Fulton County to sue after FBI seized 2020 election records, commissioner says

(TNND) — Fulton County, Georgia Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr. announced on Monday that the county will file a lawsuit over the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) 2020 search and seizure of voting records.

This comes after federal agents executed a search warrant on Wednesday, seizing “hundreds of boxes of ballots, voter rolls, ballot images and other records from the 2020 election” from the county’s main election office, according to a press release from the commissioner’s office.

Local officials have criticized the warrant, saying it represents a federal overreach.

I’ve asked the county attorney to take any and all steps available to fight this criminal search warrant,” Arrington said. “The search warrant, I believe, is not proper, but I think that there are ways that we can limit it. We want to ask for forensic accounting, we want the documents to stay in the State of Georgia under seal, and we want to do whatever we can to protect voter information.

Arrington noted that while the FBI was authorized to seize copy records under a separate court order, agents instead took physical custody of original ballots including in-person, absentee and provisional ballots as well as voter rolls.

They got copies of our voter rolls and all the original ballots,” Arrington said. “Now we cannot verify that we’ve received everything back because there was no chain-of-custody inventory taken at the time the records were seized.

Fulton County leaders have repeatedly pushed back against the federal action and on Monday the County’s attorneys are expected to file a lawsuit in federal court in the Northern District of Georgia to fight the Department of Justice and FBI.

In August of 2023, President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants were indicted by District Attorney Fani Willis over their attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state. Charges included plotting fake state electors and pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” votes.

While Willis was later removed from the case, the fight between Georgia and the Trump administration continued into 2025 when another prosecutor took on the case.

In December, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department sued Fulton County and its Clerk of Court to obtain records related to the 2020 election. The DOJ claims it needs them to ensure compliance with federal election law.