President Donald Trump said “some interesting things” would result from January’s Fulton County ballot seizure. FBI Director Kash Patel promised 2020 election arrests.
But months after the raid, the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation into Fulton’s 2020 election has produced no public evidence of wrongdoing.
Two federal judges, both appointed by Trump, have demanded answers about whether some of the Justice Department’s tactics amounted to a fishing expedition and whether evidence justifying seizing nearly six-year-old election records was solid. Legal scholars say the investigation so far has only produced accusations and political rhetoric from administration officials.
While Trump and Patel have made promises about 2020, acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche has been more cautious about the investigations. Though he claimed evidence of election rigging exists, Blanche told Fox News in May that “it takes a lot of work to uncover what happened in 2020.” He didn’t predict the investigations would answer Trump’s grievances.
“I’m not going to promise that there’s going to be a definitive answer — that wouldn’t be fair to you or anybody else. But we are looking at it, and we are hoping to get one,” he said.
Four months later, the Justice Department has released no evidence of wrongdoing in Fulton or any information recasting Trump’s 2020 defeat. No suspects have been identified; no arrests have been made. And any potential crimes committed would almost certainly fall outside the statute of limitations, experts say.
“The problem with a conspiracy theory is you can’t ever disprove a conspiracy theory,” said Loyola Marymount University law professor Justin Levitt, pointing to multiple vote counts and investigations upholding the outcome of Georgia’s 2020 election. “So there’s no amount of evidence that the people who really believe will ever be satisfied by.”
But the investigation appears to be active. For instance, Philip Davis, a conservative data analyst who provided the Justice Department with information about his analysis of ballot images and records before the January raid, said an FBI agent called him in April to ask how they could confirm his claims that Fulton double-counted ballots during a recount.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
‘Really quite breathtaking’
The FBI’s affidavit justifying the seizure raised concerns, both from legal experts and a federal judge. The document relies on the idea that claims about Fulton’s conduct in the 2020 election may have violated federal law. Authorities have already investigated each claim outlined in the affidavit. Those investigations either debunked the allegations or found no evidence of wrongdoing. And U.S. District Court Judge J.P. Boulee called parts of the affidavit “troubling” and “defective in some respects” but ultimately allowed the FBI to retain the records.
The Justice Department escalated the investigation months later. U.S. Attorney Dan Bishop, who was tapped to investigate election fraud, issued a grand jury subpoena seeking personal information for thousands of 2020 election workers.
The federal demand raised alarms among legal experts. “The scope of what’s being asked for in the grand jury subpoena is really quite breathtaking,” said Georgia State University law professor Clark Cunningham.
Levitt, who is also a former Justice Department attorney, said some of the investigators may be more cautious with where they take this investigation, pointing to a $148 million verdict levied against Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani for defaming two Fulton poll workers.
“We’re getting into pretty dangerous territory, where the only thing that’s likely to come out of this process is either false accusations or generalized hand-waving,” he said in an interview.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Fulton County is seeking to quash the subpoena, but Justice Department attorneys contended the information on thousands of the county’s paid and volunteer election workers — including their names, email addresses and personal phone numbers — is necessary.
“After all, a magistrate judge of this Court has found probable cause to believe violations of federal law occurred,” the attorneys wrote in court filings.
In a May 19 hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Bill Ray pressed the Justice officials about whether the request for the election worker information is reasonable. Ray has not ruled on the subpoena, but he worried about how the information might be used.
“If it was provided to the president and it was improper to do so and he did disclose that information, I’m not really sure what I would do about it,” Ray said, according to a transcript of the hearing.
After Ray ordered the Justice Department to file evidence of any theories of potential wrongdoing to support the subpoena, the DOJ on Friday requested permission to submit it privately to Ray, citing “sensitive investigative material.”
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Months after the ballot seizure, federal investigators have expanded inquiries across key swing states Trump lost in 2020. The FBI has obtained images of ballots related to the 2020 vote in Maricopa County, Arizona. Agents have interviewed current and former election officials in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, about the 2020 election, and the DOJ has sought 2024 ballots for Wayne County, Michigan.
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