Mark Warner leading Senate effort to hit back at DOJ election monitors

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., is leading a group of senators pushing back against a Justice Department plan to deploy election monitors to Democrat-led states for the 2026 congressional midterms.

The DOJ tried to claim, in a July 7 letter announcing the scheme, that the effort is “routine” and “nonpartisan,” but the senators noted in a letter to Acting AG Todd Blanche, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and DOJ hatchet man, and UVA Law alum Harmeet Dhillon, the lead in the Justice Department/Youngkin administration joint project to remove Jim Ryan as UVA president last year, that putting the monitors in blue states serves to undermine that claim.

“It is important that American voters trust that the U.S. Department of Justice’s election monitors will focus only on their statutory ambit and will not target jurisdictions in a partisan manner; discourage voter participation or interfere with the voting process; or pressure, harass, or interfere with state and local election officials as they do their jobs,” the senators wrote in their letter, dated Aug. 3.

The Justice Department language on the planned election monitoring has been couched in legalese, but Trump, who is directing the scheme, has been direct with his goals for the effort, with repeated claims that the 2020 election that occurred on his watch as president was “stolen.”

The counter from the senators, in their letter:

“As demonstrated under both Democratic and Republican administrations, U.S. elections are safe, secure, and fair. The department’s election monitors program must not be used to undermine that fact. Election monitors must carry out their responsibilities in a manner that respects and upholds voters’ rights, complies with the applicable legal requirements, and does not interfere with state and local election officials’ administration of the voting process.”