Georgia’s Fulton County and President Donald Trump’s administration squared off in federal court Friday over Fulton County’s demand that the FBI return seized ballots and other materials from the 2020 election. The hearing took place before U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee in Atlanta, with Fulton County arguing that the January seizure violated Fourth Amendment protections and with the federal government saying the investigation should be allowed to proceed.
Lowell, representing Fulton County, described the January seizure as “unusual” because it involved an older election and allegations he said had been investigated in the years since Trump lost the county and the state to Joe Biden. Lowell told the judge there was “nothing to support that there’s an ongoing investigation that matters,” arguing that federal authorities should return the documents.
Lowell suggested the Trump administration seized the materials because it grew impatient with the pace of litigation to obtain them, and he said the affidavit used to secure the search warrant did not allege any specific crime or accuse anyone of intentionally committing wrongdoing. He also characterized deficiencies in the county’s handling of the 2020 election as human errors that commonly occur rather than evidence that would establish probable cause.
Duva, an assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department criminal division, rejected the county’s challenges. He dismissed disputes over the legal grounds for the seizure as “posturing,” and he argued the government had a valid basis for investigation despite earlier efforts that, he said, did not find intentional wrongdoing. “Is there a predicate reason to perform this investigation? Of course there is,” Duva said, adding that other investigations raising concerns could still support an FBI inquiry. He also said, “Just because all of these other entities say one thing doesn’t mean the FBI can’t investigate.”
Federal prosecutors said the Justice Department already provided Fulton County with digital copies of everything taken and needs to retain physical copies to conduct its own investigation. They said a federal magistrate judge reviewed the FBI affidavit and signed off on the search warrant, and they objected to Fulton County’s request that the agent who wrote the affidavit testify at Friday’s hearing; the judge sided with the federal government on that point.
The Justice Department has said it is investigating “irregularities that occurred during the 2020 presidential election in the County” and identified two laws it said might have been violated. One law requires election records to be maintained for 22 months, while another prohibits procuring, casting or tabulating false, fictitious or fraudulent ballots, according to the arguments described during the hearing.
In court, Fulton County officials called Ryan Macias, an election technology and security expert who advised the county during the 2020 election, to testify in support of the county’s position. Macias said the affidavit included false or misleading statements and was not grounded in reality, and he offered explanations for alleged “deficiencies,” while Duva questioned Macias about his knowledge of criminal investigation procedures and elicited admissions that it was not his area of expertise.
Duva also defended the government’s approach to the affidavit and the underlying investigation. He rejected the contention that the FBI agent misled the magistrate judge, pointing to investigative findings in the affidavit that he said disputed some of what witnesses had said. Duva further said a lapse of the statute of limitations for potential crimes does not negate probable cause.
Beyond arguments about the warrant and the affidavit, the case also fits into a broader pattern of federal action that Democrats and election officials have criticized as potentially driven by former president Donald Trump’s political grievances. The FBI’s seizure from a warehouse near Atlanta on Jan. 28 targeted the elections hub in Georgia’s most populous county, and the hearing included references to related federal requests tied to other states’ election reviews, including a subpoena earlier in March seeking records related to an audit in Arizona’s Maricopa County.
For Fulton County, the dispute centers on whether the federal government should keep the physical materials and what the affidavit supports. For the Justice Department, the issue is whether the court should allow investigators to retain the seized materials while pursuing their inquiry into alleged irregularities, even as the county argues that prior reviews found no wrongdoing that would justify the seizure.