The FBI is executing a search warrant for 2020 election ballots in the Atlanta area
The FBI on Wednesday searched the election office of the state of Georgia that was at the center of conspiracy theories about the loss of US President Donald Trump in 2020.
A search of Fulton County’s main polling place in Union City sought records related to the 2020 election. It appeared to be a public move by the Justice Department to pursue Trump’s claims of a rigged election, complaints that were repeatedly rejected by courts and state and federal officials, who found no evidence of fraud that could have changed the outcome.
FBI agents have secured the area around the large warehouse building that houses the district’s election hub with yellow tape and can be seen loading boxes into trucks from the building. FBI spokeswoman Jenna Sellitto confirmed that the boxes contained ballots. Among the 2020 election documents sought are ballots, tabulator tapes from the scanners used to count votes, images of electronic ballots and voter numbers.
An FBI spokeswoman said agents were “conducting a warrant action” at the county’s headquarters in Union City, south of Atlanta. A spokesman declined to provide further details, citing an ongoing matter.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation last week replaced its top agent in Atlanta, Paul W. Brown, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a nonpublic personnel decision. It’s unclear why the move, which the FBI has not disclosed, was made or if it was connected to Wednesday’s law enforcement operation.
State and Democratic officials have expressed concern about the search and seizure of ballots, and said they were not notified in advance.
“For the life of me, I have never understood the fascination with the 2020 election, which happened six years ago,” County Board of Commissioners Chairman Robb Pitts told reporters Wednesday night. “That election is over. That election has been reviewed. It’s been audited, and in every case, we’re getting a clean bill of health.”
The Justice Department did not immediately comment. FBI Deputy Director Andrew Bailey and US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard were spotted at the scene.
Gabbard’s presence angered Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee. Warner said Gabbard has a duty to inform that committee of “national security concerns,” and he worries that he may be participating in “a domestic political movement designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy.”
Trump is focused on voting in Fulton County
Trump continues to insist that the 2020 election was “rigged,” but has never explained how the presidential race was marred on a day when hundreds of regional, state and local elections went off without a major incident. The director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in his administration called that election “the most secure in American history,” which led to his firing.
Narratives, reviews and research in the 2020 battleground states all confirmed Joe Biden’s victory. The judges, including some Trump appointees, rejected a number of his legal challenges, and his lawyer at the time, William Barr, later told a congressional committee that allegations of fraud that affected the outcome were “silly.”
Trump has for years focused on Fulton, Georgia’s most populous county and a Democratic stronghold, as a prime example of what he says went wrong in the 2020 election. His pressure campaign in Georgia included a now-famous phone call in which he urged the secretary of state there, a Republican, to “get” nearly 12,000 votes to overcome his deficit to Biden.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in August 2023 received an indictment against Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in an extensive scheme to illegally try to overturn the results in Georgia. That case was dismissed in November after the courts barred Willis and his office from pursuing it due to “improper appearance” arising from his romantic relationship with the prosecutor, although Trump’s 2024 election victory and a Supreme Court ruling that same year also made the chance of a trial much less likely.
Donald Trump engaged in an ‘unprecedented criminal effort’ to ‘seize power illegally’ after losing the 2020 election, said special counsel Jack Smith in a report published by the US Department of Justice.
Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani also directed that two Black staffers take office as part of an exposed conspiracy theory involving briefcases and votes. The women – who Trump called “vote fraud” – won a $148 million US judgment in a civil suit against Giuliani.
Speaking in Davos, Switzerland, last week, Trump promised that “people will soon be prosecuted for what they have done,” in the 2020 election. Past presidents generally did not receive advance notice from the Justice Department about impending prosecutions.
However, Trump’s desire in his second term to prosecute officials and politicians who have angered him, such as his protests in the 2020 election, often finds its way into the legal system.
Grand juries in some cases failed to indict, which is rare in trials without defense attorneys, when a judge threw out charges against former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, in one of many cases where courts have found that Justice Department prosecutors were improperly appointed.
The Department of Justice also received relief from about two dozen states regarding requests for voter registration information beyond what is already publicly available.
Front burner26:24Trump’s campaign of legal revenge
Civil cases are ongoing
The warrant issued Wednesday is a criminal warrant, but the Justice Department last month sued the Fulton County clerk of superior courts and magistrates in federal court seeking to obtain the county’s 2020 election documents.
Che Alexander, the Fulton County clerk, filed a motion to dismiss the case. The Justice Department’s complaint says the purpose of its request was “to ensure Georgia’s compliance with various federal election laws.”
Also, a three-person majority on the Georgia state board of elections has repeatedly sought to reopen a lawsuit alleging wrongdoing by Fulton County during the 2020 election.
The county board sent summons to the county board to obtain various election documents last year and again on Oct. 6, 2025. The battle over the state board’s efforts to enforce the 2024 resolution is tied up in court.
The Department of Justice sent a letter to the county election board on Oct. 30 citing the Civil Rights Act and requesting all records in response to an October subpoena from the state board of elections. Attorneys for the county election board responded by sending an attached letter that the clerk sent to the county board, indicating that the information would not be released without a court order.
