Officials in Georgia’s Fulton County said they have asked a federal court to order the FBI to return ballots and other materials from the 2020 election that agents seized last week, escalating a broader fight over who controls election administration ahead of the November midterms.
Fulton County Chairman Robb Pitts said the legal case is not confined to the county, saying in announcing the filing that “This is not only about Fulton County.” He added, “This is about elections across Georgia and across the nation.”
The county said the FBI search involved a warehouse near Atlanta where the records were stored. Officials said they were not told why the federal government wanted the documents, and Pitts said the county is seeking court review of the seizure and associated warrant approvals.
Pitts said a warrant cover sheet provided to the county listed items the agents were seeking related to the 2020 general election, including all ballots, tabulator tapes from the scanners used to tally votes, electronic ballot images created when the ballots were counted and recounted, and all voter rolls. County officials also said they asked the court to unseal a sworn statement from a law enforcement agent that was presented to the judge who approved the search warrant.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the county’s motion, and officials emphasized their view that the election outcome should stand if ballots are counted fairly and honestly. Pitts said, “What they’re doing with the ballots that they have now, we don’t know, but if they’re counted fairly and honestly, the results will be the same.”
The dispute comes as President Donald Trump has repeatedly signaled he would prefer federal involvement in election administration, including language that critics have warned could undermine state control. In an interview with a conservative podcaster reported this week, Trump said he wants to “take over” elections from Democratic-run areas, and he reiterated the position in Oval Office remarks the next day, according to the AP report.
Pitts and other Democrats have linked the county’s legal action to Trump’s broader election posture ahead of the midterms. The AP report said Trump’s election comments followed persistent demands for retribution tied to claims of fraud in Georgia that numerous audits, investigations and courts have debunked. Trump’s “take over” remarks also fed into congressional and administrative debate as the fall races approach.
The AP report also said U.S. Sen. Mark Warner expressed concern about the president’s potential influence on the midterm elections, stating that while he once doubted Trump would intervene, he was now alarmed by “the notional idea that he will ask his loyalists to do something inappropriate, beyond the Constitution.” White House officials, including spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, said the president’s remarks about “take over” referenced the SAVE Act, which would tighten proof-of-citizenship requirements; however, Trump did not cite the legislation in his remarks that day, according to the report.
Democratic state election officials and lawmakers have said they are planning for a range of possible disruptions this fall tied to federal involvement in elections. The AP report said officials have discussed scenarios including how they would respond if Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were stationed outside polling places, and it said they have raised concerns about Justice Department lawsuits seeking detailed voter data that includes dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers.
The report said Trump’s allies have continued to focus on Fulton County because he lost Georgia narrowly in 2020 to Democrat Joe Biden, and Trump has long challenged that result. It said that shortly after the 2020 election, Trump pressed Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to help “find” the ballots Trump said were needed for him to win, and it noted that Raffensperger did not change the vote tally and Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes.
The AP report added that after the election, rioters swarmed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, seeking to prevent certification of Biden’s victory, and it said Trump later pardoned more than 1,000 people charged in the siege. Pitts said the president and his allies “refuse to accept the fact that they lost,” and he added that even if Trump had won Georgia, “he would still have lost the presidency.”
The AP report said the FBI agents seized hundreds of boxes of ballots and other documents, and that Tulsi Gabbard, described as Trump’s director of national intelligence, was at the Fulton search last week. Democrats in Congress questioned her presence because the search was described as a law enforcement action rather than an intelligence one. In a letter to top Democrats on House and Senate Intelligence committees, Gabbard said Trump asked her to be there “under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security.”
During a separate interview with NBC News that aired Wednesday, Trump said he did not know why Gabbard was in Fulton County, while suggesting without providing evidence that “A lot of the cheating, it’s international cheating,” the AP report said. The report said Senate Republicans and Trump supporters have argued that federal intervention is needed when elections in certain states are run by Democratic officials, while opponents say the Constitution vests election administration in states.