US attorney opens investigations into California's elections, sends
prosecutor to LA vote center
[June 06, 2026]
By MICHAEL BLOOD and NICHOLAS RICCARDI
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles said Friday
it had opened “multiple election fraud investigations” related to
California's elections and sent a prosecutor to the county's
vote-counting center.
The developments came a day after President Donald Trump made baseless
claims of mass fraud in California's drawn-out vote count from Tuesday's
primary. Late-tallied Democratic-leaning mail ballots were continuing to
eat into the vote totals for the president's preferred candidates for
governor and Los Angeles mayor.
The announcement by U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, Trump's appointee as the
top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, and the visit to Los Angeles
County's ballot tabulation center marked an escalation in the
president's campaign against the Democratic-dominated state, whose
notoriously prolonged vote count has been a magnet for election
conspiracy theories. Trump weighed in again Friday while participating
in a roundtable discussion in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, claiming
without evidence that Democrats were rigging the election.
“You look at what’s happening — it’s getting tighter and tighter and
tighter,” he said. “And the people who were supposed to win, bad things
are happening. It’s a crooked state.”
Trump has often said that changes to vote totals as late ballots are
counted are a sign of fraud, when they're merely a reflection of more
ballots being counted.
On Thursday, Trump said his Department of Justice was investigating the
California count. By Friday morning, Essayli posted on X about ongoing
investigations without providing details, saying only that California’s
elections have “serious structural vulnerabilities.”
An assistant U.S. attorney came to the main ballot processing center
Friday morning, according to a statement from Mike Sanchez, a spokesman
for Los Angeles County's Registrar-Recorder. The prosecutor “was
provided an overview of the public observation program, and participated
in a walkthrough of the ballot processing operations,” Sanchez said.
He added that “election officials routinely host observers representing
a wide range of interests.”
It was not the first time Trump's Justice Department has taken an
interest in California's elections. Last fall, it sent observers to
monitor polling sites in five counties, including Los Angeles, during
the special election asking voters to change California's congressional
map.
GOP candidate calls for change in mail ballot law
Also on Friday, Republican Steve Hilton, who is Trump's favored
candidate for governor, called for a sweeping overhaul in California's
election laws to limit mail ballots to only those who request them,
rather than being sent to all registered voters. He also called for an
Election Day deadline to accept them rather than the seven-day grace
period the state currently allows as long as they are postmarked by the
final day of voting.
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Ballots are inspected the day after California's primary election at
the LA County Ballot Processing Center Wednesday, June 3, 2026, in
City of Industry, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Hilton said in an interview that the U.S. attorney's office might
know more than his campaign does, but noted his team has been
monitoring the count and has seen nothing that seems illegal.
“We certainly haven’t seen anything of that nature that would
warrant legal action,” Hilton said.
Still, Hilton said the sluggish count has made California “a
national and international laughingstock.” He proposed the state
government send an emergency detachment of state workers to
California's 58 counties to speed up the vote count.
Jesse Salinas, president of the California Association of Clerks and
Election Officers, said he welcomed Hilton's eagerness to help but
the proposal would do no good.
“It'd be more disruptive than helpful at this point,” said Salinas,
who's also the clerk and registrar for Yolo County.
Anyone who handles a ballot or machine used in the vote-counting
process would have to be trained by the very people working
feverishly to tally mail ballots that poured in Tuesday. And, added
Salinas, his own vote-counting facility is already full, with no
more room for any additional staff.
Hilton, who has been endorsed by Trump, is battling two Democrats
for one of the two slots on the November ballot. Reality television
star Spencer Pratt, another candidate backed by Trump, is likewise
competing with City Councilwoman Nithya Raman for the chance to face
Mayor Karen Bass in the November election.
Because Democrats usually vote by mail, and held onto their ballots
unusually late in the crowded primary, their votes are often tallied
after those of more Republican-leaning voters who might have cast
ballots early. The net effect is that Republican candidates appear
at their high water marks in the first batch of returns on election
night, only to see their leads whittled away in the days or weeks
that follow, when election workers complete the lengthy process of
tallying late-arriving mail ballots.
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