Fulton County, the Democrat-dominated haven that includes Atlanta, made the news last week when the FBI showed up at the county’s election center with a search warrant. The FBI showed up there after the Department of Justice (DOJ) sued Fulton County a month ago to demand access to ballots related to the 2020 election, according to Fox News.
In a rather tight-lipped statement, the DOJ said it was executing a “court authorized law enforcement action” at the facility, officially known as the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center.
In the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden officially won red-state Georgia over President Donald Trump by a razor-thin margin. Biden won with less than a half-percentage point, and about 11,800 votes, separating them.
Trump handily defeated Hillary Clinton by about 211,140 ballots four years earlier.
With such a narrow loss, Trump predictably focused on Fulton County and Democrat voters there. In a phone call leaked to the news media, Trump asked Brad Raffensperger (pictured below), Georgia’s secretary of state, to help him find the 12,000 votes that would flip the state’s election results in his favor.
A second phone call from Trump, this time with a state investigator who worked for Raffensperger, was also leaked to the news media.
Even though Trump said he was concerned about absentee ballots, the most common form of election cheating, news reports described him as an "election denying" candidate who was bullying others and subverting democracy.
After recounts and lawsuits failed to work out in Trump’s favor, Democrats in Georgia flipped the political script. They announced a criminal probe into Trump and others, such as attorney Rudy Giulianai and his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, which set up one of the many efforts across the country to make Trump a felon and put him behind bars.
Describing where that election fight now stands, election attorney Cleta Mitchell told Washington Watch many still believe Fulton County conducted a “completely fraudulent election” in 2020.
Reacting to the FBI search warrant, Mitchell said a judge agreed in 2021 to issue a protective order that preserves all ballots and election-related materials from 2020.
“That’s why these records were still in the election warehouse,” Mitchell, who founded the Election Integrity Network, advised.
Not only did Democrats in Fulton County cheat to help Biden, Mitchell claimed, but Georgia’s top Republican leaders have long been accused of shrugging off violations of state election law that critics maintain is evidence of election fraud.
One violation that happened in Fulton County, Mitchell said, was destroying digital images of the ballots immediately after the 2020 election.
A second glaring problem, Mitchell advised, was the polling precinct tabulator tapes. When a precinct closes after Election Day, the precinct manager and two poll workers sign it to confirm they examined the ballot totals from each machine in the precinct.
“You have some tabulator tapes that have the same serial number that says that they were at different polling locations. That is impossible,” Mitchell advised. “One tabulator cannot be at two physical locations at the same time.”
The FBI search warrant was applauded by Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Election. In a statement on X, Adams said the FBI showed up only after the DOJ asked for access to the ballots in three letters dating back to August of last year.
“The Georgia State Election Board has been trying for 4 years to get the records. Including issuing a subpoena for the ballots and other records. And ALL of those efforts have failed. Until today,” Adams wrote.
