The Department of Justice is demanding the names, home addresses and personal contact details of every person who worked the 2020 general election in Fulton County, Georgia — a sprawling request that the county’s lawyers say is meant to “target, harass and punish the President’s perceived political opponents.” Fulton County, the Democratic stronghold at the center of Donald Trump’s years-long campaign of false voter-fraud claims, filed an emergency motion in federal court Monday to quash a grand jury subpoena that seeks the information.
The subpoena, dated April 17 and served on the county’s director of elections on April 20, demands “name, position/function, residential and email addresses, and personal telephone number(s)” for thousands of workers “ranging from county employees who assisted on election day, to bus drivers who operated a mobile voting location, to volunteers and temporary poll workers,” according to the county’s court filing. The county’s lawyers argued the request is “grossly overbroad and untethered to any reasonable need” and “cannot yield any evidence that could result in a criminal prosecution,” because the statute of limitations on any federal crime related to the 2020 election has already expired.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Fulton County Board of Commissioners Chairman Robb Pitts, a Democrat running for reelection, called the subpoena “yet another act of outrageous federal overreach designed to intimidate and chill participation in elections.” “Let me be crystal clear. Fulton County will not be intimidated,” Pitts said in an emailed statement.
The county’s lawyers wrote that since the 2020 election, Trump “has obsessively propagated the debunked conspiracy theory that Fulton County ‘stole’ the 2020 election from him” and “has made it clear that he seeks retribution against those who refuse to indulge his baseless claims.” They noted that Trump and his supporters have already targeted individual poll workers, singling out Ruby Freeman, a Black woman who was forced to flee her home after false fraud allegations led to racist threats and strangers showing up at her residence.
The motion highlights the personal vulnerability the demand would create. Threats arising from the current political environment, the county’s lawyers wrote, have caused election workers to “fear for their physical safety.” That stress, combined with “the likelihood of being scapegoated by public officials,” is pushing workers out of their jobs “in unprecedented numbers.”
The filing also noted that the subpoena directs the county to provide the records not to the grand jury itself but to an out-of-state Justice Department lawyer or to the FBI agent who wrote the affidavit used to seize Fulton County’s 2020 ballots and documents in January. That seizure was one of several moves by the Trump administration to obtain past election records from critical swing states. In March, the FBI used a subpoena to get records related to a 2020 presidential election audit in Maricopa County, Arizona. In April, the Justice Department demanded that Wayne County, Michigan, turn over its ballots from the 2024 election — which Trump won.
The Justice Department is separately fighting numerous states in court for access to voter data that includes sensitive personal information. Election officials, including some Republicans, have said handing over such data would violate state and federal privacy laws.