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."

President Donald Trump must be trying to lose the state of Georgia for the Senate, says Atlanta Journal Constitution Senior Political Columnist Patricia Murphy, otherwise he wouldn’t be trying so hard to repeat the history of his last humiliating failure.

“Instead of visiting the state, talking to voters, stumping with GOP nominees, or most obviously, telling Georgians what Republicans might do to bring down the cost of living, the president is running backward into the fire of the 2020 election that he lost here and refuses to accept,” said Murphy.

There are pivotal elections underway with Republicans fighting for their lives, but the White House is bust announcing that Trump will deliver a major Thursday “address to the nation” to revive disproven claims that he actually won the 2020 election in Georgia. He might even allege that Georgia’s two 2020 Senate races were stolen in the process.

“Ironically, anyone who lived through the 2021 Senate runoffs can tell you that it was Trump who cost former U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue their seats, not some international plot,” said Murphy. “He sunk their chances with performances like the one he delivered at a rally in Dalton the night before the runoffs. Instead of focusing on Loeffler and Perdue and the work they had done in Washington, Trump started and stayed on the subject he just can’t let go.”

“Hello, Georgia!” he announced. “By the way. There’s no way we lost Georgia. There’s no way. That was a rigged election, but we’re still fighting it, and you’ll see what’s going to happen.”

Loeffler and Perdue lost the next day, she added.

Murphy said Trump was back in Georgia two years later to campaign against Republicans Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the top state leaders who had rejected Trump’s ploy to overturn Georgia’s election results in 2020. Again, Murphy said Georgia voters in the primary and general elections rejected campaigns focused on claims of rigged elections, and Trump’s preferred candidates running against Kemp and Raffensperger went down in flames.

“Fast forward to this week, with a Senate seat and an open governor’s race on the line, and Trump is still talking about the election he lost here six years ago,” said Murphy. “But this time, his focus on 2020 goes much further than just a speech he’s planning. Not only did the FBI seize hundreds of boxes of 2020 election materials from a Fulton County warehouse earlier this year — an FBI memo obtained by the AJC showed that the agency has ‘surged’ 260 FBI agents to investigate Fulton County ahead of a July 17 deadline.”

And Trump is flubbing his old war. Last week, a federal judge appointed by Trump drop-kicked a subpoena from Trump’s politicized Department of Justice that had sought the names, addresses, phone numbers and other personal information about all of Fulton County’s 2020 election workers. Murphy said U.S. District Court Judge Billy Ray called the request both “staggering” and pointless.

“The downstream effects of all this won’t hurt the president in November. He’s not on any ballot in 2026,” said Murphy, adding that the damage will instead be done to U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, the Republican challenging U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff.

“Rick Jackson, the GOP nominee for governor, won’t be helped either,” Murphy assured. “Although he’s well positioned with plenty of money, a compelling personal story and no particular relationship with Trump before this election to explain, GOP operatives know Jackson’s chances of victory depend heavily on Ossoff’s margins. If Ossoff beats Collins by a huge margin, Jackson could only outperform Collins by so much.”

“Why Trump wants to dig out his losing Georgia playbook now is anyone’s guess. But Collins and Jackson would be wise to reject it, acknowledge Georgia’s legal election results and forge their own path to win in November,” Murphy said.

We get an update on elections and voting rights in the United States from Mother Jones's national voting rights correspondent, Ari Berman, who warns of President Donald Trump's escalating attempts to “try to claim dictatorial power” and commit an “unprecedented intervention” into the 2026 midterm elections. Whether it takes the form of claims of foreign interference, canceling mail-in voting or requiring proof of citizenship, “[t]he bottom line here is they keep lying about the 2020 election so that they can justify massive interference in the 2026 election,” says Berman. “That’s something that we all need to be very vigilant about.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

President Trump’s Department of Justice continues to investigate the 2020 election results in Fulton County, Georgia, a state President Trump repeatedly falsely claims he won in 2020. Now CBS News is reporting the FBI fired two of its officials after they voiced concerns over the probe, claiming it was politically motivated. Their firings come months after the FBI raided an election office in Georgia’s Fulton County, seizing computers and ballots related to the 2020 election. Last week, a federal judge in Atlanta quashed a DOJ subpoena seeking the names and personal information of Fulton County’s 2020 election workers.

Meanwhile, President Trump has forced out the last remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission, a bipartisan, independent agency tasked with certifying voting systems and helping local election officials. The White House fired the Democratic commissioners, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland. And a third commissioner, Republican Christy McCormick, was given the chance to resign, which she did. The committee’s remaining member, Republican Donald Palmer, stepped down in April to join the Heritage Foundation. Trump’s dismantling of the Election Assistance Commission comes less than four months before midterm elections, following last month’s Supreme Court ruling granting the president more power to fire members of independent agencies.

For more on all of this, or as much as we can do in the next few minutes, we’re joined by Ari Berman, the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones.

Thanks so much for being with us, Ari. Start off by talking about the judge quashing the request for information of Fulton County election workers, and then going on to the primetime address President Trump is expected to give on Thursday night.

ARI BERMAN: Hi, Amy. Well, thank you for having me back on the show.

