Debunked claims from election deniers influenced FBI raid in Georgia, affidavit reveals

The FBI’s rationale behind raiding the Fulton County election office in Georgia last month was based on debunked claims from election deniers and came after a referral from a White House lawyer who tried to overturn the 2020 election, a search warrant affidavit unsealed on Tuesday reveals.The warrant offers the first insight for the basis for the FBI’s 28 January raid on the Fulton County election office. FBI officials seized nearly 700 boxes of election materials in the raid.The FBI’s investigation “originated” from a referral sent by Kurt Olsen, an attorney who sought to overturn the 2020 election and contacted justice department officials to urge them to file a motion at the US supreme court to nullify the election. Olsen began working at the White House last year to investigate election integrity problems.The FBI’s witnesses in the investigation include a cadre of conservative activists who have been hounding state officials with claims of wrongdoing in Fulton County for years. Many of their claims have been investigated by state officials and debunked.Other witnesses include two Trump-aligned members of the Georgia state election board whom Trump publicly praised as “pit bulls” at a 2024 rally. Those two members are Janice Johnston and Janelle King, who is married to Kelvin King, a current candidate for Georgia secretary of state.“Seizure of the election records would corroborate the analysis that evinces that election records were destroyed and or the tabulation of votes included materially false votes, either through duplicated scanning of specific ballots, interjection of pristine ballots, or other methods described above,” Hugh Raymond Evans, an FBI special agent, wrote in the affidavit.Trump lost Georgia in 2020 by nearly 12,000 votes, a result that was twice confirmed. Claims of wrongdoing have nonetheless been central to his efforts to keep alive the myth that the 2020 election was stolen.One of the claims in the affidavit, for example, appears to come from a citizen researcher named Joe Rossi, who claimed that the number of ballot images for Fulton County did not match the total number of ballots cast. While there were some discrepancies, Georgia did a machine and hand recount of the ballots after the 2020 election that confirmed the tally. The state election board also investigated the claim and sent a letter of reprimand to Fulton County in 2024.The affidavit also cites accusations from activists that the tabulator tapes – records from each voting machine indicating how many votes were cast for each candidate – were improperly handled. An analyst working for the executive branch reviewed the tapes and concluded there were abnormalities. The former state election director told the FBI that all votes were accounted for during the hand count of votes. Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has acknowledged that tapes accounting for 315,000 ballots were not signed, but described that as an administrative error that did not affect the election. The former state election official also told the FBI that all votes were accounted for during the hand count.Another witness appears to be Susan Voyles, who told the FBI she worked during the hand count and handled suspicious “pristine” ballots that appeared unfolded and had identical votes for candidates on them. That allegation was part of a lawsuit dismissed in 2021 in which Raffensperger’s office noted Voyles was unable to identify the batch of ballots she said she observed.Voyles, a past president of the Georgia chapter of the conservative activist group Eagle Forum, was a Republican candidate for Congress in 2022.“The affidavit is a total rehash of rejected and debunked claims from five years ago. While there were certainly administrative errors (as there always are in every election, including in states where Trump won), even this affidavit confirms that none of those were intentional, and that the ultimate count of the actual ballots (the paper ballots, not the images, not the tapes, which are not ballots) was correct and the right result reached,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.“How an agent could sign off on an affidavit, and a magistrate sign off on a warrant, that confirms there’s no evidence of intent to commit a federal crime, is hard to fathom,” he added.In a statement, Raffensperger, who is now seeking the Republican nomination for governor, said it was time to move on.“As secretary of state, I’ve made Georgia the safest and most secure place to vote. Instead of wasting time and tax dollars trying to change the past with baseless and repackaged claims, let’s focus our efforts on building a safer, more affordable future for all hard-working Georgians,” he said.The attorney for the government whose name appeared on the warrant is Thomas Albus, the US attorney for the eastern district of Missouri. Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, tapped Albus to be a special attorney to investigate election integrity issues, Bloomberg Law reported.The unprecedented raid has only elevated concern Donald Trump will seek to interfere in this year’s midterm elections. That worry escalated further when it emerged that Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, was present at the Fulton County raid. Gabbard is said to be running her own investigation separate from the one being run by the justice department.