During his Wednesday, January 21 speech at the 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, U.S. President Donald Trump repeated his debunked claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him and promised that "people will soon be prosecuted for what they did."

"It was a rigged election," Trump told Davos attendees. "We can't have rigged elections."

European reporters were quick to fact-check Trump, noting that one recount after another confirmed that 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden won the election fair and square.

But a week later in Georgia, on Wednesday, January 28, FBI agents searched an elections center looking for 2020 election records. Georgia was among the swing states that Trump lost in 2020 but won in 2016 and 2024.

In some January 29 posts on X, formerly Twitter, Nevada Independent CEO Jon Ralston stressed that the search is about much more than Georgia and much more than 2020.

Ralston said of the FBI search, "Outrageous and frightening. No basis to do this, all court cases Trump filed came to naught in 2020. And don't forget this from Trump in '22: 'Clark County, Nevada, has a corrupt voting system...' Does anyone think he'll stop w/[Georgia]? And still: The silence of the GOP lambs."

Referencing the 2026 midterms in a separate tweet, Ralston posted, "This has little to do with 2020. With the likelihood of the GOP losing the House in November and the Senate perhaps in play, this is all about what Trump is planning for this year's election. Calling an election corrupt so you can corrupt an election is quite the trick."

The Missouri prosecutor overseeing an investigation into the 2020 vote in Fulton County, Georgia, has taken part in meetings since last fall with lawyers tasked by President Donald Trump to reinvestigate his loss to Joe Biden.

Thomas Albus, whom Trump appointed last year as U.S. attorney for Missouri’s Eastern District, has had multiple meetings set up with top administration lawyers to discuss election integrity.

At those meetings was Ed Martin, a Justice Department lawyer who until recently led a group investigating what the president has described as the department’s “weaponization” against him and his allies, according to a source familiar with the meetings who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

White House lawyer Kurt Olsen, who has been tasked with reinvestigating the 2020 election, also was directed to join at least one of the meetings, according to the source. Both Martin and Olsen worked on behalf of Trump to try to overturn the 2020 election results, and a federal court sanctioned Olsen for making false claims about the reliability of voting machines in Arizona.

The meetings reveal new details about the length of the preparations for, and people involved in, the January FBI raid on Fulton County, which election and legal experts told ProPublica was a significant escalation in Trump’s breaking of democratic norms.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi picked Albus and has granted him special authority to handle election-related cases nationwide, even though his earlier work as a federal prosecutor didn’t involve election law or election-related cases. The meetings with Martin, Olsen and other lawyers for the Justice Department were described by the source as being about “election integrity,” a term the Trump administration has used to describe investigations into its false claims that elections are rigged.

Martin, Olsen, Albus and others declined to answer questions about the meetings and other detailed questions from ProPublica. The White House and the Justice Department also did not respond to questions.

The meetings came at a particularly crucial time.

Martin’s efforts to obtain election materials from Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold, had hit a wall. In August, he sent a letter demanding that a Fulton County judge allow him to access tens of thousands of absentee ballots for “an investigation into election integrity here at the Department of Justice,” but he had reportedly received no reply.

Martin explained to Steve Bannon on a podcast that aired around the time of the meetings that although the White House had given Olsen the official mandate to reinvestigate the 2020 election, “inside DOJ, myself and a couple of others have been working also on the same topic” — including getting the Fulton County ballots. But Martin described progress as a “challenge.”

Bannon, who served as Trump’s chief strategist in his first term, asked why Martin didn’t just “get some U.S. marshals to go down and seize” the ballots.

Martin suggested it was easier said than done, but agreed: “Look, we’ve got to get” the ballots.

Before long, Albus and Olsen were interviewing witnesses for their case. Kevin Moncla, a conservative researcher, told ProPublica that he spoke to Albus and Olsen a couple of times, both together and separately, around the turn of the year. He identified himself as Witness 7 in the affidavit that persuaded a judge to sign off on the raid, and the affidavit mentions a 263-page report he authored that activists believe may have justified the raid, ProPublica has reported. Moncla has a long history of working with Olsen, dating back to an attempt by Kari Lake, a Republican candidate for governor in Arizona, to overturn her 2022 loss.

