Trump’s Justice Department Just Ordered Terrifying Elections Overhaul

Donald Trump has completely gutted the Department of Justice section charged with securing elections, The Guardian reported Monday.

In January, there were seven top career managers overseeing the voting section of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, which is charged with enforcing federal laws protecting voter registration. As of this week, all of them are gone.

Last week, five of them were reassigned to the complaint adjudication office, which handles employee complaints, alongside Tamar Hagler, who had served as the chief of the voting section office, and another career attorney. Of the two remaining managers, one was reassigned to an antisemitism task force, and the other retired.

These removals are part of a wider reshuffling in the Justice Department, as experienced career officials are reassigned to low-level duties, shifted toward the priorities of the Trump administration, or elect to take buyouts.

Trump appointees at the DOJ also instructed career employees in the voting section to dismiss all remaining active cases, but did not provide a rationale for their dismissal and did not meet with the attorneys. The section’s final active case was dismissed last Monday.

“This is what you do when you don’t really know what the section does and just want to create chaos in the simplest way possible that doesn’t involve you reading anything,” one former voting section attorney told The Guardian. “It is extremely clear that the intent is to get absolutely nothing done. And the effect will be that absolutely nothing gets done.”

The moves come just weeks after Harmeet Dhillon was confirmed to lead the civil rights division. A staunch Trump ally, Dhillon defended several election deniers in court and was widely expected to go after civil rights and diversity achievements.

Trump’s demolition of the DOJ’s voting section represents a victory for election deniers and far-right groups.

Cleta Mitchell, a far-right activist with the ear of the president, called for “every lawyer in the Voting Section” to be “terminated” in a post on X after Trump was elected in November.

“They are not supportive of Pres Trump or MAGA. There has to be a reckoning. These are leftwing activists who have come from and should return to their leftwing organizations,” she wrote.

The American Accountability Foundation, a dark money witch-hunting cadre, sent a letter to then-attorney general nominee Pam Bondi in December specifically asking her to gut the DOJ’s voting section.

“These people are woke radical leftists and donors who have no place in the Department of Justice,” the group wrote in the letter signed by Thomas Jones, AAF’s president. “In order to restore the American people’s trust in election integrity and a neutral civil service, they must be fired and replaced with America-first attorneys who will execute on the agenda the American People voted for in November.”

The Trump administration’s meddling at the Department of Justice is part of a wider scheme to undermine any election he is likely to lose. A federal judge ruled Thursday to block parts of Trump’s executive order last month attempting to overhaul elections and voting processes.