Judge won’t order DOJ to return seized 2020 ballots to Fulton County

By Tierney Sneed

(CNN) — A federal judge said Wednesday he would not order the Justice Department to return ballots from the 2020 presidential election it seized from Fulton County, Georgia, rejecting a request by county officials.

Judge JP Boulee said the county had not met the high legal bar that would allow him to intervene, even as he acknowledged that “events leading up to this case are, in a variety of ways, unprecedented.”

The seizure of the ballots from the Atlanta-area county, which was a chief target of President Donald Trump’s false claims that his 2020 electoral defeat was rigged, sent shockwaves among election officials and came as the administration has sought to inject itself in other aspects of election administration with the midterms approaching.

Fulton County filed its petition seeking the return of the ballots – and hundreds of boxes of other 2020 election materials the investigators seized – days after the FBI executed the late-January search. The proceedings revealed that the investigators’ warrant application leaned on allegations of election fraud that have long circulated in far-right circles and were investigated by other authorities who concluded there was no intentional wrongdoing in the Fulton County election. The county argued that by omitting the results of those probes and other relevant information, the FBI misled the magistrate judge who approved the search.

In his 68-page opinion, Boulee said that some aspects of the affidavit were “problematic,” “troubling,” and, in one instance, “misleading.”

But the judge also noted the FBI did provide the magistrate judge with information that undermined the allegations that agency was making in the application and that showed some of the claims had been previously probed.

“While the Affidavit was certainly far from perfect, this is not a situation where an officer left out all the facts that might undermine probable cause or where an officer intentionally lied,” Boulee wrote.

Boulee rejected other arguments made by Fulton County. Boulee noted that the Justice Department has since provided copies of the records to the local officials, dismissing their claim that they needed the election records so they could comply with public records laws and be able to push back on Trump’s fraud claims.

In court filings, Fulton County also raised the specter that the case would provide a blueprint for the Trump administration to seize ballots in the midst of the 2026 midterms. Boulee’s opinion seemed to suggest his analysis might be different if the FBI seized records from an election that was underway.

“Importantly, the seizure at issue in this case did not interfere with the State’s ability to conduct the 2020 election or certify election results, nor have Petitioners shown that it will hinder the State’s ability to conduct future elections,” he wrote in a footnote.

This story has been updated with additional details.

The-CNN-Wire
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