Just a few weeks after those interviews, in late January, Albus was listed as the government attorney on the search warrant that authorized the seizure of roughly 700 boxes of election material in Georgia, far outside of Albus’ usual jurisdiction.

Former U.S. attorneys from both parties said it was rare for a federal prosecutor from one region to take on cases in other states or be granted the nationwide authority Albus has been given.

Under Trump, senior roles across the White House, DOJ and FBI have increasingly been filled by a small, interconnected group of Missouri lawyers with longstanding ties to one another.

Another top federal official in the meetings was Jesus Osete, the principal deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights. Before joining the Justice Department, Osete worked in the Missouri attorney general’s office, where he represented the state in at least five lawsuits against the Biden administration regarding vaccine mandates, immigration and other policies. Osete did not respond to requests for comment or to a detailed list of questions.

When the FBI raided Fulton County’s election center, Andrew Bailey, another lawyer from the same political circles, was in charge. Before joining the FBI as deputy director, he had used his position as Missouri’s attorney general to pursue high-profile cases against prominent Democrats and said he supported all efforts to investigate Biden, his family and his administration.

A spokesperson for the FBI declined to answer detailed questions about Bailey.

Last year, Roger Keller, a veteran federal prosecutor from Albus’ office, was brought in to help prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James for alleged mortgage fraud in Virginia after the original career prosecutors on the case were replaced by political appointees. After a judge dismissed the case, two federal grand juries declined to indict James again, and Keller returned to Missouri.

Trump’s solicitor general, D. John Sauer, previously served as Missouri’s solicitor general under state attorneys general Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt. He and Schmitt signed Missouri’s amicus brief supporting efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Sauer later represented Trump in his presidential-immunity case, successfully arguing before the Supreme Court that Trump was entitled to broad immunity from prosecution.

Albus’ connection to the other Missouri lawyers goes back decades. Unlike some of the others, though, he has never held elected office or had a high public profile, nor has he waged culture-war campaigns like Bailey or Martin. Instead, he spent most of his career as a federal prosecutor and as a judge in a Missouri state circuit court.

Emails show Albus exchanging brief messages with Martin in 2007, when Albus was an assistant U.S. attorney in St. Louis and Martin was chief of staff to then-Gov. Matt Blunt. The emails were part of records from the Blunt administration that became public after being released under Missouri’s Sunshine Law.

In the email exchange, Albus put in a good word for a St. Louis lawyer who was a finalist for an appellate court judgeship, and Blunt ultimately selected that candidate.

Albus served as first assistant to Schmitt from early 2019 until Albus was appointed by Gov. Mike Parson to fill a circuit court judge vacancy in early 2020. Schmitt, now a U.S. senator, praised Albus as “one of the finest prosecutors I have ever met” when endorsing his nomination for U.S. attorney in December.

Lawyers who appeared in Albus’ court rated him as well prepared, professional and attentive, according to Missouri judicial performance reviews. They said he followed the evidence, applied the law correctly and gave clear reasons for his rulings.

Albus came under more critical scrutiny after Trump named him interim U.S. attorney last summer. Much of that attention centered on a fraud case he inherited when he took office. Prosecutors alleged that developers in St. Louis falsely claimed to be using minority- and women-owned subcontractors to qualify for city tax breaks, conduct the Justice Department has historically treated as wire fraud.

One of the defendants was represented by lawyer Brad Bondi, the brother of Pam Bondi.

The developers’ lawyers argued that even if the government’s claims were true, they were legally irrelevant because the Trump administration had taken the position that tax breaks based on race or gender were unlawful. Albus accepted those arguments and dropped the case. As part of the resolution, Albus personally hand-delivered to City Hall a check of about $1 million from one of the developers’ companies as restitution. He told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he intervened “to make it clear” his office wanted to drop charges and hand-delivered the check “to make sure they got it.”

In a letter to Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Congressional Democrats said the dismissal of the St. Louis case and other cases in which the Justice Department intervened on behalf of Brad Bondi’s clients raised “significant broader ethical concerns.” In the St. Louis case, and in a separate matter involving another Brad Bondi client whose charges were dropped, a Justice Department spokesperson said Pam Bondi’s relationship with her brother had “no bearing on the outcome.”

