Federal prosecutors in California said Friday morning that they have multiple election fraud investigations underway and that they are working with the FBI in Los Angeles, a disclosure that put a federal spotlight on the state’s ballot-counting process as millions of votes were still being processed.
The office of Bill Essayli also confirmed that Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Renner was at a Los Angeles County ballot processing center on Friday to observe the vote count. A spokesperson for Dean Logan said the visit was consistent with routine observation of the counting process, and the county registrar-recorder/county clerk’s office said the process is open to public observation by appointment.
The developments came after Donald Trump said late Wednesday that Democrats in California were cheating in the state’s primary election and that an investigation was underway in Essayli’s office. He offered no evidence for those claims. On Thursday, California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said the slow count reflects careful, accurate processing of millions of ballots, many of them mailed on election day, and said, “Taking the time to do this work correctly protects voters’ rights and ensures the integrity of our elections.”
Weber’s office said about 5.6 million ballots had been processed by Thursday evening, with an estimated 3.6 million additional cast ballots still remaining. That pace has drawn criticism from Steve Hilton, who said Friday that he expected to make it to November’s head-to-head race between the top two primary finishers and urged Gov. Gavin Newsom to use state resources to help ensure results are verified by next Thursday. Newsom’s office dismissed his comments as uninformed, with Brandon Richards saying the governor has nothing to do with counting ballots and calling it concerning that a candidate for governor would not know that.
The open question is not whether federal prosecutors are paying attention; they are. It is what those multiple investigations actually cover, and Essayli said he would not comment on any specific case. For California election officials, the immediate test is whether the federally scrutinized count can finish with the kind of transparency and pace that keeps both the law and the political fight from overwhelming the process.
