FBI's botched warrant might be used to fight Fulton County raid: legal expert
Fulton County submitted a filing under seal Wednesday morning demanding that the FBI return all ballots and other documents seized during the raid on the local elections office.
The New York Times quoted Fulton County spokesperson Jessica Corbitt, who said the filing demands that the affidavit on which the search warrant was based be unsealed.
Atlanta News First reported that Fulton Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr. said the suit challenges the investigation's legality and scope.
“I am happy that we have finally filed this motion,” Arrington said. “Last week, I asked the county attorney to take any and all steps available to fight this criminal search warrant. Actions like this mass seizure risk sowing seeds of distrust in the election process.”
The motion also demands that the federal government temporarily stop accessing, searching, relying on, reviewing or otherwise using any of the information they took while the motion is pending before the judge. They're also asking that the case be expedited.
Arrington explained that the search warrant gave the FBI the right to "copy records under a separate court order, [but] agents instead took physical custody of original ballots," the report said.
"Now we cannot verify that we’ve received everything back because there was no chain-of-custody inventory taken at the time the records were seized,” Arrington said.
Police body camera video of the raid was posted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday and reveals a chaotic scene at the office, where agents refused to show the search warrant to several of those who requested it.
The raid, which unfolded on January 28, sought voting information about the 2020 election, which President Donald Trump lost.
Several election audits confirmed that Trump lost Georgia's election. At one point, he calls GOP lawmakers in the state demanding that they find him 11,780 votes. While at the World Economic Forum, Trump declared that people would “soon be prosecuted for what they did” in 2020.