The Trump administration asked an appeals court to intervene in a lawsuit over mail ballots in California, according to a New York Times report on the mail ballot suit.
The Times, in a report by Zach Montague, said the Justice Department sought to jump-start a lawsuit aimed at compelling the state not to count as many as 20,000 mail ballots. According to the paper, the department claims those ballots were sent to noncitizens.
The lawsuit, as the Times described it, seeks to require California to leave those ballots out of its count. The Times account does not detail the legal grounds the department cites, and it does not say how the department arrived at the figure of as many as 20,000 ballots.
The Times used wording that describes an upper limit rather than a confirmed total. The account does not indicate that any court has made findings on that figure or on the citizenship of the ballots' senders.
The account does not say when the appeals court is expected to act, whether it has yet ruled on the request, or how California officials have responded. The Times account used for this story is a brief summary, so additional details in the full article may not be reflected here.
The full Times article remains the primary source for further detail on the filing and the case.