In a move that confounded some elections experts, the Justice Department on Thursday announced preliminary findings of a probe into discarded general election ballots in a key Pennsylvania county.
U.S. Attorney David Freed of the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced Thursday that a federal investigation found that nine military general election ballots were discarded in Luzerne County. Seven were marked for President Trump, and the other two are unknown, said Freed, a Republican.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on the security of mail-in voting, and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany mentioned the announcement minutes before the U.S. the attorney's office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania posted it on Twitter.
"I can confirm for you that Trump ballots, ballots for the president were found in Pennsylvania. And I believe you should be getting more information on that shortly," she said. "Here, in the last 24 hours, they were found cast aside."
Mr. Trump himself appeared to allude to the forthcoming announcement that morning in a radio interview with Fox News' Brian Kilmeade.
"Eight ballots in an office yesterday in a certain state and they had 'Trump' written on it, and they were thrown in a garbage can," he said. "This is what's going to happen. And we're investigating that."
In the initial release, the Justice Department said that all nine ballots had been cast for Mr. Trump and then issued a correction hours later stating that two of the ballots had been resealed and their contents were unknown.
The Justice Department released a summary letter sent to the Luzerne County Board of Elections later in the day that said, "The majority of the recovered materials were found in an outside dumpster." The letter also said the investigation also uncovered four empty mail-in ballot envelopes.
Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor and former Justice Department official, said in a tweet that "there is no legit reason" for "a DOJ press release on a pending investigation, that...announces a partial list of unconfirmed facts, including...the identity of one of the candidates on specific ballots."
"If the U.S. attorney wants to work for a campaign, he's welcome to do so, just as soon as he resigns," he wrote.
The Luzerne County district attorney's office said in a statement that it was told of "issues with a small number of mail-in ballots," on September 17. That was the same day that the state Supreme Court ruled that the Green Party would not be on the ballot, lifting a stay and allowing the secretary of the commonwealth to certify the ballot.
Luzerne District Attorney Stephanie Salavantis, a Republican, told CBS News the county elections office had already sent some military ballots to voters ahead of the court's decision because of a deadline to send them out by September 19, 45 days before Election Day. The local district attorney's office found out about the returned ballots because some of them had been opened, despite state law stating that they can't be opened until Election Day.
More Pennsylvanians are expected to vote by mail than ever before in the November election. It'll be the first time any voter in the state can do so without an excuse in a general election. Over 1.5 million voted by mail in the primary, leading to delays in the results, and election officials expect that number to double in the general election. About 34% of Pennsylvanians plan to vote by mail, according to a recent Franklin and Marshall poll, and Democrats are expected to vote by mail at far higher rates than Republicans.