Justification Unsealed For Fbi’s Seizure Of 2020 Fulton County Ballots

A judge authorized the FBI’s extraordinary seizure of all the ballots cast in Fulton County, Georgia during the 2020 election based largely on allegations from conservative activists that have been repeatedly rejected by state and local officials, according to court filings unsealed Tuesday.

Affidavits submitted to a federal court magistrate last month don’t appear to contain any bombshell revelations of fraud, but instead a litany of alleged irregularities in ballot tallying and in the handling of related records, like digital scans of the paper ballots cast. The magistrate judge, Catherine Salinas, approved the seizure.

While FBI Special Agent Hugh Evans asserted that the alleged departures from protocol were sufficient to establish probable cause that two federal laws were broken, he attributed those crimes to “unknown persons.”

Evans’ affidavits confirm that the criminal investigation originated with a referral from Kurt Olsen, an ally in President Donald Trump’s quest to subvert the 2020 election, who was named by Trump in Octoberas the White House’s “director of election security and integrity.” Olsen was among the figures Trump spoke with on Jan. 6, 2021while he made a last-ditch effort to deny Joe Biden the presidency.

The overt steps to relitigate Georgia’s 2020 election practices have already fueled Trump’s renewed, false claims that he won the election that year.

Evans presented no evidence that the alleged irregularities were aimed at swaying the vote, but said that any deliberate actions could be federal crimes even without evidence of partisan intent.

“If these deficiencies were the result of intentional action, it would be a violation of federal law regardless of whether the failure to retain records or the deprivation of a fair tabulation of a vote was outcome determinative for any particular election or race,” Evans wrote.

Evans did not say precisely when the FBI’s investigation began, nor did he describe any steps agents took in the probe before seeking to seize the Fulton ballots and other materials last month. He did point to two federal statutes that were likely violated: one making it a felony to engage in voting fraud in connection with a federal election and another making it a misdemeanor to fail to preserve records related to a federal election for at least 22 months after Election Day.

Fulton County officials have acknowledged they did not keep all the scans and tallies of ballots in the 2020 election, but they say they were unaware that was required and the shortcoming is of no significance because the original paper ballots were kept.

Evans’ affidavits cite complaints and claims by various activists, but U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee agreed that the names of non-government “witnesses” could be redacted from the versions of the affidavits that were made public Tuesday. However, the identities of many of the activists are evident, including Kevin Moncla, a Texas resident who has repeatedly lodged fraud allegations with the Georgia State Election Board.