UNION CITY — FBI agents raided Fulton County’s elections warehouse Wednesday to collect ballots from the 2020 presidential election, an escalation by the Trump administration into unsubstantiated allegations of fraud.
The FBI didn’t release details of its investigation, calling it a “court-authorized law enforcement action.”
A federal search warrant said the FBI is seeking a trove of election records, including all 523,000 ballots cast in Fulton in 2020, absentee ballot envelopes and tabulator tapes.
The seizure of ballots follows years of complaints by Republican President Donald Trump that the 2020 election was stolen after he lost Georgia by fewer than 12,000 ballots to Democrat Joe Biden. Three vote counts showed Biden won Fulton, the heavily Democratic home of Atlanta, with about 73% of the vote.
Fulton’s ballots from the 2020 election have been kept under seal over the last five years despite repeated efforts by Trump’s allies to review them to look for wrongdoing or miscounts. Georgia law prevents ballots from being unsealed without a state judge’s order, but the FBI’s search warrant came from a federal court.
Democrats criticized the raid as federal overreach in an attempt to validate the president’s unproved suspicions, while Republicans praised the FBI for trying to uncover more about the county’s known elections mismanagement.
“I’m not concerned about finding actual evidence because I think it’s very clear that nothing except some poor administration happened,” said State Election Board member Sara Tindall Ghazal, a Democrat, outside the elections warehouse. “What I’m concerned about is the federal government using and abusing its authority.”
State Election Board member Salleigh Grubbs, a Republican who also came to see the search, said she hopes for a thorough investigation.
“It’s been a long time in coming, I think, and getting a lot of the answers that need to be given,” Grubbs said.
Republicans who believe there was wrongdoing have pointed to inaccuracies in Fulton, including state investigations that found over 3,000 double-scanned ballots and early voting documents that lacked required signatures.
While investigations have repeatedly verified sloppiness and disorganization, they’ve never found intentional attempts to alter the vote count.
“This is extremely alarming. I think Fulton County and Georgia in general are tired of being the target of Donald Trump’s narcissism, that’s all this is about,” said state Sen. Josh McLaurin, D-Sandy Springs, a candidate for lieutenant governor. “He is dispatching federal officials at the highest levels of government to try to vindicate his agenda.”
The Department of Justice, which includes the FBI, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“This is another step in the FBI doing the president’s bidding to create a criminal case against Georgia,” said Kristin Nabers, Georgia director of All Voting Is Local, a voting rights group. “By carrying out this farce of an investigation, election deniers are trying to placate his delusions. This is a power grab.”
Three large trucks parked outside the elections warehouse, where agents prepared to load ballots and election documents.
Neither Fulton County’s government nor the secretary of state’s office received advance notice of the raid before agents descended on the elections warehouse.
Mark Davis, a Republican and Georgia elections analyst, said on social media that he talked to the DOJ in September.
“I am over here dancing in my kitchen!” Davis said. “We got our wish, and more. And now we see the fruit of five years of work.”
The State Election Board and the Department of Justice both issued subpoenas last year for 2020 election records, and those subpoenas are still being litigated in court.
Trump pressured Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to reverse the results of the election in early 2021, a demand that resulted in criminal charges against Trump in Fulton. That case was dismissed last year.
Days before the raid, the DOJ sued Georgia to seek access to its voter registration list. Raffensperger has refused to turn over an unredacted voter list, which includes voters’ personal information protected by state law including Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers and full birth dates.