Bondi’s ‘blackmail’ letter to Minnesota deepens concerns over DOJ’s voter roll motives, federal judge says

Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks during an announcement at Department of Justice headquarters in Washington, D.C., Nov. 19, 2025. (Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images)

A federal judge in Oregon said Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent letter to Minnesota reinforced unease about how the Justice Department is wielding its authority in its nationwide push for state voter rolls, suggesting the administration’s campaign may be driven by improper motives.

During a hearing Monday, U.S. District Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai said the Bondi letter — which tied continued aggressive immigration enforcement to voter roll access — fortified concerns about the DOJ’s stated purpose for demanding voter records under the Civil Rights Act of 1960.

“I have great concerns given what I have seen now both in this letter from the U.S. Attorney General and those motives and purposes,” Kasubhai said. “It does clearly focus and relate to motives that would very well undermine the basis and purpose provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1960.”

The hearing came after Kasubhai had already ruled from the bench that the DOJ’s lawsuit against Oregon would be dismissed. But the judge’s decision to convene the parties again — specifically to address the Bondi letter — signaled that the court was looking beyond the narrow procedural posture of the case to examine whether the attorney general’s public actions shed light on the DOJ’s true “basis and purpose” for seeking voter data.

Kasubhai reiterated at the hearing that the DOJ’s case against Oregon — seeking its statewide, unredacted voter rolls — will be dismissed entirely and said his written opinion will be issued later this week.

In her letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), Bondi urged state officials to “allow the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice to access voter rolls” as part of a broader push to “restore the rule of law.” The letter also demanded cooperation with immigration enforcement, access to state benefit data and an end to so-called sanctuary policies.

Bondi sent the letter just hours after a federal immigration officer fatally shot a man in Minneapolis — an incident that sparked protests and national backlash — and framed voter roll access alongside immigration enforcement and public unrest.

At Monday’s hearing, attorneys for Oregon and intervening parties* argued that the letter confirmed long-standing concerns that the DOJ’s voter roll campaign is pretextual.

“It undermines the federal government’s position that the request of Oregon’s unredacted voter enrollment — along with every other state — has something to do with voter list maintenance,” Thomas Castelli, an attorney for Oregon, said. “This is entirely, it seems to be, in the context of immigration enforcement.”

Branden Lewiston, counsel for the intervening defendants, said “this letter really confirmed some of the suspicions that we already had regarding whether the DOJ’s stated purpose is their true purpose,” adding that the case should be dismissed as a matter of law.

DOJ attorney James Tucker argued that the Minnesota letter had no bearing on the Oregon case and that the department had satisfied statutory requirements.

The DOJ has argued in Oregon and in dozens of similar cases nationwide that its voter roll demands are narrow enforcement actions authorized by federal election law and that courts should not second-guess the attorney general’s stated reasons for requesting voter records.

But Kasubhai suggested Monday that courts are not required to ignore real-world conduct when evaluating whether those statutory requirements have been met.

The judge said the Minnesota letter was not necessary to resolve the Oregon case, but explained that it sharpened his concerns about how the DOJ is exercising its authority and whether its stated rationale matches its actions.

Those remarks and Kasubhai’s anticipated opinion could have implications far beyond Oregon.

The Trump administration has sued more than two dozen states and the District of Columbia in an effort to obtain unredacted voter registration data, a campaign that has increasingly drawn judicial skepticism. Federal judges have already dismissed similar DOJ lawsuits in California and Georgia.

Voting rights advocates have said Bondi’s letter appears to confirm their long-standing anxieties that the DOJ’s voter data campaign is being used as political leverage rather than as a good-faith effort to enforce election laws — a concern now echoed, at least in part, by a federal judge evaluating the administration’s conduct on the record.

“Here’s the bottom line… they’re not entitled to that data,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) said. “This isn’t leadership. This is blackmail. This is the way organized crime works. They move into your neighborhood, they start beating everybody up, and then they extort what they want. This is not how America is supposed to work, and I’m embarrassed that the administration is pushing in this direction.”

*The intervening defendants in the case are represented by the Elias Law Group (ELG). ELG firm chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.