Department of Justice and FBI

The FBI has closed a politically driven 2020 election‑fraud inquiry in Nevada, opened at the insistence of First Assistant U.S. Attorney Sigal Chattah, after a review of voter rolls against Department of Homeland Security citizenship data found only 38 possible non‑citizen voters statewide and no viable cases before the statute of limitations expired. Chattah reportedly ordered the probe in July and provided a thumb drive of Republican Party data claiming non‑citizen voting and cash‑for‑ballots schemes on tribal reservations, and told colleagues it could help flip a congressional seat and target Democratic state attorneys general who pursued fake electors. Agents told her office in late January that, beyond the small number of possible ineligible voters, time had run out to bring charges, and the FBI closed the assessment. The closure undercuts continued federal investigations into 2020 fraud claims in Georgia and Arizona, where the FBI has executed a search warrant for Fulton County ballots and issued a grand jury subpoena for records tied to Arizona’s Maricopa audit, even as those claims rely heavily on figures like Trump White House lawyer Kurt Olsen whose allegations of sweeping fraud remain unproven. Ethics experts and election‑integrity advocates are already questioning why a sitting top federal prosecutor was allowed to press an investigation anchored in partisan opposition research and debunked theories while being kept in the loop on FBI findings, raising fresh concerns about politicization of federal law enforcement in swing‑state election cases as Trump pushes Congress to pass strict proof‑of‑citizenship and voter‑ID rules in the SAVE Act.