Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon says Gov. Mikie Sherrill already knew her state's voter rolls were compromised when she joined two dozen Democratic governors in publicly branding President Trump a liar, and now the DOJ is suing.

Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, told Fox News Digital that the timeline of events points to a governor who chose political theater over transparency. On July 16, President Trump delivered a primetime address alleging that Democrat-run states, including New Jersey, had large numbers of noncitizens registered to vote. The Department of Homeland Security released data the same day identifying more than 35,000 potential noncitizens on New Jersey's voter rolls.

Shortly after the speech, Sherrill co-signed a joint statement with 23 other Democratic governors, formally led by Kentucky Gov. Andrew Beshear, calling Trump a liar. The statement called his claims "lies and conspiracy theories" and insisted the country's elections "have repeatedly been proven to be safe and secure."

Dhillon says Sherrill's public posture was dishonest. She told Fox News Digital that, based on the sequencing of events, Sherrill was already aware the DHS disclosure was coming when she signed that statement.

"When the president came out with his Primetime speech last Thursday, I believe in the sequencing of events that has been laid out, she already knew that this revelation was forthcoming."

Dhillon did not stop there.

"She knew it, and she still went online and called the president a liar and said he was exaggerating, Shame on you, governor."

Sherrill refused to hand over voter data, so the DOJ sued

After Trump's address, Dhillon sent Sherrill a letter demanding the state turn over voter registration data within five business days. The deadline expired on a Tuesday. Before it passed, Sherrill told WCBS she would not comply.

Her stated reason: the Trump administration wants to "weaponize" the data rather than focus on running fair elections. Speaking after touring a grocery store in Essex County, New Jersey, where she had signed unrelated legislation, Sherrill framed the situation as unsurprising.

"We're running an independent investigation right now to get to the bottom of exactly how this happened and what's going on, but it is not a surprise to me that the federal government that the Trump administration wants to immediately weaponize this against people as opposed to focusing on making sure that we're running free and fair elections."

Her spokesman, Sean Higgins, pointed Fox News Digital to those grocery-store remarks when asked about Dhillon's accusation. He offered no further comment.

The DOJ responded to Sherrill's refusal by suing New Jersey Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell. Dhillon warned that other states stonewalling federal requests would face the same treatment. The noncitizen voter registration problem is not limited to New Jersey. Republicans in New Jersey have previously uncovered noncitizens on voter rolls across all 21 of the state's counties, raising questions about how long the problem has persisted.

Pennsylvania, New York, and several other states have also resisted DOJ requests for voter registration data, citing federal law and state privacy protections.

Dhillon rejects the 'software glitch' defense and warns of criminal cases

Sherrill's administration has attributed the noncitizen registrations to a software error at the state's Motor Vehicle Commission, the kind of automated system that registers people to vote when they get a driver's license. Dhillon rejected that explanation outright. In an appearance on Newsmax, she made the DOJ's position clear.

"We're not calling it a glitch or an error or a mistake."

The numbers back up the DOJ's skepticism. While DHS flagged more than 35,000 potential noncitizens on New Jersey's rolls, the state itself acknowledged that over 6,500 noncitizens were improperly registered through the motor-voter system. Roughly 400 of those noncitizens reportedly cast ballots in New Jersey elections, each one canceling out the legal vote of an American citizen.

Dhillon put a fine point on that reality. Every illegal vote, she said, disenfranchised a lawful New Jersey voter.

"Every single person who voted illegally canceled out the vote of a New Jersey voter; that is shameful."

The DOJ's Civil Rights Division has formally launched an investigation and demanded that New Jersey turn over all related records from its Motor Vehicle Commission system. Dhillon signaled that criminal prosecution of officials who knowingly allowed noncitizens to vote remains on the table. The problem, she added, extends well beyond one state.

"There are hundreds of thousands of noncitizen registrants identified in a handful of other states through commercial data."

This is not the first time federal authorities have pursued voting violations in New Jersey. A Slovakian national was previously arrested for illegally voting in a New Jersey midterm election, a case that underscored how porous the state's registration safeguards have been.

24 Democratic governors called Trump a liar, Dhillon calls that a dodge

The joint statement Sherrill signed alongside Beshear and 22 other Democratic governors did not address the DHS data or the 35,000-plus figure. Instead, it accused Trump of trying to "intimidate and silence voters" and claimed Democrats are the ones "actually making life better for American families by lowering costs, creating jobs and protecting our freedoms."

The statement closed with a political broadside: "Ours is a winning message, which is why he is trying to undermine democracy."

Dhillon dismissed the partisan framing. She argued that the noncitizen registration problem crosses party lines and that the DOJ is willing to work with any governor who cooperates, and sue those who do not.

"It's a bipartisan problem, actually. And I'm really looking forward to helping everyone who will work with us fix this problem. And if they won't work with, we'll sue them and we'll still fix the problem."

She reserved her sharpest criticism for Sherrill's decision to attack the president rather than address the data. Election integrity concerns have surfaced in other Democrat-led states facing accusations of election irregularities, but New Jersey's situation stands out because the governor's own administration has acknowledged the registrations occurred.

"And instead of pointing fingers at the president, which is what Governor Sherrill did... she should be raising her hand to work with the federal government to clean this up ASAP because that's the vow she took when she ran for office and she got sworn in as the governor of her state is to protect her citizens, and her citizens have a right to vote."

Vice President JD Vance weighed in as well, posting a pointed comment about the state's explanation. "If only there was a way to stop this type of software error that allowed noncitizens to vote in our election," Vance wrote.

Sherrill's 'independent investigation' raises more questions than it answers

Sherrill has said her administration is conducting its own investigation into how the noncitizen registrations happened. She has not disclosed who is leading it, what its scope is, or when it began. She has not explained why, if she believed the problem warranted an independent probe, she simultaneously joined a public statement dismissing the president's concerns as lies.

That gap, between privately acknowledging a problem and publicly denying one exists, is the core of Dhillon's accusation. The DOJ official did not claim Sherrill caused the registrations. She claimed Sherrill knew about them and chose to mislead the public anyway. Voter integrity problems have surfaced in other Democratic-run jurisdictions with troubling irregularities on the ballot, but the New Jersey case is distinct because it involves a sitting governor allegedly aware of federal data before publicly contradicting it.

Several open questions remain. What exactly did Sherrill know, and when? What evidence does Dhillon have beyond the "sequencing of events"? And will the DOJ's lawsuit against Lt. Gov. Caldwell force the state to hand over the records Sherrill refused to provide?

For now, more than 35,000 potential noncitizens sit on New Jersey's voter rolls. Roughly 400 of them cast ballots. The governor who presides over that mess chose to call the man who exposed it a liar, and the Justice Department says she did it with full knowledge of what was coming.

When the voters whose ballots were canceled out by illegal votes ask who was looking out for them, Sherrill's grocery-store press conference will not be much of an answer.