A spokesperson for the developers said their lawyers communicated only with the U.S. attorney’s office in St. Louis about the case and had no direct contact with Pam Bondi. He said the dismissal reflected “a recognition that this case should never have been brought in the first place.” Brad Bondi did not respond to a request for comment.

Weeks later, around the time of Albus’ meetings about election integrity, he posed with Martin in Martin’s office, flanked by a framed photo of Trump and a copy of “A Choice, Not an Echo,” the influential conservative manifesto by Phyllis Schlafly arguing that Republican voters were being manipulated by party elites and the media.

Martin posted the photo on X with the caption, “Good morning, America. How are ya’?”

After 37-year-old Alex Pretti — an intensive care nurse for the U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA) — was fatally shot by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in Minneapolis on January 24, protests were held not only in that city, but in many other U.S. cities as well. One of them was Augusta, Georgia, where VA recreational therapist Becky Halioua was among the demonstrators.

Now, CNN's Brian Todd is reporting that Halioua was the subject of a VA internal investigation because of her involvement in those protests.

"Her supervisor informed her that an internal probe had been launched into whether she violated agency rules regarding employee interviews with the news media — a probe that could result in disciplinary action," Todd explains in an article published on May 5. "Halioua is not alone, several sources familiar with the matter told CNN. At least three other VA employees have been investigated for their interactions with the press, including at least one other related to Alex Pretti, according to one of the sources."

Todd adds, "As part of her investigation, Halioua says investigators e-mailed her photos of herself at the vigil from news coverage, which also included a brief interaction with a local newspaper. Someone had drawn a line around her image in some photographs, labeled with her name."

Halioua told CNN, "It really gave me an uneasy feeling," adding that seeing her face circled in photos of protests seemed "very stalker-like."

Pretti's death followed the fatal shooting of another Minneapolis resident, Renée Good, by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (ICE) agents on January 7.

"In the case of the VA workers," Todd notes, "the interviews touched on an issue that sparked a national discussion. Pretti's killing, along with that of another protester, Renee Good, became political flashpoints in debates over immigration enforcement and free speech following a surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in Minneapolis in January. Within hours of their deaths, officials from the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, claimed, without evidence, that Pretti and Good were domestic terrorists, sparking outrage. Protests and vigils, like the one Halioua attended, popped up across the country."

The union National Nurses United, which helped organize the vigil for Pretti that Halioua attended, told CNN, "It is despicable and immoral to come after any federal employee who participates in a vigil for a fellow worker."

Halioua described the probe of her as a "scare tactic," telling CNN, "I think that it is a method really to silence the employees with the loudest voices."

U.S. District Court Judge J. P. Boulee, who is overseeing the Fulton County, Georgia, ballot case, has quashed the subpoena for FBI Agent Hugh Raymond Evans, who provided the one affidavit used to support the search warrant to seize the ballots from the 2020 election, reported Lawfare legal analyst Anna Bower.

It's a huge hit before the Friday evidentiary hearing over the raid on the elections office.

Fulton County officials believe that Evans deliberately misled the judge in the case by promoting 2020 election conspiracy theories from one of President Donald Trump's own allies to get the warrant for the ballots.

Boulee was appointed by the first Trump administration.

“In searching for evidence of a crime in Fulton County, President Trump has, in some sense, returned to the scene of his own…Now Trump is using the power of the federal government to seize the very ballots cast by voters whose will he once sought to subvert," Bower wrote in her piece, walking through the specifics of the case ahead of the hearing.

Marc Elias' Democracy Docket explained that the Justice Department has already made one mistake in revealing information about the probe when it unsealed the affidavit.

"Following the raid, the DOJ also initially told Fulton County officials that it wouldn’t oppose Evans testifying about the affidavit," the report explained. "Thomas Albus, a Missouri-based U.S. attorney overseeing the DOJ’s probe into the 2020 vote in Georgia, said in February that he couldn’t imagine Evan’s testimony 'will be an issue.'"

The DOJ then made a huge pivot three days later.

Dan Bishop has been lucky enough to score several jobs in President Donald Trump's administration after he failed to win in a primary race and it isn't the first time.

Writing for the Rachel Maddow Show blog, producer Steve Benen noted Bishop was first hired after he gave up his North Carolina House seat to run for attorney general in the state. He lost. So the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) hired him.

After less than a year, he left OMB for a prime spot at the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina. After five months, he was shifted to another job: Winning Trump's 2020 campaign, in 2026.

