"The distrust is there."
That was Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon's stinging response to CBS' Lesley Stahl after Stahl suggested during Sunday's 60 Minutes that the Trump administration's attempts to clean up voter rolls and purge noncitizens from them were undermining Americans' confidence in elections.
Stahl was trying to argue that very few noncitizens actually vote – it's the old "it never happens" argument favored by Democrats, despite ample proof to the contrary – and questioned why the administration was making such an effort to secure the elections ahead of the midterms.
“There are people who feel that the point is to sow distrust about the whole election system. There are very few people who are noncitizens who end up voting — very, very few. And so therefore, what’s the purpose?” asked Stahl.
“The point is actually the opposite of what you’re saying,” Dhillon replied. “It’s not to sow distrust. The distrust is there.”
Sending monitors to election polls does not sow distrust in elections—quite the contrary! Tonight on @60Minutes, I explained it is routine for @theJusticeDept to monitor election sites to repair the distrust already present in the system due to voting irregularities. https://t.co/WNAEN31u9j
— AAGHarmeetDhillon (@AAGDhillon) October 19, 2026
And it's not like Dhillon has to look very far for examples to back up her claims.
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) acknowledged back in July that a software error had improperly added roughly 6,600 noncitizens to the state’s voter rolls, and a preliminary review found that nearly 400 of those noncitizens had actually voted. That’s a bit more than the “very, very few” line Stahl was trying to push.
Then there’s Virginia, where Democrat Attorney General Jay Jones’ office and the Department of Elections just issued a 10-page Election Day bulletin instructing local officials on how to deal with federal law-enforcement personnel and Department of Justice monitors who show up at polling places. Among Jones' instructions: document the badge numbers, weapons, vehicles, and movements, and report their presence up the chain. Workers are even being advised to call the police.
You don't issue instructions like that if you've got nothing to hide.
So, yes, Dhillon is 100 percent correct here – the distrust is there because Democrats have put it there. And doing things like telling voters that noncitizens hardly ever vote while states like Virginia are simultaneously preparing poll workers to keep tabs on the feds doesn't exactly make the Left's denials, as argued by Stahl herself, ring true.
Editor’s Note: Republicans are fighting for election integrity by requiring proper identification to vote. It's common sense, yet Democrats are spreading lies about the impact of such a measure.
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