Justice department had demanded state segregate and not count ballots from people it claimed were non-citizens

A federal judge declined to order California election officials to segregate and not count ballots from people the Trump administration claimed were non-citizens, rebuffing a legally thin request from the justice department that appeared designed to cast doubt over the results of the midterms.

The ruling from US district judge David Carter, nominated to the federal bench by Bill Clinton, comes about two weeks after the justice department delivered a USB drive to election officials in Los Angeles and Sacramento that it said contained the names of 20,000 non-citizens on the state’s voter rolls. There are more than 23 million registered voters in California and non-citizen voting is extremely rare.

Keaton Denlay says agents handed him ‘poorly formatted Excel spreadsheet’ and threatened to criminally prosecute him

A California county elections official is speaking out about the Department of Justice’s campaign against purported “voter fraud”, saying federal officials provided him a disorganized list of names filled with inaccuracies – and threatened to criminally prosecute him if he didn’t take action.

Keaton Denlay, the county clerk-recorder for Butte county, a region north of Sacramento, said a federal agent on Friday hand-delivered what appeared to be a printout of a “poorly formatted Excel spreadsheet with missing and jumbled information”. The DoJ claimed the list was of 47 “likely” noncitizens who were unlawfully registered to vote and demanded the county set aside their ballots. But Denlay said the document was riddled with errors and lacking crucial details, and he declined to act on it.

Bill Essayli, a former GOP lawmaker and ally of president, has not been confirmed by the Senate in his role

A US judge ruled on Tuesday that Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in southern California, was “unlawfully serving” as the head of the US attorney’s office and was disqualified from overseeing two criminal prosecutions.

The order, however, will not immediately go into effect, and the Department of Justice has said it intends to appeal.