Trump has spent the first part of the year revisiting the 2020 election, which he lost to President Joe Biden. In Fulton County, Georgia, the FBI seized ballots from the past election. In Maricopa County, Arizona, in early March, an FBI agent took more than three dozen hard drives and servers containing data from a partisan audit of the 2020 election from the state Senate building. The audit was done by the company "Cyber Ninjas" and lambasted by legal experts and watchdog groups as a "sham audit."

Benen cited the Wall Street Journal report, which cited Bishop's recent "quiet" appointment to the investigative team at the Justice Department.

"Attorney General Pam Bondi, last week, quietly authorized Dan Bishop, a U.S. attorney in North Carolina, to pursue election-related probes across the country, according to a copy of the order," the Journal cited. One DOJ official told the reporters that "Bishop, a former congressman who voted against certifying Biden’s 2020 win, will also examine voter-roll data the Justice Department has been collecting from states in an effort to determine whether noncitizens have illegally registered or cast ballots."

Benen wrote, "Given his record, it’s tough to be optimistic about Bishop overseeing these efforts in a detached and independent way."

The report indicated that "the lines have grown blurry," Benen said, when it comes to how the DOJ is being used to pursue 2020 election conspiracy theories. While Bishop is concerned, Benen, it's the combination of all of it that sent up the red flags.

"Making matters worse is the scope of the efforts. The Bishop news is important, but it dovetails with the president and his team seizing ballots and election records in Georgia and Arizona; seizing voting equipment in Puerto Rico; waging an aggressive campaign to acquire voter rolls from states where Democrats won; organizing an unnecessary FBI elections 'briefing' for state officials; and providing Kurt Olsen, one of Trump’s highly controversial former campaign lawyers, with classified information as he tried to advance election conspiracy theories," Benen explained.

While it's part of Trump's continued efforts to relitigate the 2020 election, it's also part of a larger campaign to restrict voting rights.

As Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) explained it in 2020, “If Republicans don’t challenge and change the US election system, there will never be another Republican president elected again. President Trump should not concede. We’re down to less – 10,000 votes in Georgia. He’s going to win North Carolina. We have gone from 93,000 votes to less than 20,000 votes in Arizona, where more – more votes to be counted.”

Trump further commented in early March that passing voter restrictions “will guarantee the midterms."

After Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to the Democratic nominee — former Vice President and ex-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden (D-Delaware) — his claim that the election was stolen from him was repeatedly debunked by numerous vote recounts. And some of the debunking came from conservative Republicans, including Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, then-U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr and then-Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.

But Trump, now 13 and one-half months into his second presidency, continues to double down on his false claim that he won the 2020 election. In January, FBI agents searched an election center in Fulton County, Georgia, seizing 2020 election records.

In an article published on March 5, CNN reporters Tierney Sneed and Zachary Cohen describe ways in which the Georgia State Election Board helped pave the way for the FBI search.

"For most election administrators around the country," Sneed and Cohen explain, "the FBI's recent seizure of 2020 Atlanta-area ballots was shocking. But for some members of the Georgia State Election Board, the search was a welcome development. Led by the commission's vice chair, Janice Johnston — a retired obstetrician who, according to court filings, had no experience working elections prior to 2021 — the board's conservative majority has been relentlessly pursuing fraud theories about Donald Trump's defeat in the 2020 presidential election."

The CNN journalists continue, "After subpoenaing some of the Fulton County election records themselves, the board invited the Justice Department's assistance last year, itself, resulting in a Trump Administration civil lawsuit in December that preceded the search warrant secured through a federal criminal probe. Johnston and another MAGA-aligned board member, former media personality Janelle King, were witnesses cited by the FBI in its application to justify seizing the records, as were other election deniers who have made frequent appearances before the board to allege a tainted 2020 result."

According to David Worley — a Democrat who formerly served on the Georgia State Election Board — Johnston objected when told she couldn't enter the Fulton County election center's inner storage room during the FBI search. Johnston didn't object to the search, but rather, wanted to get some credit for it and argued, "It's our subpoena."

Salleigh Grubbs, another Republican on the Georgia State Election Board, told CNN, "It's way past time for these matters to have been investigated." And she said it was "great" that the FBI search took place.