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A top federal prosecutor in California said federal investigators have determined that all 20,000 people they flagged on the state's voter rolls as "likely noncitizens" are not U.S. citizens.
Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for California's Central District, told Fox News Digital that federal investigators have evidence that these 20,000 individuals received mail ballots this month. His office sued California last week seeking a court order to prevent any ballots they return from being counted.
"We're not asking California to take any drastic steps other than to sequester the ballots from the suspected noncitizens," Essayli said in an interview on Wednesday. "We believe it's at a minimum of 20,000. That's the floor."
Since then, federal investigators have been sifting through those records to identify people they believe they can verify as noncitizens.
He said 20,000 is only the current tally and expects thousands more names to be added in the coming days.
Earlier this week, Essayli got into a social media spat with Gov. Gavin Newsom over the state's safeguards against noncitizen voting.
Essayli argued that California is allowing people without citizenship onto the voter rolls through its supposedly lax verification processes, while Newsom said the state follows all relevant federal law governing the integrity of elections.
In court filings, California election officials have pushed back against the Justice Department's demands, arguing that county election offices lack both the authority and access to federal records needed to verify voters' citizenship status.
They have also said that sequestering ballots from people on the DOJ list is impossible in cases where the ballots have already been processed. Once a ballot's signature is verified, it is removed from its identifying envelope and processed alongside other ballots, meaning it can no longer be traced back to an individual voter.
"That is true. That's why we're getting an emergency court order requiring them to put those ballots aside," Essayli said. "Ballots have already gone out, people are filling them out and they're being returned in process as we speak. So, the crime is occurring in real time."
The DOJ escalated its push for immediate court intervention Wednesday, asking the judge to rule on its emergency request by noon Thursday. In Los Angeles County alone, officials have already processed 331,000 ballots, according to court records.
Essayli's office filed suit on Oct. 15, roughly two weeks after California sent out mail ballots, including to the possible noncitizens on the DOJ list, according to the federal government.
When asked why the Justice Department didn't act sooner, Essayli explained that investigators did not know exactly which voters would receive ballots until they were sent.
He said California should cooperate with the federal government to expedite the process of verifying voters' citizenship.
That would involve providing additional identifying information, including driver's license numbers and Social Security numbers when available, that federal investigators could cross-check against government databases.
California and dozens of other states treat this information as confidential and have refused to turn it over to the federal government, prompting the DOJ to take several of them to court.
In a separate lawsuit from Sept. 2025, the DOJ tried to compel California to provide its complete, unredacted voter-registration database, including names, Social Security numbers, home addresses and voting histories.
In January, a district court sided with California and dismissed the case, calling the government's request "unprecedented and illegal." The DOJ appealed the ruling and litigation is ongoing.
"If California will make available or submit its records, we can quickly put them through our established systems to determine who's a citizen and who's not," Essayli told Fox News Digital. "They're forcing us to do it the hard way, which we're willing to do because this is very important."
He said every person on the current 20,000-name list was individually reviewed by a federal employee at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Homeland Security Investigations.
California officials, however, have questioned the reliability of the DOJ list.
Monica Flores, an assistant registrar-recorder in Los Angeles County, said in a court declaration that her office conducted a preliminary review of a sample of 200 records from the list that were associated with LA County addresses.
Of those, 112 corresponded to canceled or inactive voter registrations, meaning no ballot was mailed to those individuals for the November election, Flores said.
"I don't believe that, actually," Essayli said. "The information we have is that they likely received ballots. So we are asking for the names of people they claim whose registration has been canceled."
Essayli added LA County did not say when these registrations were canceled. He raised the possibility at least some were canceled after federal officials provided the state with their list.
"If they're canceling now based on the records we provided, that's great news," Essayli said. "But that's all to be determined."
In the 200-person sample reviewed by LA County, Flores said that among records where birthplace was "meaningfully reported," 38.9% indicated the person was born in the United States, which she called "strong evidence of citizenship."
Essayli similarly disputed this conclusion, arguing that the birthplace information — much like the citizenship information itself — was provided by the registered voters themselves.
"They're not independently checking any of this information," Essayli said. "They're going off the information that was provided to them by the person who registered to vote."
The California Secretary of State's office and the LA County Registrar-Recorder's office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's requests for comment.
Essayli said that his office is determined to follow through with its investigation because "one noncitizen voting is too many."
"One illegal vote cancels out the vote of an American citizen. There are a lot of local elections that are decided on very few votes," he said. "Noncitizens cannot vote in federal elections, and we intend to enforce that law."
Democrats are up in arms after a so-called polling firm that projected far-left candidates as strong contenders in several primaries admitted that it had fabricated its polling data.
Wedgewood Polling, which billed itself as an election survey company, released a statement Tuesday night admitting it used "fabricated numbers" for an "experimental project to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight, and overall low barrier to entry in the modern political polling industry."
The group's polls were cited by Abdul El-Sayed's campaign amid a high-profile primary race against Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich. The nonpartisan polling aggregator Political Polls also cited Wedgewood in the Wisconsin gubernatorial race, showing socialist Francesca Hong having an edge over Republican candidate Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wis.
McMorrow said Wedgewood's numbers led to her donations drying up and reporters having "hounded" her with calls to drop out of the race.
"Sure, a point was proven. Polling is broken. But tens of thousands of people poured their hearts, time, energy, hard-earned money into something they believed in - for a year-and-a-half, and it was treated like a game," she said in a statement on X. "Trust is already at an all-time low. We don't get out of this mess without rebuilding trust. And media - who loves to ride the drama of a pollercoaster - needs to take a hard look at what's legitimate and what's not."
