Pam Bondi’s Three Simple Steps

The third request had nothing to do with immigration

Pam Bondi’s Three Simple Steps

The third request had nothing to do with immigration

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #1,015: Thursday, September 3rd, 2026

Hold two facts in your head. Just two.

On Saturday, January 24, a Border Patrol agent shot and killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, during a federal immigration operation in Minneapolis.

It was the second killing by a federal agent in that city in under three weeks. Renee Good, 37, a mother of three, had been shot dead earlier that month. The day before Pretti died, tens of thousands of Minnesotans marched in sub-zero temperatures against the federal operation.

That same day, the Attorney General of the United States sent Minnesota’s governor a three-page letter listing three things the state could do to bring an end to the chaos.

Two of the three requests were about immigration. The third one was for the voter rolls.

What The Letter Actually Said

Not what a pundit said it said. What it said.

Fox News obtained it first. CBS News obtained all three pages. The text has been public since January.

Pam Bondi asked Governor Tim Walz for three things:

One.

Repeal Minnesota’s sanctuary policies and cooperate fully with ICE…including giving agents access to local jails and honoring federal detainer requests.

Two.

Turn over state records on Medicaid and food assistance, including SNAP data.

Three.

Let the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department into Minnesota’s voter registration records…framed as confirming the state’s practices comply with federal law under the Civil Rights Act of 1960.

She called these simple steps that would help bring back law and order. She accused state officials of anti-law-enforcement rhetoric and of putting federal agents in danger.

Now read the three again…and find the one that doesn’t belong.

The One That Doesn’t Belong

Here’s what you cannot argue around.

Voter registration data has no relationship to immigration enforcement. Not a strained one. Not an indirect one. None. Nobody’s safety in Minneapolis in January depended on who got to inspect Minnesota’s voter file.

The first two requests, whatever you think of them…are at least about the subject of the letter. Jail access relates to enforcement. Benefits data relates to a fraud investigation the administration had been pressing for months.

The third is a non sequitur, unless you already know that DOJ had been trying to get Minnesota’s voter data through ordinary legal channels and getting nowhere. Which is exactly what Minnesota’s Secretary of State said in his reply.

A request that couldn’t get through the front door…showed up in a letter about dead bodies.

Minnesota Answered In One Word

Secretary of State Steve Simon replied the next day. The answer, he said, was no.

He called it an ”outrageous attempt to coerce Minnesota” into surrendering private data on millions of citizens…and said it followed repeated failed attempts by DOJ to pressure his office for the same thing.

He described the demand as ”an apparent ransom to pay for our state’s peace and security.”

Before The Payoff, Here’s Where I Could Be Wrong

I’m not burying this at the bottom where nobody reads it. (Again, I don’t work that way.)

The letter contains no explicit quid pro quo.

Bondi did not write give me the voter rolls and I’ll pull ICE out. The Brennan Center, no friend of this administration…concedes it in plain text: ”There’s no explicit quid pro quo offered.”

They argue the implication is unmistakable. I think so, too. I think most people would. But…the words aren’t there…and if you tell someone at Thanksgiving that they are…you’ll lose the argument in front of the whole table.

DOJ says the accusation is a fabrication.

A department spokesperson told Fox News Digital that Democrats were ”shamelessly lying” about the letter’s contents.

Their position is that these were three separate lawful requests in one envelope…and that the department has statutory authority to examine voter-roll maintenance. That’s a real legal argument, not a talking point.

And basic registration lists are often public.

The fight is over the sensitive…unredacted version. That distinction gets flattened in most coverage…including some you’ve seen from people on our side.

So the honest claim isn’t that the Attorney General committed extortion.

The honest claim is narrower and harder to answer: she put an unrelated election-data demand into a letter about lethal federal operations…on the day of a killing…and then federal judges had to decide what that meant.

