The Justice Department’s top civil rights official has accused New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill of publicly criticizing President Donald Trump’s election integrity claims while already knowing that her own state was about to be hit with a major voter registration scandal. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said Sherrill’s actions amounted to a betrayal of her duty to protect the rights of New Jersey voters.
Speaking after Trump’s primetime address on July 16, in which the president alleged that China had obtained sensitive voter data and that several Democrat-run states, including New Jersey, had large numbers of noncitizens registered to vote, Dhillon pointed out that the Department of Homeland Security had simultaneously released data showing more than 35,000 potential noncitizens on the Garden State’s voter rolls. “When the president came out with his primetime speech last Thursday, I believe in the sequencing of events that has been laid out, she already knew that this revelation was forthcoming,” Dhillon said. “She knew it, and she still went online and called the president a liar and said he was exaggerating – shame on you, governor.”
Following Trump’s remarks, Sherrill joined 23 other Democratic governors in a statement led by Kentucky Governor Andrew Beshear that accused Trump of trying to “undermine free and fair elections.” The statement said, “No amount of lies and conspiracy theories can change the fact that our country’s elections have repeatedly been proven to be safe and secure.” Sherrill and her fellow governors also accused Trump of attempting to “intimidate and silence voters” while arguing that Democrats are “actually making life better for American families.”
Dhillon, however, emphasized that the issue is not partisan. “It’s a bipartisan problem, actually. And I’m really looking forward to helping everyone who will work with us fix this problem. And if they won’t work with us, we’ll sue them and we’ll still fix the problem,” she said. She warned that every illegal vote cancels out the vote of a legitimate New Jersey voter and urged Sherrill to cooperate with federal authorities instead of deflecting blame. Dhillon’s letter gave Sherrill five business days to turn over voter data, a deadline that expired Tuesday.
Sherrill has indicated she will not comply. In comments to WCBS, she said, “It is not a surprise … the Trump administration wants to immediately weaponize this against people as opposed to focusing on making sure we’re running free and fair elections.” A spokesman for Sherrill pointed Fox News Digital to her earlier remarks after a grocery store tour in Essex County, where she said the state is “running an independent investigation right now to get to the bottom of exactly how this happened.”
New Jersey is not alone in resisting the DOJ’s requests. Pennsylvania, New York, and several other states have cited federal law and state privacy protections as reasons for not sharing voter registration data. The DOJ has also filed lawsuits against officials in some of these states, including New Jersey Lieutenant Governor Dale Caldwell, as part of its push to clean up voter rolls.
Dhillon urged Sherrill and other governors to join with the DOJ to investigate every substantive claim of election integrity violations. “Every single person who voted illegally canceled out the vote of a New Jersey voter; that is shameful,” she said. “And instead of pointing fingers at the president … she should be raising her hand to work with the federal government to clean this up ASAP because that’s the vow she took when she ran for office.”