Trump plan to send 1,000 DOJ monitors to the polls could ‘jeopardize the election,’ NAACP lawsuit warns

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Joe Biden’s former civil rights chief is leading a lawsuit against plans for Donald Trump’s administration to deploy hundreds of federal agents to polling places during the midterm elections.

Kristen Clarke, who oversaw the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice under Biden, is leading the NAACP’s case against her successor Harmeet Dhillon, who is planning what she calls the “biggest DOJ election observer effort in history.”

The NAACP is seeking a judge’s urgent intervention to force the Trump administration to share plans for the unprecedented deployment, a plan that Clarke says could “jeopardize the election and interfere with the right of voters to participate in the election free from intimidation.”

Following the organization’s request for records about the , the Justice Department has continued to “take steps to bring about its menacing threats of an unprecedented federal intrusion into elections this Election Day,” including “aggressively recruiting a record number of poll monitors,” according to the NAACP.

On Sunday, Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News that the Civil Rights Division plans to send “a thousand or more” Justice Department personnel to “every state” on November 3. He accused critics of “fearmongering.”

Last month, Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter sent an agency-wide email asking government attorneys and other staff to volunteer as election monitors.

FBI Director Kash Patel also, when asked if federal agents are being sent to the polls, told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that the bureau will rely on an “election crimes community coordinator” in all 56 field offices on Election Day.

“So you bet we're going to have them there and manning the post for election interference matters,” he said.

“There is no indication about the limits of this monitoring operation or the restraints that will be imposed on anyone who may be deployed,” Clarke warned in Monday’s court filing.

“This is not just rhetoric or hyperbole,” she said.

It remains unclear where election monitors will be sent on Election Day, but the Justice Department has already deployed observers to several states during primary elections.

Top Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are also asking the Justice Department for documents about the deployments, including the names, departments and job titles of observers and any training materials they have been provided.

That investigation follows reports that DOJ monitors arrived unannounced at polling places during Wyoming’s primary election in August — and demanded access to election equipment, prompting the state’s Republican governor to raise concerns about “aggressive, unexpected and disruptive” conduct.

“It is not the job of election monitors to administer elections, assess election equipment, determine voter eligibility, or direct local election officials,” Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin and Joe Morelle wrote to the Justice Department last week.

“DOJ must demonstrate that it is not misusing its election monitoring program in any way and that its monitors are being used for appropriate purposes,” they said.

The Justice Department has historically sent monitors to polling locations to targeted jurisdictions to ensure election officials and poll workers are following election laws.

But a dramatic, nationwide deployment of election monitors marks an unprecedented injection of federal authority into locally run election administration as the president fights legal and political battles to assume control of the nation’s elections.

The Republican National Committee is separately training poll monitors to investigate voting machines, including inspecting serial numbers and photographing results, and Trump-aligned election activists are also planning efforts to observe voters this fall.

The NAACP is also among several voting rights groups that are suing Immigration and Customs Enforcement to prevent federal agents from patrolling polling places “in a manner that unlawfully intimidates voters or anyone urging or aiding voters.”

The administration has not explicitly outlined plans to send armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to the polls, but top officials have repeatedly suggested that federal agents could show up to respond to “threats” or make an immigration arrest.

“The specter of armed officers at polling places threatens the freedom of this upcoming election,” according to a separate complaint from the League of United Latin American Citizens and other groups.

That threat “places voters in fear that they will be confronted by armed federal immigration enforcement officers if they choose to cast a ballot” and “makes it more difficult for state and local election officials and law enforcement to do their jobs by making polling places spaces of confrontation,” they added.