The FBI raided the office of a voting rights group in Ohio on Thursday. prompting immediate concerns the Trump administration is cracking down on such organizations ahead of the midterm elections.
FBI agents raided the Cleveland office of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. a grassroots group that does voter registration work, said Prentiss Haney, a board member of the group. Agents seized computers. phones, he said, and also showed up at homes of people affiliated with the group throughout the state and interviewed them.
“This raid is a full-on coordinated assault weaponizing the justice department. DHS against people who are fighting for working-class voters and Black voters to make sure they have access to the ballot,” Haney said in an interview.
The agents appeared to be examining accusations of fraud relating to the 2024 election, Haney said,. it was not immediately clear what the specifics of the investigation were beyond that. The FBI’s office in Cleveland did not return a request for comment. Trump won the popular vote in Ohio in 2024, delivering him 17 electoral votes,. Bernie Moreno, a Republican senator, unseated Sherrod Brown, a longtime Democratic incumbent, in an expensive race that helped deliver the Senate to the GOP. The partisan balance of Ohio’s House seats did not change.
The activity came about a month after a top official in the office of the acting attorney general. Todd Blanche, instructed prosecutors to prioritize voter fraud cases, according to the New York Times. Last fall. Frank LaRose, a Republican serving as Ohio’s top election official, referred 1,084 non-citizens who appeared to have registered in the state to the justice department. Federal investigators have also collected voter records in at least six Ohio counties, Reuters reported in April.
The raid, first reported by MS Now, brought immediate condemnation from elected officials and other civil rights organizations. “This is an unprecedented attack on democracy: these raids must end immediately,” said Shontel Brown. an Ohio Democratic representative, whose district includes Cleveland. “Unfortunately, this appears to be part of a systematic effort by Trump. Kash Patel’s FBI to attack our elections and perpetuate more myths of voter fraud – all to undermine and challenge any election result that Trump does not agree with.”
Sherrod Brown, who is running again this year, said reports of the raid were “deeply disturbing”. Justin Bibb, Cleveland’s Democratic mayor, said the FBI should disclose the basis for the raid. “If there is a legitimate basis for these actions, it should be disclosed,” he said in a statement. “If not, the public has every right to question whether civic participation is being unfairly targeted.”
Trump has continued to falsely claim there is widespread voter fraud. more recently focusing on California, which takes long after election day to tally votes because it allows for late-arriving ballots. Trump continues to offer no evidence for those claims. though it has escalated concern he will try to contest a Republican loss in this fall’s midterm elections.
“This appears to be an outrageous fishing expedition, an attempt to intimidate people working for democracy in our communities. country. It is an egregious abuse of law enforcement for political ends,. it fits a pattern of federal inquiries targeting voting infrastructure ahead of the midterm elections,” said Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice, a thinktank.
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