The FBI raid on an election hub in Georgia has sparked fears Trump is trying to rewrite history – or worse, interfere in this year’s midterm elections. Here’s what you need to know
Donald Trump’s FBI last night raided an election hub in Fulton County, Georgia – a key target of the US President’s false claims about the 2020 election being “stolen”.
The shock move has sparked fears he’s trying to rewrite history – or worse, interfere in this year’s midterm elections.
Trump lost the election fair and square to Joe Biden, but has spent much of the last five years trying to convince Americans he won.
And he’s threatened to use the US Justice Department to take vengeance on the people he claims were behind the stolen election – most recently during his speech in Davos, Switzerland where he said charges were imminent.
So why Fulton County, Georgia? Why is he taking ballot papers, and what does he want to do next?
Why Georgia?
Georgia has been at the heart of Trump’s 2020 obsession.
He infamously called Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021 – days before the election was certified – asking him to “find” 11,780 more votes for Trump so he could be declared the winner of the state. “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said. “Because we won the state.” Raffensperger refused, noting that repeated reviews had confirmed Democrat Joe Biden had narrowly won Georgia.
Votes in Fulton County in particular were counted three times, including a machine recount, and a second one by hand which took several days. Those were part of a series of reviews in battleground states, often led by Republicans, that confirmed Biden’s victory, including in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada. Trump also lost dozens of court cases challenging the election results and his own attorney general at the time said there was no evidence of widespread fraud.
His allies who repeated his lies have been successfully sued for defamation. That includes former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who settled with two Georgia election workers after a court ruled he owed them $148 million for defaming them after the 2020 election.
Voting machine companies also have brought defamation cases against some conservative-leaning news sites that aired unsubstantiated claims about their equipment being linked to fraud in 2020. Fox News settled one such case by agreeing to pay $787 million after the judge ruled it was “CRYSTAL clear” that none of the allegations were true.
What happened last night?
Last night, the FBI served a search warrant at the election headquarters of Fulton County, seeking ballots from the 2020 election.
The warrant says the search was part of a criminal investigation into violations of two federal laws: one about preserving election records and the other about efforts to defraud voters.
The warrant allowed agents to seize physical ballots, voting machine tapes, voter rolls and images taken during the 2020 count.
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, was spotted at the scene, for reasons which are not yet clear – as her role relates to foreign threats, not domestic law enforcement.
What is Trump playing at?
At the very least Trump is trying to prove he won the 2020 election, which he did not. Donald Trump ‘spirals out of control’: Why he’s really raiding election hub in GeorgiaBut there could be more sinister consequences of last night’s brash use of federal law enforcement.
First of all, it’s a power grab. It’s very unusual for federal agents to step in on elections. US Elections are run by the states – a right reserved by the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. Trump has already tried to interfere in how states manage elections with an executive order trying to set new rules, systems and procedures. That order has been repeatedly blocked by judges who ruled the Constitution gives states, and in some instances – such as the District of Columbia – Congress, control of how elections are conducted.
Second, some worry he’s laying the groundwork for the Trump administration to pull a similar move after November’s Midterm elections. “Georgia’s a blueprint,” said Kristin Nabers of the left-leaning group All Voting Is Local. “If they can get away with taking election materials here, what’s to stop them from taking election materials or machines from some other state after they lose?”
Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat, compared the search to the Minnesota immigration crackdown that has killed two U.S. citizen protesters, launched by Trump as his latest blow against the state’s governor, who ran against him as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate in 2024. “From Minnesota to Georgia, on display to the whole world, is a President spiralling out of control, wielding federal law enforcement as an unaccountable instrument of personal power and revenge,” Ossoff said in a statement.