This County Is Suing the Trump Administration After the FBI Seized Election Records

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FBI agents showed up in Fulton County, Georgia, and seized boxes of records related to the 2020 election last week. Now, the county is about to take the matter to court.

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A Fulton County official announced on Monday that it will file a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the seizure, arguing that the warrant the FBI used to justify the seizure was invalid, according to CNN.

An official in Fulton County, Georgia, announced the county will file a lawsuit Monday over the FBI’s search and seizure of 2020 election records.

Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr. said the lawsuit will “challenge the legality of the warrant and the seizure of sensitive election records, and force the government to return the ballots taken.”

Arrington said that the county’s attorneys are expected to file a lawsuit in federal court in the Northern District of Georgia to fight the action of Trump’s Justice Department and the FBI.

The FBI served a warrant last Wednesday at the Fulton County election office, near Atlanta, Georgia, taking 700 boxes of election materials as it probes alleged voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

“I’ve asked the county attorney to take any and all steps available to fight this criminal search warrant,” Arrington said Monday in a press release.

“The search warrant, I believe, is not proper, but I think that there are ways that we can limit it,” the statement continues. “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.”

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Arrington said that while the FBI had authorization to copy the records from a separate court order, he believes they did not have proper permission to take physical custody of the original 2020 ballots and voters rolls.

FBI agents took around 700 boxes of records on January 28, according to Fulton County Commission Chair Robb Pitts. The warrant authorized the agents to take all physical ballots, images of ballots that were scanned during counting, printouts from voting machines, and voter registration lists, Fox News reported.

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Fulton County includes Atlanta and is the state’s largest county. Former President Joe Biden won the county by a significant margin in 2020. President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that voter fraud in the county cost him Georgia’s electoral votes. 

Arrington told CBS News that “there was no chain-of-custody inventory taken at the time the records were seized,” which means the FBI cannot verify that the documents will be returned safely.

What was unusual about the raid is that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was spotted at the site, even though this appears to be a domestic matter. The FBI has not yet explained what crime they are investigating.

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