A 45-year-old Iraqi man was charged on Monday with voting illegally in the 2020 presidential election, a prosecution that federal officials said had been assisted by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
The case against the man, Akeel Abdul Jamiel, appeared to be the first announced by the Justice Department in which Mr. Musk’s unit, also known as DOGE, is credited with aiding in the investigation that led to the charge. The department did not respond to an inquiry about what form the unit’s help had taken.
Mr. Jamiel lived in South Glens Falls, N.Y., about an hour north of Albany in Saratoga County, when he cast the illegal ballot, officials said. He was prohibited from voting because he was not a U.S. citizen but did so anyway, according to a charging document.
He registered as a member of the Conservative Party about a month before the election, public records show. It appears to be the first time he had registered to vote in the United States, where records show he had lived since at least 2005.
President Trump has argued since 2020 that rampant voter fraud caused him to lose that year’s election to President Joseph R. Biden Jr. In what could be considered an ironic twist, court filings in a lawsuit suggest that Mr. Jamiel is a Trump supporter.
Mr. Jamiel was not in custody on Monday, and a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of New York declined to comment on when he might be. The charge he faces, voting by aliens, is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison and a fine of as much as $100,000. He could not be reached for comment.
