‘Stop threatening your friends’: Idaho Attorney General’s Office lawyer blasts Justice Department

In response to one of the Trump administration’s latest attempts to intervene in state election processes, a high-ranking Idaho state government lawyer representing the state’s top election official sent the U.S. Justice Department a stern letter.

Early last week, the Justice Department sent Idaho — and apparently all 50 states — a letter threatening to criminally prosecute local and state election officials if they let noncitizens vote in the 2026 midterm elections. The letter ratcheted up the Trump administration’s push to eradicate noncitizen voting, a crime that experts say is rare in Idaho and across the country.

In Idaho — which is politically controlled by Republicans, and in recent years publicly promoted its audit of all registered voters in search of noncitizens — the Trump administration’s letter wasn’t well received.

“Your insinuations of criminal violations of the federal election laws are not well taken,” Jim Craig, a division chief in the Attorney General’s Office, wrote to several lawyers for the Justice Department in a letter on Friday.

He also noted that Idaho’s top election official, Republican Secretary of State Phil McGrane has made clear to the Justice Department that “Idaho shares in your goals of having properly maintained voter registration lists. Idaho has taken a leading role in ensuring that its voter registration list is purged of non-citizens.”

The U.S. Justice Department could not be immediately reached for comment.

McGrane, Idaho’s top election official, has declined to give the Justice Department access to sensitive information on Idaho’s 1 million registered voters, including partial Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers.

In April, the Justice Department sued him to try to get a judge to force him to turn over the data. The lawsuit is paused while a federal appeals court considers two of several similar cases the Justice Department has initially lost.

Toward the end of the letter, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division’s Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon asked how the Justice Department “can assist” with McGrane’s efforts to comply with federal law.

Craig, who leads the civil litigation and constitutional defense division in the Idaho Attorney General’s Office, had a few thoughts.

“First, you can stop threatening your friends in Idaho,” he wrote. “Idaho is fully committed to supporting President Trump’s goal of ensuring that only U.S. citizens are registered and actually vote in Idaho."

“Second, you can voluntarily dismiss your lawsuit against Secretary McGrane,” Craig added. “As Secretary McGrane repeatedly made clear, he has taken significant steps to ensure that Idaho’s voter registration list only includes eligible U.S. citizens … We are confident that Idaho’s voter registration list is the best maintained list within the entire United States.”

And, Craig wrote, the Justice Department can update McGrane on how its office is criminally prosecuting noncitizens that McGrane’s Office flagged and referred to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. 

“Notably, unlike your unwarranted efforts against Secretary McGrane, criminal prosecutions of the noncitizens actually responsible for breaking the law will do much to deter future noncitizens from illegally registering to vote,” Craig wrote. 

Craig wrote that McGrane was “unaware of the USDOJ taking any action against” 15 noncitizens referred by the Secretary of State’s Office for possible prosecution.

Last week, University of Idaho law professor Benjamin Cover told the Idaho Capital Sun that no noncitizens in Idaho had been recently federally prosecuted for ineligible voting. Cover, who researches noncitizen voting, said he had found only about two dozen federal prosecutions for noncitizen voting under the second Trump administration. 

Craig also detailed Idaho’s efforts to purge noncitizens from its voter rolls — which was partly spurred by a 2024 executive order by McGrane and Gov. Brad Little, who are both elected Republicans. Craig noted that in the review, “none of those noncitizens voted in any election in 2024”

He also accused the Justice Department’s letter of violating Idaho’s professional rules of conduct for attorneys, which generally forbids parties under legal representation from communicating directly with each other about the subject of their legal representation, meaning the Justice Department should not be communicating out of court with the very state official it is suing.