WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has opened a criminal investigation in its intensifying campaign to prove thousands of noncitizens are on California’s voter rolls, issuing federal grand jury subpoenas to local election officials, according to people with knowledge of the matter and copies of subpoenas obtained by The New York Times.

The move escalates the Justice Department’s pressure on the most populous state as the administration seeks to tighten its grip on the midterm elections by making unsubstantiated claims that large numbers of illegal voters are on the rolls. A day earlier, a federal judge resoundingly rejected the Trump administration’s bid to block the state from counting the votes of some 20,000 people it says are likely noncitizens, even though studies have found such fraud is rare.

The new subpoenas are part of the administration’s broader effort to portray elections in Democratic states as rigged against Republicans. Justice Department officials have repeatedly suggested that they would investigate and prosecute local election officials who did not accede to federal demands to set aside ballots of people that the administration had claimed were likely noncitizens.

The people with knowledge of the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive legal matters.

At least two employees of the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s office received grand jury subpoenas last week for a proceeding scheduled for Nov. 4, the morning after the election, according to records obtained by the Times through the state’s public records law.

Already, the Trump administration has sought records on individuals whom prosecutors appeared to suspect lacked the citizenship status required to cast ballots. The new round of subpoenas appear directed at election officials, seeking copies of all internal communications about the Justice Department’s demands to county officials and the California secretary of state. They also ask for all records involving the agency’s “methods for screening for unlawful voting by aliens” and “efforts to prevent noncitizen votes from being counted in any election.”

Dean Logan, the Los Angeles County registrar, denounced the subpoenas as “intimidation.”

“At every step, the U.S. Department of Justice has taken a confrontational, adversarial approach,” he said in a statement. “Election officials are acting in accordance with state and federal law.”

A Justice Department spokesperson also declined to comment but noted that California officials and a federal judge have recently emphasized that issues of unlawful voting should be addressed through criminal prosecution.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Devlin Barrett and Shawn Hubler/Philip Cheung
c. 2026 The New York Times Company