The U.S. Justice Department did not ask Kevin Moncla for his 263-page report outlining alleged fraud in Fulton County’s 2020 election. But the Louisiana-based conservative researcher sent it anyway.
“They needed a road map,” Moncla told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Weeks later, FBI agents seized troves of the county’s 2020 election records.
It’s not clear to what extent the FBI relied on Moncla’s assertions. But he appeared to find a sympathetic listener in Kurt Olsen, President Donald Trump’s handpicked director of elections security and integrity at the U.S. Justice Department.
An unsealed affidavit justifying the seizure makes clear the FBI read Moncla’s report and interviewed him, raising his profile among a crowded field of conservative election advocates. It also offers insights into the Trump administration’s thinking at the outset of an investigation that could result in criminal charges.
Fulton County’s 2020 errors are well documented, but state investigators and election monitors have repeatedly attributed the issues to human errors and sloppiness. State investigators have not found evidence of a crime.
Moncla isn’t convinced. He still believes state officials covered up wrongdoing, and his dogged persistence appears to have laid the groundwork for the U.S. Justice Department to intervene.
Moncla wrote the report, with contributions from a cadre of conservative researchers asserting, among other things, that Fulton County’s results were padded with “fictitious ballots” and that county officials “fabricated” tabulator poll tapes.
Many claims included in the report have been dismissed by the State Election Board. State investigators have verified some of the claims but haven’t found evidence of wrongdoing. Three vote tallies, including a hand count audit of every ballot cast, upheld Democrat Joe Biden’s win in his tight race with Trump.
Moncla confirmed he spoke with U.S. Attorney Thomas Albus and FBI Special Agent Hugh Raymond Evans in the weeks before the FBI raid about allegations of wrongdoing in Fulton County’s 2020 election.
Moncla said he also sent his report to Olsen, who has tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election results. In 2024, Olsen represented the DeKalb County Republican Party in an unsuccessful lawsuit challenging the state’s touchscreen voting system.
As part of that case, the DeKalb County Republican Party used Clay Parikh as an expert witness.
Moncla asked Parikh to review Fulton County’s 2020 tabulator tapes, according to the FBI’s affidavit. Federal authorities relied on that analysis for part of their justification to seize Fulton County’s 2020 ballots, according to the affidavit.
Moncla’s influence, and that of other conservative activists, has raised concerns from election experts.
“We have a rogues’ gallery of noncredible conspiracy theorists who are apparently forming the only basis for the search warrant,” said David Becker, a former Justice Department attorney who leads the Center for Election Innovation and Research.
Some of Moncla’s assertions have been verified by the state. In one high-profile example, state investigators found the county likely did double-scan more than 3,000 ballots. But they said they found no evidence those ballots were counted twice or that the double scanning was intentional.
But some critics still have questions and believe those double-scanned ballots were also double-counted.
A spokesperson for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Moncla is simply not credible. In 2004, Moncla pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor voyeurism charge in Florida. In 2006, a jury ordered him to pay $3.25 million in damages after secretly recording guests in his bathroom.
Moncla said the allegations were made during a contentious divorce and custody battle more than two decades ago.
“I chose to plead guilty not because I was but to end the battle for my children’s sake,” he wrote in a text message. “Likewise, this is not about me, but the report encompasses the work of many. Unlike Georgia’s elections, the report is evidenced, verifiable, and documented matters of fact. Those facts remain regardless of personal attacks against me.”
Fulton County attorneys believe Moncla’s assertions provided “significant evidence” for the FBI to support its request for a search warrant. County attorneys wrote in a legal filing that Moncla “appeared to take credit for the government’s search and seizure.”
Moncla hasn’t done much to contradict that. He said he offered his research to the federal government “because it needed to be done.”
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