The Letter Grew Up And Became Evidence

This is the part that got lost in January, and it’s why I’m writing about a seven-month-old document sixty-one days before an election.

In Minnesota’s litigation over the federal operation…the state’s attorneys held up the letter and argued extortion…one of them called it a ransom note. Judge Katherine Menendez said it suggested a “quid pro quo” and appeared skeptical of the department’s defense.

In Oregon…attorneys used the same letter to argue that DOJ’s nationwide voter-roll campaign is pretextual. That the stated reason isn’t the real reason.

Then…look at the scoreboard. DOJ has sued 24 states and the District of Columbia for their voter files. Federal judges in California, Oregon, Michigan and Georgia threw those demands out…Judge Carter in California finding the demand violated federal and state privacy law.

Meanwhile…17 mostly Republican-led states…handed their data over voluntarily…and DOJ has acknowledged in court that it intends to route what it collects to DHS.

A letter written in January is the document opposing counsel reaches for in September. That’s not a news cycle. That’s a fact pattern.

The Question Nobody Has Answered

On February 13, the Democracy Defenders Fund filed a complaint…

…with the Justice Department’s Inspector General…asking it to investigate whether Bondi and other officials broke federal law attempting to coerce Minnesota into surrendering its voter database.

That was almost seven months ago.

I can find no public record of any response. No acknowledgment. No opening. No declination…nothing.

Maybe…it’s under review. Maybe…it’s in a drawer. But…an inspector general complaint against a sitting Attorney General…filed in February and silent in September…is not a small thing to leave sitting there while ballots get printed.

Two phone calls answer it.

One Ask

If you know a reporter…local…national…student paper…doesn’t matter…send them this piece and point them at the last section.

The OIG press office and the Democracy Defenders Fund. That’s the entire assignment.

Somebody is going to break that story in the next sixty days…and it may as well be someone who read it here first.

Then restack it… so the next reporter finds it, too.

The Same Four Steps

Same list as last week. Same list as next week.

Request early. Don’t mail it. Track it. Tell three people.

If that’s getting repetitive…good. Repetition is how a thing turns into a habit…instead of a headline you forgot by Tuesday. Skip it if you’ve done it. Everyone else…read it again.

#HoldFast

Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. Notice what she didn’t ask for. Not a joint review of use-of-force policy. Not a shared incident-command protocol. Not one thing that would have made the next encounter between a federal agent and a Minnesotan less likely to end with someone dead.

Two people had been killed in that city in three weeks. Look at the three requests and find the one that was designed to prevent a third.

P.P.S. Here’s the detail that should concern you. Weeks after the letter…after the backlash…the lawsuits…the flat refusal…the administration announced it would start pulling immigration agents out of the Twin Cities anyway.

Minnesota surrendered nothing. Not the sanctuary policies. Not the benefits data. Not one line of the voter file. And the agents left regardless. Which leaves one question about that third request…and it’s the only one that really matters: if the withdrawal was coming either way…what exactly was the voter roll the price of?

Sources

• CBS News — Bondi seeks Minnesota voter rolls and welfare data (full letter obtained)

• Fox News — DOJ responds, calls the quid pro quo claim a lie

• Minnesota Secretary of State — Statement from Secretary Simon, Jan. 25

• Newsweek — The three demands and the reaction

• MS NOW / MaddowBlog — Minnesota’s one-word answer

• Brennan Center — Bondi links Minneapolis violence to voter data

• Democracy Docket — Bondi demands voter rolls after fatal shooting

• Democracy Docket — Minnesota lawyers argue extortion; judge cites quid pro quo

• Democracy Docket — The letter deepens concerns over DOJ’s motives

• Democracy Defenders Fund — Inspector General complaint, Feb. 13

• Voting Rights Lab — Analysis of the demand

• Democracy Now — Headline summary of the letter

• NPR — DOJ’s plan to route state voter data to DHS

• Sen. Cantwell — Senators demand DOJ end the pressure campaign