Former DOJ lawyers call federal attempt to get Minnesota voter rolls a 'fishing expedition'

Nathaniel Minor, Star Tribune on Feb 26, 2026

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

A group of former U.S. Department of Justice attorneys say the ongoing federal attempt to force Minnesota officials to turn over its voter rolls amounts to a “fishing expedition” not supported by law.

Sixteen former DOJ lawyers who worked on voting issues say the department “overstepped its bounds” in the dispute that has since escalated into a lawsuit.

“DOJ’s request to Minnesota for its full unredacted voter file is inconsistent with prior DOJ practice and cannot be justified by the authority it has invoked,” the former DOJ attorneys argued in a Feb. 26 court filing.

The Department of Justice declined to comment.

The DOJ’s attempts to get voter registration data from Minnesota and most other states is part of a greater effort by federal officials to take more control of elections that have long been run by state and local governments.

Elections experts worry the voter roll data in particular could be used to relitigate President Donald Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen or undercut future elections. Minnesota Republicans at the state and federal levels have recently waded into the dispute, pressuring Secretary of State Steve Simon to comply with the Justice Department.

Several independent experts have told The Minnesota Star Tribune in recent months the data requests are legally problematic.

But the new court filing is notable because it amounts to a rebuke of the DOJ’s legal strategy by people once charged with executing it. The current DOJ’s data requests are a “radical departure” from previous practice, they wrote.

The former DOJ lawyers said the department misled state officials when it initially told them the data were needed to ensure that the state was complying with federal elections law.

News reports and later public statements from the DOJ indicated it would share voter data with the Department of Homeland Security in an effort to prove conservatives’ claims that undocumented immigrants were voting illegally. Studies do not support those allegations, including a review by Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security.

The former DOJ staffers also argued that federal law gives states, not the federal government, the authority to maintain voter rolls. Nothing in the several federal laws the current DOJ has cited gives it the authority to “use highly sensitive, personal data in state voter rolls to conduct a nationwide search for individual registrants that it suspects may not be eligible to vote,” the lawyers wrote.

Several judges have recently sided with other states that refused to give up their voter rolls. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who is representing Simon’s office in the lawsuit, recently cited those rulings in a filing arguing for the case to be dismissed.

“This Court should reach the same conclusions,” he wrote.

The DOJ, meanwhile, announced on Thursday it was suing five more states who refused to give up their voter rolls.

(Sarah Nelson of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this report.)