The nation has been convulsed by the shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Millions now see with sickening clarity a lawless assault by federal officers on an American city and its people. As The Wall Street Journal editorialized, it is a “moral and political debacle for the Trump presidency.”

The videos were followed by a fusillade of lies from senior government officials. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Pretti had engaged in “domestic terrorism.” White House aide Stephen Miller called Pretti an “assassin” who tried to “murder federal agents.” Border official Gregory Bovino declared, “This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” The instant impulse by these high officials was to bully and smear.

Another outrageous statement by a cabinet official has not gotten enough attention.

On Saturday, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz linking the violence in Minneapolis to a demand that the state give the Justice Department complete access to the state’s sensitive voter rolls, among other things. There’s no explicit quid pro quo offered—but anyone familiar with Grade B gangster movies won’t miss the implication. Certainly that’s how state officials have read it. Let that sink in: Federal agents have killed innocent civilians in cold blood. And the response of the attorney general of the United States is to use it as leverage to illegally access voter data. That is an unambiguous abuse of power.

That sense of crisis, consciously instigated, can create opportunities to undermine the election and sow doubt and division.

As my colleague Wendy Weiser has written, “What do voter rolls have to do with ICE? Nothing. But they have a lot to do with the administration’s ongoing efforts to meddle in elections.”

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon provided Bondi with the only legal and responsible answer (a simple “no”), describing her offer as “an apparent ransom.”

Make no mistake: The federal government has no authorization to demand confidential voter information from the states. In our constitutional system, states are responsible for maintaining and protecting voter rolls. Indeed, various state and federal laws limit how much data the federal government can collect.

But that hasn’t stopped it from trying. Bondi’s Justice Department has demanded access to the voter records of 44 states and........

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