by Debra Heine
The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently served a grand jury subpoena to Fulton County, requesting the contact information of all workers who participated in the 2020 election.
The subpoena, issued on April 17, requested names, positions, residential addresses, email addresses, and personal phone numbers of all individuals—including county employees, contractors, volunteers, and temporary election workers—even those who received medals from Joe Biden.
Fulton County is challenging the subpoena in court, arguing it is “grossly overbroad,” politically motivated, and intended to “target, harass, and punish” President Trump’s political opponents.
The move came 2 1/2 months after the FBI raided the Fulton County election hub building and seized over 600 boxes of 2020 election records.
The FBI cited “deficiencies or defects” in Fulton County’s election records, as well as inconsistencies in vote counting, as the basis for the January 28 raid, 11 Alive reported.
According to election data analyst Mark Davis, the feds are focusing on the following irregularities:
• 18,000 missing ballot images from the Recount
• Duplicate & “pristine” (never-folded) absentee ballots
• Unsigned/mismatched tabulator tapes for hundreds of thousands of ballots
• Serious chain-of-custody failures in the Risk Limiting Audit
“After six years of ‘nothing to see here,’ the truth may finally get its day in court,” Davis quipped.
A federal judge on Wednesday denied Fulton County’s attempt to retrieve the 2020 election records seized by the FBI in January.
Lawyers for the county had argued that the ballots and other election materials should be returned because the seizure was improper and unconstitutional, according to the Associated Press.
In a 68-page order, U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee ruled that rights were not “callously disregarded” and that every ballot, tabulator tape, memory card, and envelope could remain in federal custody for the ongoing criminal investigation.
The judge also said the county failed to prove that it needed the documents or would be irreparably harmed if they were not returned.
The Trump administration in recent months has moved to obtain past election records from two other critical swing states.
The FBI used a subpoena in March to get records related to an audit of the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County in Arizona. And in April, the Justice Department demanded that Michigan’s Wayne County turn over its 2024 election ballots.
A federal grand jury issued the March subpoena to Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, seeking materials tied to the audit of the 2020 election conducted by the Cyber Ninjas, including ballot images, absentee envelopes, vote tallies, hard drives, videos, and documents from the review.
Shortly after the 2020 election, The Georgia Star News began an exhaustive a statewide audit of the absentee ballots deposited in dropboxes across the state, of which there was an estimated 3 million. The outlet concluded more than 300,000 ballots had no chain-of-custody documentation to substantiate their provenance. Further analysis suggested that in Fulton County alone, thousands of ballots counted in that election had no accompanying chain-of-custody documentation.
A separate audit by the Cyber Ninjas released in July 2021, found in that 74,243 mail-in ballots were counted with “no clear record of them being sent.” Joe Biden “won” the state by only 10,457 votes.
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Debra Heine is a reporter at American Greatness. Executive Editor of The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network Christina Botteri contributed to this report.
