did not immediately respond to Friday messages seeking information.
The existence of the subpoenas, disclosed two months before Election Day, comes as the Trump administration has increased pressure on Nevada to find noncitizens in its voter rolls.
A federal judge in Nevada last month dismissed a DOJ lawsuit that sought Nevada’s unredacted voter registration list.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for Nevada voters and their right to have their sensitive personal information protected,” a statement from Aguilar said at that time. “Nevada is now the 22nd consecutive state or jurisdiction to prevail in federal district court against the Trump administration’s effort to force states to turn over their unredacted voter rolls.”
The Department of Homeland Security this week launched an operation of hundreds of Homeland Security Investigations agents across nine states, including Nevada, probing voter fraud, according to CNN and the New York Times.
The agency did not dispute the news reports in a statement to the Review-Journal.
In a July prime-time address, President Donald Trump claimed that the DHS had identified more than 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote in the U.S.
The DHS singled out Nevada, California, Pennsylvania and New Jersey as collectively having more than 250,000 of those purported noncitizens.
That same day, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin informed Aguilar that the federal agency had found “as many as” 15,903 noncitizens in Nevada’s voter records.
Aguilar called the number “speculative at best.”
Federal officials met virtually with Aguilar’s office last month, saying that they had only confirmed 185 names through a manual review, calling the original figure a “ceiling.”
The federal officials noted that the investigation was preliminary.
Furthermore, the DOJ recently warned states, including Nevada, that election officials could face criminal charges for letting noncitizens vote.
Pressed about the possibility that any elections official in Nevada was under federal investigation, DHS official Heather Honey told Aguilar’s staff that the agency hadn’t made such a criminal referral.
“I don’t think that you have anything to worry about,” she said, noting ongoing collaboration between the state and federal agencies.
Court rulings, election experts and officials in the past have disputed Trump’s claims about widespread voter fraud, which date back to his unsuccessful 2020 re-election bid.
“DHS is laser focused on prosecuting and removing aliens who vote and preventing the dilution of the votes of U.S. citizens,” a DHS spokesperson wrote to the Review-Journal earlier this week. “Our message to aliens who vote in American elections is clear: we will find you, arrest you, and you will face the consequences — including criminal charges and deportation.”
Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at rtorres@reviewjournal.com.
