New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill called Trump a liar over noncitizen voting, then refused a Justice Department order to hand over the very records that prove him right.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon says Gov. Mikie Sherrill knew a voter-roll scandal was about to break in her own state when she went online and accused President Trump of lying about noncitizens casting ballots. "She knew it, and she still went online and called the president a liar and said he was exaggerating," Dhillon said. "Shame on you, governor."
The facts Dhillon is pointing to are not in dispute. New Jersey's Motor Vehicle Commission ran a software error between June 2023 and June 2024 that registered roughly 6,600 noncitizens to vote. Sherrill's own administration has confirmed the number. Of those registrations, approximately 400 people cast ballots in state elections, according to the governor's office. The error predates Sherrill's time as governor, but the disclosure landed on her desk, and it landed around the same time she was publicly dismissing Trump's warnings about noncitizen voting as exaggeration.
Dhillon sent New Jersey a letter demanding the names, dates of birth, nationalities, addresses, and registration dates and locations of all 6,600 people swept up in the software failure. She also wants records showing when and where the roughly 400 noncitizen voters cast ballots, plus certification and signature records for anyone who voted by mail. The deadline was five business days.
Sherrill's administration said no. The governor's office has pointed instead to an internal, independent state investigation and has blamed the prior administration for the software failure, even as it withholds the underlying voter data from federal investigators. That is a notable position for a governor who spent recent weeks casting doubt on the scale of noncitizen voting nationally. New Jersey is not disputing that thousands of ineligible names ended up on its rolls. It is disputing whether the Trump Justice Department gets to see who they are.
The optics are not complicated. Trump and Department of Homeland Security officials released data alongside a recent speech showing more than 35,000 potential noncitizens on New Jersey's voter rolls, a broader figure than the 6,600 confirmed cases tied to the Motor Vehicle Commission glitch. Sherrill pushed back publicly on that claim. Days later, her own administration confirmed the narrower number was real, and voters who should never have been on the rolls had, in fact, cast ballots.
What comes next
Dhillon's letter is not a polite request. It is the opening move of a Justice Department that has shown, in other states, a willingness to escalate voter-roll disputes into litigation when governors decline to cooperate. New Jersey Globe and the Washington Examiner both reported that Sherrill's refusal sets up a direct legal confrontation, with the DOJ already weighing next steps if the state does not produce the records voluntarily.
Sherrill's team argues the state's own review should be allowed to run its course before federal investigators get access to individual voter files, and that handing over names, addresses and ballot records to Washington raises its own privacy concerns. That is a defensible administrative position. It does not explain why the governor felt free to call the president a liar on the underlying question days before her own numbers proved him substantially right.
The next move belongs to the Justice Department. If Sherrill continues to withhold the data past the five-day window, expect a subpoena or a federal lawsuit to compel production, the same path DOJ has taken with other states resistant to voter-roll requests. Until then, New Jersey has confirmed noncitizens were registered, confirmed some of them voted, and declined to say who they are.
Also read: DSA co-chair says true to abolishing the Senate, ICE and borders • California AG sued after rewriting voter ID measure's ballot title • NJ Governor Admits Software Error Let 6,600 Noncitizens Register to Vote
