The Justice Department is conducting a criminal grand jury investigation into alleged noncitizen voting in California and has subpoenaed at least three employees of the Los Angeles County election office. The subpoenas order them to testify on Nov. 4, the morning after Election Day.

The subpoenas were sent between Oct. 21 and Oct. 24, according to copies seen by CBS News, and became public Thursday. The three known recipients are the employees whose subpoenas were released by the office of Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan. Politico reported that they were told to appear at a federal courthouse in Orange County.

NBC News reported that it is unclear how many subpoenas went out and exactly who received them. CBS described the recipients as state and local officials, and NBC as local election officials across the state.

What the subpoenas seek

The subpoenas ask for documents and communications about correspondence on noncitizen voting with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter, including letters California Secretary of State Shirley Weber exchanged with Mullin. They also seek records on “your agency’s methods for screening for unlawful voting by aliens” and any records indicating illegal voting.

Federal law bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections. Earlier this month, McCotter wrote to Los Angeles officials that “noncitizen voting in a federal election is a federal crime -- and knowingly facilitating such conduct is equally unlawful.” Last week, the department sent letters to 57 of California’s 58 counties warning local election officials to cooperate with federal investigations into illegal voting or face investigations themselves, NBC News reported. The one county left out was Los Angeles, which a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles told the Los Angeles Times had already received a notice.

What the Justice Department has said

A department spokesperson said it “does not comment on leaks about alleged grand jury subpoenas.” The spokesperson then pointed to a court ruling issued Wednesday, after the subpoenas went out: “the district court judge explained that voting unlawfully results in criminal exposure. Consistent with this, California also wrote in its filing that the remedy for unlawful voting is through criminal prosecution. Thus, while DOJ maintains that a civil remedy is still available, all agree that noncitizen voting is properly addressed through criminal law.”

A U.S. official told NBC News that receiving a subpoena does not make someone a target of the investigation and that the department rarely subpoenas people it intends to charge.

The court fight over 20,000 ballots

As of this morning, the department is working under a temporary restraining order issued late Friday by U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson in San Francisco, in a lawsuit brought by labor unions. It bars the Justice Department from threatening election workers with prosecution or demanding that they segregate or withhold ballots. Thompson found that federal officials had likely violated the Voting Rights Act’s ban on attempts to “intimidate, threaten or coerce” people who help others vote, and ordered the department to inform the court of any pending subpoenas or search warrant applications. The order expires Nov. 16, and a hearing is set for Nov. 13.

Thompson’s order came at the end of a week of rulings in a separate civil case, in which the department has asked the courts to make California set aside the mail ballots of about 20,000 registered voters it claims are noncitizens.

On Monday, a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel declined, 2-1, to take up the department’s emergency appeal until the trial judge acted. Gov. Gavin Newsom called that decision “a welcome speed bump to Trump’s disgusting attacks.” Attorney General Rob Bonta said the Constitution “gives states and Congress -- not the President or the Executive Branch -- the power to determine the time, place, and manner of elections.”

At a hearing Tuesday, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter in Los Angeles told federal lawyers, “You’ve got a remedy for goodness sake. Go out and indict,” according to ABC7 Los Angeles. He also warned that threats against state and county election employees should “cease immediately,” and said he would set a further hearing within two weeks. No date has been announced.

On Wednesday, Carter rejected the department’s emergency request to have the ballots segregated. He wrote: “Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch.”

The department appealed that night. On Friday, the 9th Circuit panel again denied the request, 2-1. “As the district court found—and we discern no clear error—there is no feasible way to identify and segregate the ballots of specific individuals without potentially catastrophic effects on the entire system,” the court wrote.

A wider federal effort

The department has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia over access to voter registration data. This week, federal prosecutors in Washington state sent Secretary of State Steve Hobbs a list of more than 400 registrants they believe are or were noncitizens, asking him to review it within 24 hours and to have election officials hold those voters’ ballots from tabulation until citizenship could be determined, according to the letter. In an Oct. 28 reply, Hobbs refused. He wrote that a preliminary review showed the list “includes United States citizens and is not reliable,” and that without individualized proof of ineligibility, “it would be both irresponsible and illegal for election officials to decline to process a registered voter’s ballot.”

The response in California

Attorney General Rob Bonta wrote on X on Thursday that “the Trump Administration’s escalating attacks on our hardworking elections officials in California are unacceptable.” Logan told ABC News that “at every step, the U.S. Department of Justice has taken a confrontational, adversarial approach,” and said his office would “take whatever steps necessary to ensure the safety of our employees.”

The three subpoenas direct those employees to appear before the grand jury in Orange County on the morning of Wednesday, Nov. 4. Neither the department nor the county has said whether Thompson’s order affects that date.