There was plenty of drama Thursday, a day after an FBI raid on Fulton County’s election operations center hit Georgia political circles like an earthquake.
Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts said he was prepared to be arrested and suggested he was on a “hit list” of elected officials who have been critical of President Donald Trump’s endless conspiracy theories about his 2020 election loss.
State and local officials openly speculated that the raid could provide a pretext for the Trump-aligned majority on the State Election Board to take over administering elections in the state’s most populous county ahead of crucial midterm elections.
And still no one is saying what prompted the raid, where investigators took nearly 700 boxes of 2020 ballots and other election materials, or what details they used to secure a warrant to seize them in the first place.
Reporters for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution are watching for the federal case to be unsealed, which could provide some answers. Stick with the AJC throughout the day for updates.
The FBI’s seizure of Fulton County ballots from the 2020 election has renewed attention to a slew of voting fraud allegations that President Donald Trump and others have made for years.
Most have been investigated and debunked. There were no “suitcases” of ballots. The “smoking gun” video for voting fraud showed normal ballot counting. Voting equipment did not “flip” votes from Joe Biden to Trump.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has been covering these allegations for years. Here’s a closer look at some of them, originally published last year.
Steve Bannon, who has long claimed the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump, hosted a series of guests to weigh in on the FBI raid on a recent episode of his podcast “Bannon’s War Room,” including State Election Board members and one of Georgia’s most well-known conspiracy theorists, Garland Favorito.
“Garland and (his wife) Tamara could have quit,” said Bannon. “They all could have quit.”
He said soon the administration could finally unveil what happened during Fulton County’s 2020 election, despite three vote counts — including a hand tally of every ballot cast — that upheld Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow victory in Georgia.
State Election Board Vice Chair Janice Johnston, once lauded by Trump as a “pit bull,” told Bannon about violations that the state board has found in Fulton’s 2020 election, such as the county double-scanning more than 3,000 ballots in the machine recount. During the recount, Trump gained 939 net votes against Biden in Fulton, where Biden received 73% support, according to the results.
“If we don’t learn what happened in 2020, we won’t know how to approach or how to direct future elections,” Johnston said.
Another guest, election skeptic Jason Frazier who has challenged the registrations of thousands of Fulton County voters, said he “can’t move on until we’ve seen what happened.”
“We just want clean voter rolls. We want clean elections, and whoever wins, wins,” he said.
A top Justice Department official said a federal raid of Fulton County’s election warehouse was part of the Trump administration’s broader focus on “election integrity.” And he said Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's presence during the raid shouldn’t be viewed as unusual.
That’s according to Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, who briefed reporters in Washington.
Blanche said he wouldn’t comment on the specifics of the raid, citing a pending criminal case. But he framed the search as a sign that “election integrity is extraordinarily important to this administration.”
Gabbard’s appearance at the site has sparked controversy and criticism, with Democrats and voting rights advocates questioning why the nation’s top intelligence official was on the ground for a politically charged investigation tied to Donald Trump’s false claims about 2020.
Blanche called her an “extraordinarily important” figure in the administration who “happened to be present in Atlanta.”
"The fact that she was present in Atlanta that day is something that shouldn't surprise anybody," he said.
President Donald Trump has been amplifying debunked claims about Georgia's 2020 election following the FBI's seizure of Fulton County's 2020 ballots this week.
In a series of reposts on his Truth Social account, Trump shared a post claiming election workers pulled suitcases filled with "alleged fraudulent ballots from under tables after the election center was shut down."
But state and federal investigators reviewed 14 hours of surveillance video to conclude the "suitcases" were official ballot containers placed under the table with observers and the news media present.
Trump also reposted comments from people praising the FBI raid, including one post declaring "EXPOSE THE FRAUD! Show the people, Trump was right!"
FBI Director Kash Patel said the search warrant executed at Fulton County's elections office this week is part of an ongoing investigation that will pay off at the end by improving public safety and security. But he didn't go into details about the case during an interview on Thursday's episode of "The Charlie Kirk Show."
"It's not one of those matters where I'm saying, trust us," Patel said. "I'm saying, look at the last year under President Trump's leadership, what this DOJ and FBI has done. Record levels of safety across America.”
Patel said agents are now going through the evidence they obtained and determining next steps, including whether to request more search warrants or bring witnesses in for interviews.
And he pushed back on comments from Fulton Commission Chairman Robb Pitts that the integrity of the ballots was jeopardized by the raid because a clear chain of command has not been established.
"For anybody to hint that this FBI or this Department of Justice is mishandling evidence is just flat-out political buffoonery," Patel said. "We will maintain the chain of custody. We will secure it like we always do. And we will make sure that we can use it to further any investigation. And most importantly, we will make sure that it is maintained under the rigors of the law so that we can use it in any future court proceedings that may rise out of any investigation.”
Fulton County Court Clerk Ché Alexander said that FBI agents seized 656 boxes of 2020 election records from Fulton’s election operations center in Union City.
She told WSB Channel 2 Action News she spent hours in the 600,000-square-foot warehouse as the federal agents loaded troves of ballots and other documents into trucks on Wednesday.
“I provided the information and the documents to the federal government like I was supposed to do, and it was another day on the job,” she said.
Another mystery about the FBI's Fulton County raid may have been solved.
Many have wondered why Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was in Union City for the raid. Now the Wall Street Journal reports that Gabbard is "leading the administration’s effort to re-examine the election and look for potential crimes, a priority for the president."
The newspaper reported Gabbard has "begun studying information about voting machines, analyzed data from swing states and pursued theories that President Trump has promoted to claim the 2020 election was unfairly taken from him, the officials said, particularly on foreign government interference."
You can read more here.
One of the many mysteries about the federal raid of Fulton County’s election system is why a federal prosecutor from Missouri is listed on the warrant.
That would be Thomas Albus, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District and a recent appointee of President Donald Trump.
Federal officials aren’t saying why Theodore Hertzberg, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, isn’t named in the document. His office isn’t commenting.
One potential reason: Liberty Vote, the company that bought Dominion Voting Systems, is based in St. Louis. Georgia relied on Dominion’s touchscreen voting system during the 2020 election, and it’s long been the target of lawsuits from critics.
Bloomberg Law reported late Thursday that Attorney General Pam Bondi named Albus to handle election integrity cases nationwide.
One puzzle about the FBI Fulton County raid may have been solved.
Many have wondered why a Missouri-based U.S. attorney appeared on the search warrant for a Georgia case. But on Thursday Bloomberg Law reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi has assigned Thomas Albus, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, to handle election integrity cases nationwide.
Fulton County officials took note of Wednesday’s FBI raid in a new filing in a Justice Department lawsuit that sought to obtain the county's 2020 ballots and other materials.
The department filed the federal lawsuit last month. Superior Court Clerk Ché Alexander, the defendant, has asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit.
On Thursday, Alexander noted that the Justice Department had seized most, if not all of the materials the lawsuit sought. She requested a two-week extension to supplement her motion to dismiss the lawsuit “to ascertain the facts regarding the materials seized.”