ATLANTA — Four Democrats in Georgia’s congressional delegation sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice Friday protesting the agency’s demand for personal information about Fulton County workers and volunteers involved with the 2020 election when President Donald Trump was defeated by Joe Biden.
“Fulton County election workers have already endured years of threats and harassment from false claims about the 2020 election,” said the letter to Todd Blanche, the acting U.S. attorney general. “The Department’s subpoena risks compounding that harm by demanding the residential addresses and personal contact information of thousands of people who served in election administration.”
The New York Times reported Monday that the Justice Department had demanded the identities of every worker who staffed that election, noting that Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts had described the subpoena as “harassment” and an attempt to “punish” Trump’s perceived political opponents.
The Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections filed a motion Monday to block the subpoena, which, according to Fox 5 Atlanta, sought personal data of nearly 3,000 people.
Separately on Wednesday, Fulton County lost a demand for the return of 600 boxes of election records the FBI seized in January. U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee for the Northern District of Georgia ruled that flaws in the Justice Department’s search warrants and the execution of the search did not merit the return of the documents. The decision enabled investigators to continue their probe of an election that Trump has continued to protest, according to Politico.
The Democrats’ letter Friday, signed by Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, and Reps. Nikema Williams and Lucy McBath, said the subpoena for election workers’ personal information was “untethered to any reasonable need.”
The letter, released by Warnock’s office, asks Blanche to answer 13 questions, from why the personal information request was so broad, to why a North Carolina prosecutor was involved in investigating Georgia’s election. The subpoena was issued by a federal grand jury for the U.S. attorneys office in the Middle District of North Carolina.