The FBI cited a slew of allegations that have already been investigated to justify the seizure of Fulton County’s 2020 ballots, an affidavit unsealed Tuesday shows.
The document shows the agency interviewed numerous people who have suggested the election was rife with fraud. But investigations by the Secretary of State’s Office found no intentional wrongdoing.
The document drew a rebuke from Georgia State University law professor Clark Cunningham, who reviewed it for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He said he’s surprised a judge issued a search warrant based on the evidence.
“This is nothing but suspicion and conjecture,” Cunningham said. “There’s nothing in this affidavit that’s evidence that any particular person acted with criminal intent.”
The affidavit offers the first glimpse of the evidence the FBI used to justify the Jan. 28 seizure of Fulton 2020 ballots and other election material. The seizure has touched off a political and legal firestorm, with President Donald Trump saying arrests are likely to result.
The affidavit cites five allegations that are the focus of the investigation:
- Fulton County has admitted it does not have scanned ballot images for all of its 528,777 ballots.
- The county has admitted some ballots were scanned multiple times.
- During a hand recount of every ballot cast, tallies of ballots were inconsistent with the actual votes within each ballot.
- Election observers reported spotting “pristine” ballots that had never been creased or folded, as would be expected if the ballots had been mailed by voters.
- During a machine recount, the county reported more than 17,000 fewer ballots counted than in the original tally.
Each of these allegations have previously been investigated by the state, but no evidence of intentional misconduct was found.
For example, investigators confirmed Fulton double-scanned more than 3,000 ballots during the recount. They could not confirm the ballots were counted twice, though election skeptics say they believe they were. If they were counted twice, an analysis of the ballots found it would have benefited Trump.
Investigators also searched for unfolded “pristine” ballots in specific batches cited by Republican election observers but found none.
Three of the allegations resulted in letters reprimanding the county. One resulted in a consent order in which the county agreed to take corrective action. The State Election Board dismissed the pristine ballots allegation.
“As Secretary of State, I’ve made Georgia the safest and most secure place to vote,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said. “Instead of wasting time and tax dollars trying to change the past with baseless and repackaged claims, let’s focus our efforts on building a safer, more affordable future for all hardworking Georgians.”
Although many of the allegations in the affidavit were addressed in previous State Election Board complaints, state board member Janelle King said she doesn’t believe all of the cases were thoroughly examined by secretary of state investigators.
“I’m not saying that all the investigators are doing something egregious or malicious,” she said. “However, there’s just not a lot of trust and faith there.”
The affidavit cites interviews with 11 witnesses. Although their names are redacted, they include some easily identifiable as Republican members of the State Election Board, as well as several election skeptics who have long claimed the election was rife with fraud. Among them is Kevin Moncla, who previously told the AJC he had been interviewed by a U.S. Department of Justice attorney.
Cunningham, the GSU law professor, said the affidavit makes it sound as if “a federal law enforcement project has been hijacked by private parties.”
“All this affidavit does is repeat what a number of people say they believe,” he said.
The State Election Board’s sole Democrat, Sara Tindall Ghazal decried the evidence used by the Trump administration during a Zoom news conference, saying the affidavit was full of “recycled conspiracy theories.”
In an interview with the AJC, Republican State Election Board member Salleigh Grubbs said there is no harm in giving the records to the Justice Department if Fulton has nothing to hide.
“It’s way past time to get to the bottom of what happened in Fulton County,” she said.
The document also provides insights into the origin of the investigation. It says the matter was referred to the Justice Department by Kurt Olsen, whom Trump appointed as the “director of election security and integrity.”
Olsen has long pushed debunked claims of election fraud and worked closely with Trump to undermine the results of the 2020 election. The lawyer spoke with Trump multiple times during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said the affidavit was “much weaker than I suspected — no allegations of intent, no allegations of election theft, no allegations of foreign interference, and no allegations that the statute of limitations doesn’t apply.
“After more than five years, dozens of court cases, and over a year in total control of the federal government, this is all they’ve got?” Becker said in a statement Tuesday. “If taken at its word, this entire affidavit at most alleges human error after a late night during a pandemic, all of which had no impact on the outcome of the race.”
At a brief news conference Tuesday, Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts said he had “no doubt whatsoever” that seizing the 2020 records was politically motivated and the search warrant was built on “recycled rumors, lies, untruths and unproven conspiracy theories.”
“These accusations have been debunked, but here we go again on a merry-go-round,” Pitt said, adding: “There are no rules. They’re just doing anything they choose to do at this point in time, disregarding the Constitution altogether.”
Pitts said he was reaching out to leaders of other cities where Trump might attempt to “take over” elections, including Philadelphia and Detroit. Trump last week floated the possibility of a federal takeover of 15 unspecified states’ election processes.
“If they’re successful here in Fulton County, as the face of this effort, they will take that show on the road and go elsewhere,” he said.
After the news conference, Fulton Commissioner Dana Barrett, who is running for secretary of state, said the abrupt seizure, made as a judge prepared to order the documents’ release, would cast doubt on the investigation’s findings.
“They don’t want a controlled process. They want to be able to make up whatever they want to make up about what’s inside those boxes,” Barrett said. “The longer they have them out of anybody’s view, the easier it is for them to make something up.”
Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department has said where they took the seized boxes of ballots.
The affidavit has been the subject of intense speculation since federal agents showed up at the county’s election operations center with rented trucks and tools to force their way into the locked cage where the ballots were kept. The affidavit unveils what federal authorities were after.
Trump and his allies have long accused Fulton County of rigging the vote against him and awarding the state and presidency to Democrat Joe Biden.
Three vote counts — an Election Day machine count, a hand-count audit and a machine recount — as well as numerous investigations and lawsuits upheld Trump’s loss. But the president has dug in his heels since his return to the White House, repeating debunked conspiracy theories online and in public comments. Trump last week promised the raid will unveil answers to lingering mysteries about the heavily Democratic county’s election conduct.
“You’re going to see something in Georgia where they were able to get with the court order and the ballots,” he said on former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino’s podcast last week. “You’re going to see some interesting things come out.”
The ballot seizure comes after months of escalation from Trump, the Justice Department and the State Election Board over Fulton’s long-scrutinized 2020 election.
The county’s 2020 records are tied up in several lawsuits, one brought by the Justice Department late last year seeking ballots. A Superior Court judge in Fulton County paused another, filed in 2024 by the State Election Board, in an order reflecting some frustration over the latest developments.
“We are left to hope that the Bureau and the Department of Justice handle the ballots and related records with the care required to preserve and protect their integrity,” Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said.
Staff writers Greg Bluestein, Alia Pharr and Thad Moore contributed to this report.
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