The FBI has asked its field offices across the country to dedicate more than 200 staffers to its investigation of the 2020 election in Georgia’s Fulton County.
A memo obtained Thursday by The Associated Press calls for the FBI to “surge” 260 investigative analysts and staff operations specialists to the effort, which it described as a “priority investigation.”
It said each of them is to conduct a check of an estimated 708 records by July 17. While the memo does not describe the investigation, people familiar with the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal decision-making confirmed the request was to help with the Georgia 2020 election investigation.
FBI agents in January seized hundreds of boxes containing ballots and other documents related to the 2020 election in Georgia’s most populous county, which is heavily Democratic and includes most of the city of Atlanta. A Fulton County spokesperson declined to comment citing a pending investigation. The contents of the memo were first reported by MS NOW.
President Donald Trump and his allies have made false claims that widespread election fraud cost him the 2020 election. Georgia’s votes in the 2020 presidential race were counted three times, including once by hand, and each count affirmed Democrat Joe Biden’s win.
The Justice Department has previously said it is investigating “irregularities that occurred during the 2020 presidential election in the County.”
Trump has previously said “some interesting things” would result from the ballot seizure. FBI Director Kash Patel has publicly promised 2020 election arrests.
Two federal judges, both appointed by Trump, have demanded answers about whether some of the Justice Department’s tactics amounted to a fishing expedition and whether evidence justifying seizing nearly six-year-old election records was solid, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in early June.
Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche has been more cautious about the investigations.
He has claimed evidence of election rigging exists, but he told Fox News in May that “it takes a lot of work to uncover what happened in 2020.”
“I’m not going to promise that there’s going to be a definitive answer — that wouldn’t be fair to you or anybody else. But we are looking at it, and we are hoping to get one,” he told the network.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Any potential crimes committed would almost certainly fall outside the statute of limitations, experts have previously told the AJC.
The FBI’s affidavit justifying the seizure raised concerns, both from legal experts and a federal judge. The document relies on the idea that claims about Fulton’s conduct in the 2020 election may have violated federal law. Authorities have already investigated each claim outlined in the affidavit. Those investigations either debunked the allegations or found no evidence of wrongdoing. And U.S. District Court Judge J.P. Boulee called parts of the affidavit “troubling” and “defective in some respects” but ultimately allowed the FBI to retain the records.
The Justice Department escalated the investigation months later and issued a grand jury subpoena seeking personal information for thousands of 2020 election workers.
The federal demand raised alarms among legal experts with one law professor telling the AJC the scope of the grand jury subpoena was “quite breathtaking.”
In a May 19 hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Bill Ray pressed Justice officials about whether the request for the election worker information is reasonable and worried about how the information might be used.
Federal investigators have expanded inquiries across other swing states Trump lost in 2020.
The FBI has obtained images of ballots related to the 2020 vote in Maricopa County, Arizona. Agents have interviewed current and former election officials in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, about the 2020 election, and the DOJ has sought 2024 ballots for Wayne County, Michigan.
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Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports contributed to this Associated Press story by Kate Brumback in Atlanta and Alanna Durkin Richer and Eric Tucker in Washington.
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