Virginia Attorney General Says DHS May Have Violated State Election Laws Following Whistleblower Report

Virginia's attorney general announced Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security may have violated multiple state laws following a whistleblower report accusing federal employees of misrepresenting themselves on voter lookup tools to search for noncitizen voters. The development escalates tensions between state officials and federal operations targeting voter rolls ahead of elections.

In an official letter obtained by The Associated Press, Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones demanded that DHS confirm in writing whether the agency directed anyone to access Virginia voters' private information without securing explicit permission from those individuals first. Jones addressed the correspondence to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, emphasizing that Virginia legal standards prohibit such disclosures.

"Virginia Election Code does not permit disclosure of this protected information to the federal government without a court order," Jones wrote in his letter to the department. The state's statutory framework explicitly restricts the use of its voter lookup tools to individuals who attest under penalty of law that they are checking solely for their own registration records.

Alongside the demand for clarification, Jones asked Mullin to preserve all related records concerning the matter. This preservation request covers access logs, internal correspondence, and any training materials referenced in the underlying whistleblower report.

The anonymous whistleblower report at the center of the inquiry was published Monday by Democratic Senate leaders. It includes transcripts from a DHS training session provided to a group of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services staffers. According to the document, these employees were directed in late August to pause their normal responsibilities, complete a training session lasting less than two hours, and begin running DHS-provided names through state voter registration systems to identify potential "unlawful voters."

The whistleblower alleged that participating agents were instructed to review 40 individuals per day, allocating roughly 12 minutes to determine the legal voting status of each person and to generate federal records for anyone flagged as a noncitizen.

The Associated Press has sought comment from DHS regarding the attorney general's letter and the allegations contained within the whistleblower disclosures.

The inquiry unfolds against a broader national backdrop involving President Donald Trump's administration, which has contended that noncitizen voting represents a significant potential source of fraud for the November midterm elections. Conversely, extensive independent research indicates that voting by individuals who lack U.S. citizenship is extremely rare.

As part of these broader federal initiatives, the Department of Justice has pursued lawsuits attempting to compel the release of detailed voter registration data across 30 states and the District of Columbia, though those legal actions have not yet yielded successful outcomes for the administration.

With the attorney general's demand issued, state officials are awaiting a formal response from DHS leadership regarding the access protocols used during the staff training exercises, while state lawmakers and investigators continue to scrutinize how federal personnel interacted with local election databases.