UNION CITY, GEORGIA — The FBI on Wednesday searched the elections office in a Georgia county that has been central to right-wing conspiracy theories about President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, just a week after the Republican leader expected prosecutions over a contest he baselessly insisted was tainted by widespread fraud.
A search of Fulton County’s main election facility in Union City sought records related to the 2020 election, county spokeswoman Jessica Corbett Dominguez said. This appears to be the most public step by law enforcement to pursue Trump’s claims of a stolen election, grievances that have been repeatedly dismissed by courts, state officials and audits that have found no evidence of fraud that would have changed the outcome.
It is also unfolding against the backdrop of efforts by the FBI and Justice Department to investigate perceived political enemies of Trump, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Trump has for years focused on Fulton, Georgia’s most populous county and a Democratic stronghold, as a prime example of what he claims went wrong in the 2020 election. His pressure campaign there culminated in a sweeping state indictment charging him and 18 others with trying to illegally overturn the vote.
An FBI spokesman said agents were “conducting a court-authorized law enforcement action” at the county’s main elections office in Union City, just south of Atlanta. The spokesman declined to provide any further information, citing an ongoing matter.
Corbett Dominguez said the arrest warrant “seeks a number of records related to the 2020 election,” but she declined to comment further because the search is still ongoing.
The Justice Department had no immediate comment.
Trump has long insisted that the 2020 election was stolen even though judges across the country and his own attorney general have said they have found no evidence of widespread error that tipped the race in favor of Democrat Joe Biden.
The president made Georgia, one of the states he lost in the 2020 election, a prime target of his complaints about the election and memorably paid its secretary of state to help “find” enough votes to overturn the contest.
Last week, he stressed, referring to the 2020 elections, that “people will soon be tried for what they did.” It was not clear what he was referring to in particular.
In August 2023, Fulton County District Attorney Fanny Willis obtained an indictment against Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a large-scale scheme to illegally attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. That case was dismissed in November after the courts barred Willis and her office from pursuing it due to an “appearance of impropriety” stemming from a romantic relationship she had with the prosecutor she appointed to lead the case.
The FBI moved last week to replace its top agent in Atlanta, Paul W. Brown, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel decision. It was not immediately clear why this step, which was not announced by the FBI, was taken.
Last month, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the Fulton County Superior Court clerk in federal court seeking access to documents from the county’s 2020 election. The department sent a letter to Che Alexander, clerk of the Superior and District Courts, but failed to provide the requested documents, the suit said.
Alexander filed a motion to dismiss the case. The Justice Department’s complaint says the purpose of its order is “to ensure Georgia’s compliance with various federal election laws.” The attorney general is also trying to assist the state Board of Elections with “transparency efforts under Georgia law.”
The state elections board’s three-person conservative majority has repeatedly sought to reopen a case alleging irregularities by Fulton County during the 2020 election. It passed a resolution in July seeking help from the U.S. attorney general to access voting materials.
The state board sent subpoenas to the county board for various election documents last year and again on Oct. 6. The October subpoena requested “all used and voided ballots, all ballot stubs, signature envelopes, and digital files corresponding to the envelopes from the 2020 Fulton County General Election.”
The Department of Justice sent a letter to the county elections board on October 30, citing federal civil rights law and requesting all records in response to the October subpoena from the state elections board. Attorneys for the county board of elections responded about two weeks later, saying the records were maintained by the county court clerk. They also attached a letter the clerk sent to the state Board of Elections saying the records were sealed in accordance with state law and could not be released without a court order.
The Justice Department said it then sent a letter to the employee, Alexandra, on November 21 requesting the documents, but she did not respond.
The department is asking a judge to declare that the clerk’s “refusal to produce election records at the request of the Attorney General” violates the Civil Rights Act. It also asks the judge to order Alexander to produce the requested records within five days of the court order.
The state Board of Elections in May 2024 heard a case that documents were allegedly missing for thousands of votes in the 2020 presidential election recount. After a presentation by an attorney and an investigator for the Secretary of State’s office, a response from the county and a lengthy discussion among board members, the board voted to issue the county a letter of reprimand.
Shortly after that vote, there was a shift in power on the board, and the newly strengthened conservative majority sought to reopen the case. The board’s lone Democrat and the chair repeatedly objected, arguing the case is closed and citing multiple audits that found that although the 2020 county election was sloppy and mismanaged, there was no evidence of intentional wrongdoing.
The conservative majority voted to subpoena a large number of election records from the county in November 2024. The fight over that subpoena is still tied up in court.
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