Federal Investigation into Ballot Processing in Los Angeles

Federal prosecutors visited a ballot processing facility in Los Angeles County on Friday, just a day after President Trump stated that the U.S. Attorney’s Office was “investigating” the election, according to a report from the California Post.

U.S. Attorney Robert Renner toured the facility amidst growing concerns about the efficiency of ballot processing.

As questions arose regarding California’s low vote counts, Los Angeles’ federal prosecutor Bill Essairi announced that his office is collaborating with the FBI and the Justice Department on multiple investigations into election fraud.

Renner’s visit came after The Post reported on Thursday from the county’s 144,000-square-foot ballot processing facility, which was found to have much of its space underutilized even with a considerable backlog of ballots.

During the visit, The Post noted rows of empty chairs and vacant ballot processing stations, while hundreds of thousands of ballots remained uncounted.

When a staff member at the election center was asked about the unused workstations despite the backlog, the response was somewhat dismissive, suggesting reporters shouldn’t be “fooled by what you see.” However, no further explanation was provided.

Later that evening, county officials announced they had counted an additional 74,486 votes, bringing the total to 1,470,473. Still, an estimated 638,694 ballots are unprocessed, which includes around 627,000 mail-in ballots.

This federal attention follows Trump’s accusations that California Democrats were attempting to “steal” the gubernatorial and mayoral primaries in the state. In a series of social media posts, he claimed that election officials were mishandling mail-in ballots and intentionally delaying results, although he did not offer any supporting evidence.

The outcome of outstanding votes may be crucial for several key races.

In the gubernatorial race, former Fox News host Steve Hilton was ahead of former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra by approximately 67,500 votes as of Thursday night, receiving 27.2% of the vote compared to Becerra’s 26%.

The Los Angeles mayoral race remains unclear as well. Mayor Karen Bass is currently leading, but media figure Spencer Pratt is vying for second place in hopes of reaching a possible runoff in November. With many ballots still unprocessed, election officials and candidates are closely watching the tally.

Los Angeles County election officials defended the time-consuming counting process, citing California’s mail-in voting system and the necessary signature verification, along with state law permitting ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted even after a few days.

Attempts to contact Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder and County Clerk Dean Logan for comments were unsuccessful by the time of publication.