North Carolina Misses Federal Subpoena Deadline to Turn Over Voter Information

North Carolina state officials have missed the deadline to turn over voter information requested by the federal office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The two federal grand jury subpoenas were issued in September 2018 and requested five years worth of voter and ballot data from 44 counties. In addition, the subpoenas also requested eight years of data for voters statewide and eight years of data from the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

The DMV criteria are lengthy but include anyone registering to vote who indicated that they were born outside of the United States, dealt with immigration services, used foreign documents to try to register, or had their applications rejected. The subpoenas can be accessed below:

• ICE DMV Subpoena
• ICE Elections Records Subpoena

In a letter to the North Carolina State Board of Elections Attorney Joshua Lawson dated September 6, 2018, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sebastian Kielmanovich agreed to postpone fulfillment of the subpoenas until January 2019 due to the upcoming election.

The letter also states that the postponement is agreeable only if North Carolina preserves the records being requested.

The subpoenas were originally sent on August 31, 2018 to the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE), but Lawson has handed them over to the state’s Attorney General’s Office.

The North Carolina Attorney General’s Office confirmed that it was now handling the subpoenas but declined to comment on their status or which attorney’s were responsible for them.

“We have been in regular communication with the U.S. Attorney’s office,” Laura Brewer, a spokesperson for the North Carolina Department of Justice, told Battleground State News.

Both subpoena documents list Kielmanovich and ICE Special Agent Jahaira Torrens as primary contacts.

Keielmanovich and Torrens were part of the high-profile case in August 2018 that charged 19 foreign nationals with voting illegally in the 2016 general election.

The cases of illegal voting were uncovered by a federal task force led by the ICE and the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service.

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A.P. Dillon is the North Carolina Bureau Chief for The Tennesee Star and a reporter at Battleground State News. Follow A.P. Dillon on Twitter. Email Tips to [email protected].
Photo “North Carolina Eastern District Courthouse” by U.S. Courts.