Unlike El-Sayed, who advanced from Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, Hong lost Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary to the establishment-backed candidate. El-Sayed, a former Michigan public health official, is currently locked in a tight race against former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., for Michigan's open Senate seat.
Democrat strategist Jennifer Holdsworth said she ran a super PAC that raised money for McMorrow and that "this poll was used by several donors to pull back funding at a time we were being outspent by $80 million."
Wedgewood's numbers were cited by high-profile outlets like The New York Times and Decision Desk HQ, which both said they have since removed them from their projections.
The Times said it removed 15 polls released by Wedgewood between June and October after it admitted to fabricating data. The outlet said Wedgewood had "answered a series of questions regarding the identities of the pollsters; the methods they were using to draw their sample, contact respondents and weight their polls; and the source of their funding" during its vetting process.
Decision Desk HQ said it removed 17 Wedgewood polls from its projections but that it "has not changed the projected seat totals or chamber control probabilities in the Senate or House."
Wedgewood Polling's statement said it "was never intended to sway an election" but rather was aimed as a "wake-up call" about data integrity and vetting standards.
"These people are absolute scumbags," veteran Democratic strategist and former Kamala Harris advisor Mike Nellis told Fox News Digital. "They can try to claim that they have some moral high ground here, but they lied about their polling data, got caught, and are freaking out because they've committed fraud."
"The people responsible for this should be run out of American politics, and if they can be, they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law," Nellis said. He added that both Democrats and Republicans, as well as the media, should reflect on how polling is verified "because there's likely other people that are doing things like this."
Independent outlet FiftyPlusOne said it was investigating Wedgewood when it had released its statement. Co-founder G. Elliott Morris wrote on X, "We were investigating Wedgewood for faking their data and emailed them for comment this morning, ahead of publishing the findings tomorrow. They are trying to cover up their fraud with the 'we were doing a social experiment' excuse."
Former Obama staffer Tommy Vietor said on X that Wedgewood's actions amounted to "lying and fraud."
A group called "Wedgewood Polls" had also previously created a GoFundMe to raise money for polling in Nebraska's gubernatorial and Senate races. It raised $500 of its intended $5,000.
"I know they crowdfunded, I believe, a good chunk of their polls," Nellis told Fox News Digital. "Are they going to return that money? And if not, are they going to be prosecuted?"
Other Wedgewood surveys showed Democrats with significant edges over Republicans in states like Texas, where a July Wedgewood poll showed James Talarico leading state Attorney General Ken Paxton among Hispanics by 64% to 30%.
Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have long heaped doubt on the veracity of polls.
Polls notably showed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with an edge over Trump in 2016 — far from the actual result.
And with the fight for control of Congress coming to a head in November, every data point is being scrutinized as political tea leaves.
Governor Gavin Newsom and Bill Essayli, a Trump-appointed federal prosecutor in California, sparred on social media this week about whether the state is doing enough to prevent noncitizens from voting.
Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for California's Central District, surfaced a court document filed Tuesday in which a Los Angeles County election official said the registrar's office "is not equipped or authorized to verify voter citizenship because it does not independently house citizenship-related information beyond the voter attestation."
The official, Monica Flores, made the declaration as part of a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to force California to verify the citizenship of more than 20,000 people the federal government believes are likely noncitizens who were sent mail ballots ahead of this year's midterm elections.
Essayli called Flores' statement a "massive concession" that shows election officials take voters' word on whether they are a citizen.
"American citizens’ votes are being diluted in California," Essayli wrote.
In response, Newsom's press office account on X said California adheres to a 1993 federal law that requires people registering to vote through the DMV to swear under penalty of perjury that they are eligible, including that they are U.S. citizens. Similar attestation requirements apply to federal mail-in voter registration forms.
"May want to brush up on your election law before tweeting," Newsom's office wrote in a jab at Essayli. "Perhaps Second Assistant is more apt from now on?"
The public spat highlighted the central dispute in the lawsuit against California: whether the state should take additional steps to verify the citizenship of voters when the federal government flags potential issues with the rolls.
According to the Justice Department's complaint, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) cross-checked California voter registration records with federal immigration data.
That investigative process, described by DOJ lawyers as "preliminary," yielded a list of more than 20,000 registered voters federal investigators identified as likely noncitizens. California voters were mailed ballots beginning Oct. 1.
In its initial complaint filed Oct. 15, the Justice Department asked a federal court to require California to set aside mail ballots associated with people on the list until their citizenship could be verified.
Flores, an official with the LA County Registrar's Office, argued that doing so is now virtually impossible because once a ballot's signature is verified, it is removed from its identifying envelope and processed alongside hundreds of thousands of others.
As of Tuesday, the county has processed 331,000 ballots, according to Flores' statement in court.
She also pointed out that the registrar's office is "not an investigative agency," adding that she was unaware of "any state or federal law granting it investigative authority."
Nonetheless, staff from the registrar's office reviewed a sample of 200 records from the Justice Department list that had LA County addresses.
"The October list is unreliable: 112 of the 200 records correspond to registrations that are canceled or inactive," according to Flores' statement. "Of the voters where birthplace was meaningfully reported, 38.9% indicate that they were born in the United States, which is strong evidence of citizenship; and 71.2% of the records have no voting history."
In a statement to Fox News, Essayli said these reported numbers "are meaningless because, by their own admission, they have no way to verify anyone's citizenship status or their birthplace."
There are indications that the Justice Department list does contain at least some individuals who could have broken the law.
On Monday, the Justice Department charged 28 individuals off that list, all lawful permanent residents, with making false statements on naturalization applications and fraudulently registering to vote. Most of them cast unlawful ballots in elections, officials said.
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