President Donald Trump waded into Maryland’s mail ballot mishap on Monday, blaming the vendor’s error on Gov. Wes Moore and announcing that he would ask the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate.

Maryland Elections Administrator Jared DeMarinis announced Friday that he’d ordered the vendor to resend roughly 400,000 mail ballots “to maintain the highest level of confidence and accuracy in mail-in voting.” This came after the vendor notified the state that they’d made a coding error and were unable to determine which voters may have received incorrect ballots — or the right ones.

Trump, who has long pushed claims of voter fraud and falsely maintains that he won the 2020 presidential election, was quick to blame Moore, a Democrat who has been a sharp critic of the Republican president.

“This was done by the Corrupt Governor of the State, Wes Moore,” Trump said on the social media platform X. “He allowed this to happen in order to make sure that Democrats win. It never made sense to me that Maryland was considered an automatic Democrat State, but now I see why.”

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Trump told reporters that he thought he did “really well” in Maryland and seemed to suggest voting fraud might have cost him the state.

Democrat Kamala Harris defeated Trump 62.6% to 34%, or by more than 867,000 votes, in the 2024 general election.

Moore’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The president’s remarks online come shortly after the state revealed that there was a mishap that caused some voters to receive mail ballots with the wrong party’s primary last week.

DeMarinis said last week the majority of voters received the correct party ballots, but that since it wasn’t possible for the state to determine which voters received incorrect ballots, officials were replacing the whole batch. Affected voters will receive a postcard notifying them of the mistake, followed by a ballot marked “REPLACEMENT.”

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The initial ballots will be voided and should be discarded, DeMarinis said. Voters who were mailed a ballot before May 14 are affected.

The State Board of Elections has since issued detailed instructions and will mail replacement ballots to those affected beginning Tuesday.

Moore and Trump have engaged in verbal sparring matches on social media. The president has repeatedly berated the state, and Baltimore specifically, in his comments.

In one instance, he called Baltimore a “hellhole.” Another time he called the city a “horrible deathbed.” On other occasions, he has threatened to send the National Guard to the city or to revoke funding for rebuilding the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Moore has mocked Trump for avoiding military service during the Vietnam War, while Trump has been dismissive of Moore’s national ambitions.

For every insult hurled, Moore has pushed back and even invited Trump to come visit Baltimore.

Banner reporter Brenda Wintrode contributed to this report.