The FBI executed a search warrant Wednesday at an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, seeking to take ballots in an investigation that a source told CBS News is linked to the 2020 presidential election.
Fulton County confirmed that the FBI executed a search warrant at its election operations center and “sought a number of records related to 2020 elections.” A state senator who was present told reporters the FBI sought hundreds of boxes of ballots.
The search drew several top Trump administration officials. Deputy FBI Director Andrew Bailey and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard were both spotted outside the elections office late Wednesday. A news conference with federal officials was initially scheduled then later canceled.
“Director Gabbard has a pivotal role in election security and protecting the integrity of our elections against interference, including operations targeting voting systems, databases, and election infrastructure,” a senior administration official told CBS News.
The FBI operation follows years of claims by President Trump — without evidence — that the 2020 election was rigged, many of which have zeroed in on Fulton County.
What is the FBI investigating in Fulton County?
It’s not entirely clear what information the FBI is seeking, though the agency confirmed in a statement that it carried out a “court authorized law enforcement action.”
But the bureau appears to be investigating violations of two federal criminal laws, according to a search warrant shared on social media by Fulton County commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr.
One of those laws makes it a crime for elections officials to intimidate voters and to deprive them of a fair election by submitting fraudulent ballots or voter registration applications. The other law requires elections officials to retain federal election records for 22 months.
The warrant was signed by U.S. Magistrate Judge Catherine Salinas. Typically, in order to get a search warrant, authorities must show probable cause that there is evidence of a crime at a particular location. It’s unclear what evidence the FBI has presented.
Democratic state Sen. Josh McLaurin told reporters the FBI showed up at the elections office seeking to take “700 boxes of ballots,” and was seen loading boxes of ballots into trucks. McLaurin posted a video of an FBI evidence response team at the office.
Robb Pitts, chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, was critical of the search. He said in a news conference late Wednesday he “can no longer certify that these ballots are secure.”
The Justice Department lawyer listed on the search warrant was Thomas Albus, interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. It’s unclear why Albus’s name appears on the warrant rather than a Justice Department official based in Georgia. A spokesperson for Albus’ office did not respond to a request for comment from CBS News.
The search took place at the Fulton County Elections Hub and Operations Center, but the warrant shared by Arrington was addressed to the Office of the Clerk of Court — seemingly due to a discrepancy in Georgia law.
Earlier in the day, the FBI showed up with a warrant for the Fulton County elections office, but ballots and other 2020 election paperwork are technically held under seal by the clerk of the Fulton County Superior Court under state law, forcing federal officials to seek a new warrant for the clerk’s office, Fulton County Commissioner Dana Barrett told CBS News.
Barrett said both the FBI and Clerk of Courts Che’ Alexander were filming the process of inventorying the boxes for chain-of-custody purposes.
The federal government has not publicly commented on why it carried out the search. The FBI said in a statement it can’t provide details because its “investigation into this matter is ongoing.” The White House referred a request for comment to the FBI.
Why is the Trump administration interested in Fulton County?
Home to Atlanta and some of its suburbs, Fulton County is the most populous county in Georgia and a key Democratic stronghold — and it played a central role in Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
In the weeks following the 2020 race, Mr. Trump’s allies claimed, without evidence, that widespread fraud in Fulton County led to former President Joe Biden’s narrow 11,779-vote win in Georgia, and urged state officials to reverse the results. At one point, Mr. Trump told Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger: “I just want to find 11,780 votes.”
Trump-appointed Attorney General Bill Barr said in 2020 that the Justice Department hadn’t found evidence of fraud on a wide enough scale to tip the results of the election. Biden’s win in Georgia was also confirmed in both a machine recount and an audit that involved hand recounts by every county in the state.
But Mr. Trump has continued to insist that the 2020 election was “rigged,” and since returning to the White House, he has vowed to investigate the issue.
“It was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that,” the president said in a speech last week in Davos, Switzerland. “People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. It’s probably breaking news, but it should be. It was a rigged election.”
Last month, the Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit against Alexander, the Fulton County clerk of courts, asking a judge to force her to hand over the county’s 2020 election ballots and other voting records. The department said she had failed to hand over the records as part of a Justice Department investigation into whether the county complied with federal elections law.
Alexander asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing the Justice Department hadn’t offered a legitimate reason to seek the records. She also said the records were under seal, and would need to be unsealed by a state judge in Fulton County. A judge has not yet ruled on the matter.
Separately, Fulton County drew national attention because the county’s District Attorney Fani Willis criminally charged Mr. Trump and more than a dozen other people with racketeering in 2023, accusing them of illegally trying to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss.
The case was stalled for years, in part because an appellate court removed Willis from the case over a romantic relationship she had with a special prosecutor she hired to assist in the investigation, posing a “significant appearance of impropriety.” Another prosecutor who stepped in to replace Willis decided to dismiss the prosecution “to serve the interests of justice.”
How have Democrats reacted?
Local Democratic politicians have strongly criticized the FBI and suggested it could be related to Mr. Trump’s fraud claims.
“For the life of me, I still cannot understand the fascination about the 2020 election, which occurred six years ago,” said Pitts. “That election has been reviewed, it’s been audited, and in every case, in every instance, we get a clean bill of health.”
Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia said in a statement: “I suspect today’s raid is a continuation of this sore loser’s crusade, despite repeated audits and independent reviews confirming that Donald Trump was indeed defeated.”
Democratic Rep. Nikema Williams of Georgia demanded that the FBI cut off its investigation, writing that “raids and renewed investigations based on the lie that President Trump won the election lack a factual basis and only serve to intimidate voters and undermine the integrity of our upcoming elections.”
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, specifically questioned Gabbard’s involvement. He wrote in a statement that “there are only two possible explanations” for why the director of national intelligence would be present at the FBI’s search.
“Either Director Gabbard believes there was a legitimate foreign intelligence nexus — in which case she is in clear violation of her obligation under the law to keep the intelligence committees ‘fully and currently informed’ of relevant national security concerns — or she is once again demonstrating her utter lack of fitness for office that she holds by injecting the nonpartisan intelligence community she is supposed to be leading into a domestic political stunt designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy,” Warner wrote.
