President of the United States Donald Trump The FBI on Wednesday raided a Georgia county election office that has been at the center of right-wing conspiracy theories over the 2020 election loss.
A search of the Fulton County primary election facility in Union City sought records related to the 2020 election. It appeared to be the most public step yet from the Justice Department to pursue Trump’s claims of a stolen election, with complaints dismissed by courts and state and federal officials who found no evidence of fraud that would have changed the outcome.
FBI agents secured the area around a large warehouse building, the county election center, with yellow tape and were seen loading boxes from the building into trucks. FBI spokeswoman Jenna Selito confirmed the boxes contained ballots. Among the required 2020 election documents are ballots, tabulator tapes from the scanners used to count ballots, electronic ballot images and ballot papers.
An FBI spokeswoman said agents were “conducting a court-authorized law enforcement action” at the county’s main elections office in Union City, south of Atlanta. A spokesman declined to provide further information, citing the ongoing case.
The FBI last week moved to replace its top agent, Paul W. Brown, in Atlanta, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the non-public personnel decision. It was not immediately clear why the action, which was not disclosed by the FBI, was taken or if it was related to Wednesday’s law enforcement activity.
State and county Democratic officials expressed concern about inspections and ballot raids, and said they were not notified in advance.
“For the life of me, I still can’t get over the awesomeness of the 2020 election six years ago,” said County Board of Commissioners Chairman Rob Pitts. He told reporters Wednesday night.. The election is over. The selection is screened, audited, and in all cases we get a clean bill of health.
The Justice Department had no immediate comment. FBI Deputy Director Andrew Bailey and US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard were also present.
Gabbard’s presence angered Senator Mark Warner of VirginiaWarner Gabbard, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she had an obligation to report “appropriate national security concerns” to that committee and said she was concerned she might be participating in “a domestic political environment designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy.”
Trump focused on voting in Fulton County.
Trump in 2016 They insist that the 2020 election was “rigged,” but it doesn’t explain how only the presidential race was rigged on a day when hundreds of other federal, state, and county elections went off without a hitch. The director of his own administration’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency called the election “the most secure in American history.” He went to shoot.
Repeated polls, reviews and audits of the 2020 battleground states have confirmed Joe Biden’s victory. While judges, including some Trump appointees, rejected dozens of legal challenges, then-Attorney General William Barr told a congressional committee at the time that the fraud claims that affected the outcome were “outrageous.”
Trump in 2016 For years, they have focused on Fulton, Georgia’s most populous county and a Democratic stronghold, as a key example of getting it wrong in the 2020 election. His push in Georgia included a now-famous phone call to the secretary of state there, imploring him to “seek” about 12,000 votes to overcome the Republican deficit for Biden.
Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis indicted Trump and 18 others in August 2023, accusing them of participating in a broad scheme to illegally overturn the results in Georgia. That case was dismissed in November after Willis and her office were barred from pursuing it by the courts due to “appearance of impropriety” stemming from her romance with prosecutors, though Trump’s 2024 election victory and a Supreme Court ruling that year made a trial unlikely.
Donald Trump After losing the 2020 election, they engaged in an ‘unprecedented criminal effort’ to ‘retain power illegally,’ special counsel Jack Smith said in a report released by the US Department of Justice.
Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, also led an investigation into two black election workers as part of the investigation. A false conspiracy theory involving luggage and ballot papers. The women — who Trump called “professional vote-riggers” — He won a US$148 million judgment in a civil case On Giuliani.
Speaking in Davos, Switzerland, last week, Trump promised that “people will soon be prosecuted for their actions” in the 2020 election. Past presidents typically do not receive advance notice from the Justice Department of an impending indictment.
However, Trump’s desire to prosecute officials and politicians he has angered in his second term has run into roadblocks in the legal system, as have opponents in the 2020 election.
Grand juries have failed to indict in some cases, a rare occurrence in trials without lawyers, with a judge tossing indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
The Justice Department has received responses from nearly two dozen states seeking more voter registration information than was previously publicly accessible.
Front burner26:24Trump’s campaign of legal revenge
Ongoing civil lawsuits
Wednesday’s warrant is a criminal document, but the Justice Department last month sued Fulton County’s sheriff and magistrate court clerk in federal court to obtain documents from the county’s 2020 election.
Fulton County Clerk Che Alexander filed a motion to dismiss the charges. The Justice Department’s complaint said the purpose of the request was to “ensure Georgia’s compliance with various federal election laws.”
Also, the three-person conservative majority on the Georgia State Board of Elections has repeatedly tried to reopen the lawsuit in Fulton County during the 2020 election.
The county board sent summons to the county board for various election documents last year and again on October 6, 2025. The battle over the state board’s efforts to enforce the 2024 summons is currently tied up in court.
The Justice Department filed an Oct. 30 subpoena with the county election board, citing federal civil rights laws, and requesting all records from state election boards responding to the October subpoena. In response, attorneys for the county board of elections attached a letter from the clerk to the state board indicating that the information cannot be released without a court order.