HARRISBURG, Pa. — The Justice Department announced Thursday it is investigating a small number of military ballots that were discarded in a Pennsylvania county that could be key in the presidential election. But the department’s disclosure is both unusual and inappropriate, experts say.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Pennsylvania released a statement saying it is working with the FBI to investigate after the discovery of nine discarded ballots. The office initially said all nine ballots had been cast for President Donald Trump, but later revised its statement to say only seven were for Trump and that the other two had been resealed and its contents were unknown.
“Some of those ballots can be attributed to specific voters and some cannot,” the statement said.
The inquiry was launched at the request of Luzerne County District Attorney Stefanie Salavanti, the statement said. In 2016, Trump won Pennsylvania — and its 20 electoral votes — by just 44,000 votes. He won Luzerne County by nearly 20 points.
Trump and his campaign immediately used the investigation to attack the integrity of mail-in voting, which the president has repeatedly claimed could lead to a fraudulent election outcome.
The president, in fact, discussed the discarded ballots hours before the U.S. attorney’s press release was issued.
“These ballots are a horror show,” Trump told Fox News Radio. “They found six ballots in an office yesterday in a garbage can. They were Trump ballots. Eight ballots in an office yesterday in a certain state and they had 'Trump' written on it, and they were thrown in a garbage can. This is what’s going to happen.”
The investigation also comes during a week in which Trump has suggested he might not peacefully leave the White House if he loses and doesn’t believe the results are legitimate.
Matt Wolking, deputy communications director for the Trump campaign, tweeted about the investigation, saying, “Democrats are trying to steal the election.”
The Justice Department’s statement did not allege that any laws were broken and seemed to blame the problem on bureaucratic mistakes.
Military ballots are supposed to be securely stored, unopened, until Election Day. But election officials told investigators that the military envelopes are similar to those for mail-in ballot requests.
“The staff believed that adhering to the protocol of preserving envelopes unopened would cause them to miss such ballot requests,” the statement said.
But the Justice Department’s press release itself has left many elections and legal experts bewildered. They say it is highly unusual for U.S. attorneys to announce they’ve opened an investigation and were troubled by the fact that the DOJ revealed the votes were cast for Trump.
“This is both bizarre and disturbing — US Attorney’s Offices don’t issue reports on pending investigations — and certainly not reports so blatantly contrived to provide political ballast for a sitting President’s campaign narrative,” tweeted David Laufman, a former Justice Department official.
“It is hard to express how illegitimate the press release is. That’s the problem,” Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School, told Politico. “It is really improper for DOJ to be putting out a press release with partial fact. And it is career-endingly improper to designate the candidate for whom the votes are cast. There is no federal statute on which the identity of the preferred candidate depends.”
Richard Hasen, an election law professor at University of California at Irvine, told The Washington Post: “The Justice Department should not be a political tool, and this is a story that is going to be manipulated by the president to say his votes are being thrown out.”
At her briefing Thursday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany also made reference to mail found earlier this week in a ditch Greenville, Wisconsin, that included absentee ballots. The U.S. Postal Service is investigating that matter.