The Justice Department found itself red-faced after a court document was filled with basic spelling errors.
An emergency motion filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in the Sixth District Court last week failed to spell several basic words correctly, spelling voters as “votors,” “United States” as “United Staes,” and “emergency” as “emeregency.”
The emergency appeal comes after a Michigan judge refused to force the state to turn over records containing personal voter information such as birth dates, addresses and Social Security numbers.
US President Donald Trump attends the Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House in Washington, DC, the United States on March 2, 2026. Reuters/Jonathan Ernst/Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
The Trump administration is trying to force states to hand over the personal information of tens of millions of voters across the country ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
The Justice Department has defended the outreach, arguing that full access to the data is necessary to enforce federal regulations that require states to keep their voter rolls current and not conduct ineligible registrations.
But many states, including Republican-led ones, have resisted, arguing that the Justice Department overstepped its bounds by handing over detailed personal data that would allow the federal government to identify and delete unmarked voters in the state.
One Republican election official, who spoke anonymously to avoid backlash from the White House, told CNN last month they were concerned the data could be used for immigration enforcement or cast doubt on the midterm election results.
“If states don’t provide this information, Republicans lose and they can go back and say, ‘Look, it’s because they didn’t give us this information that they cheated and all these illegal people who shouldn’t have voted voted,'” the official said.
Since September, the Justice Department has filed lawsuits against 24 states that have refused to share records.
At the same time, the latest filing is not an isolated embarrassing incident.
Justice Department attorneys have stumbled upon basic details in several court cases in recent months. In April, lawyers misspelled “United States” in a case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s wrongful deportation.
Months later, former prosecutor Lindsey Halligan incorrectly listed New York Attorney General Letitia James’ address as “Brooklyn, New Jersey” in a legal filing.
Just last week, when the Department of Justice filed charges against New Jersey Gov. Mickey Sherrill, her name was misspelled multiple times throughout the indictment.
The Justice Department has also been criticized in recent weeks for errors it made in the newly released Epstein documents.
When the records were initially released, they contained a range of material that did not appear to comply with standard editorial practices. The release includes video in which women’s faces are clearly visible, nearly 100 unedited nude images, mugshots of young women, images involving minors, and documents identifying survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse, according to CNN’s review. A court document reportedly allowed redacted text to be discovered simply by copying and pasting.
The trove also includes a 2009 FBI undercover video related to an effort to obtain a “black book” of Epstein’s alleged contacts, in which the agent’s face was not obscured.
Under the Epstein Dossier Transparency Act passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump in late November, the Justice Department must withhold sexually explicit material and information that could identify victims.
Even so, the department has faced criticism for heavily blacking out the names of individuals alleged to have assisted Epstein, prompting accusations of inconsistent application of its revised standards.
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A Justice Department spokesman said the fully redacted names belong to victims, FBI personnel or other law enforcement officials.
“In many cases, as is publicly documented, those original victims became participants and co-conspirators,” the official said. “We did not redact any of the male names, only the female victims.”
Justice Department leaders acknowledged errors in the release of the Epstein documents but said they were quickly corrected.
“Mistakes were made by attorneys who worked extremely hard over the past 60 days. But think about it: You’re talking about pieces of paper stacked from the ground to the two Eiffel Towers,” said Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
“We had 30 days to review, redact and unredact millions of pages of documents, and our error rate was very low,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said.
