Democracy Docket reports:

A federal judge in Oregon issued a sweeping rebuke of the Justice Department’s nationwide push to seize state voter rolls, ruling that the department can no longer be presumed to be acting in good faith and warning that its conduct threatens voters and states’ rights.

And the judge cited a recent letter sent by Attorney General Pam Bondi linking the voter roll crusade to the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota as one reason to doubt the department’s truthfulness.

In a sharply worded opinion released Thursday, U.S. District Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai concluded that the department’s public statements and actions stripped it of the trust courts typically afford federal law enforcement agencies.

Kasubhai had already announced from the bench — on two separate occasions — that the DOJ’s lawsuit seeking Oregon’s unredacted voter registration data would be dismissed.

“The presumption of regularity that has been previously extended to Plaintiff that it could be taken at its word — with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes — no longer holds,” Kasubhai wrote. “When Plaintiff, in this case, conveys assurances that any private and sensitive data will remain private and used only for a declared and limited purpose, it must be thoroughly scrutinized and squared with its open and public statements to the contrary.” [Continue reading…]