So, what happened in Fulton County, Georgia, was the Justice Department was trying to get access to the personal information of thousands of election workers from the 2020 election, and the judge said, “You can’t have that personal information. And also, you can’t bring charges against them, because it’s too late.” It’s been now six years since that election.

But the disturbing thing here is that Georgia is just a microcosm of what they’re planning to do to interfere in the midterms. The raid on Fulton County, Georgia, the taking of 700 boxes of ballots, that is a preview of the type of suppression and intimidation the Trump administration wants to do everywhere in 2026. And we’re seeing this with the primetime address the president is planning to give. He’s going to lie and say there was rampant fraud and foreign interference in the 2020 election, so that he can then say we have to seize voting machines, we have to stop mail voting, we have to do all the things that he tried to do in 2020 but was unsuccessful.

And the bottom line here is they keep lying about the 2020 election so that they can justify massive interference in the 2026 election. It really is that simple. You put all the different moves of the administration together, that is the underlying goal, to build a narrative that will justify some kind of unprecedented intervention in the midterms to challenge how people vote, how votes are counted and how elections are certified.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, Ari, you’ve been covering election news for years now. You’re one of the top experts in the country on it. Have we ever seen any attempt by a federal government to actually squash free and fair elections like we’re seeing now? And to what degree do you fear that Trump could be successful?

ARI BERMAN: No, Juan, I think it’s completely unprecedented, what the Trump administration is trying to do. We’ve never seen the full weight of the federal government mobilized in such a way to try and interfere in free and fair elections and to try to undermine elections in so many different ways, from how people vote to how elections are administered to how elections are ultimately certified here.

Now, I do think the problem that the president has is that the Constitution is very clear that states, with oversight from Congress, run their elections, and the president has very little role in doing that. And so, time and time again, what Trump wants to do is blocked in court. His executive orders have been blocked in court. So much of what the Justice Department has tried to do has been blocked in court. So, that’s the silver lining of this, is that, yes, the president is becoming more authoritarian, more desperate, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to be any more successful in trying to do this. He can say the 2020 election is rigged. He can say that he wants to seize voting machines or stop mail voting, but, ultimately, states have the power to run their elections. And that’s the saving grace of our constitutional system right now to stand up to what Trump is doing.

AMY GOODMAN: What he’s going to say on Thursday night, what you understand?

ARI BERMAN: Well, what I understand is he’s going to allege foreign interference in the 2020 election, which has been extensively studied. There was no evidence of interference in that election. If there was any interference, it was Russia trying to help Trump. But there was no evidence that Iran or Venezuela or China or the other countries that Trump is going to name interfered in that election.

But he’s going to say they interfered, so that he can create the predicate for then interfering in the midterms to say, “I can now have the power to seize voting machines. I have the power to shut down mail voting. I can try to put in place proof of citizenship to register to vote.” He can’t unilaterally do any of those things, but he’s going to try to claim dictatorial power for himself, through the propaganda that his administration is generating, to try to lay the predicate for some kind of dramatic intervention of the midterms. And that’s something that we all need to be very vigilant about.

AMY GOODMAN: And threatening to arrest election officials if any noncitizens vote? We have 20 seconds.

ARI BERMAN: Well, it’s just an example of further weaponization of the Justice Department, from trying to uphold the laws to trying to intimidate election workers into following Trump’s agenda. And I think election workers are going to stand up to it. But, again, it sets a very chilling precedent.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you, Ari Berman, for joining us, national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones.

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’?”

The FBI is pressing investigations into connected to Georgia's 2020 election, MS NOW reported Thursday.

The FBI, along with former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, seized the original Fulton County ballots from the 2020 election earlier this year.

According to reporter Ken Dilanian, the FBI is now directing hundreds of staff to dig up private information on people involved in the election.

Dilanian said that expanding the operation "suggests the review is part of a broader federal push tied to Trump-era election-fraud allegations, with investigators examining election materials and personnel linked to the case."

It also suggests that after one year and six months, the Trump administration still hasn't found any evidence that he won the 2020 election.

Still, looking directly at individuals is an escalation from seizing the ballots. Dilanian explained in the report that many of the claims have already been raised in public and courts, resulting in investigations by county and state officials.

It's all happening under the politically charged midterm elections in which Trump is desperately trying to prove a need to pass his Safeguard American Voter Eligibility America Act (SAVE America Act). Locally, Republicans have pressed to put even tighter restrictions on voting rights and access.

Trump famously called officials in Georgia, demanding they find 11,780 Trump votes, saying, "frankly we did win this election." That case was eventually dismissed.

Atlanta Journal Constitution columnist Bill Torpy says the U.S District Court who smacked down President Donald Trump’s attempt to “assuage his maniacal ego and excuse the embarrassing ‘L’" on his record, is a conservative farm boy at heart.

“The judge knows politics, as well as taking a tough stand. Billy Ray grew up on a Middle Georgia farm and his family was in the political game: One uncle was a state rep, another was a congressman. Ray once headed Gwinnett’s GOP,” said Torpy, a veteran Georgia reporter. “ … Now, Ray is no radical, left-wing whacko, or whatever Trump calls those who rule against him. He’s a former tough-on-crime GOP state senator nominated to the bench by Trump in 2017.”

“That was when Trump still picked normal, reasonable Republicans,” Torpy added.

That’s probably why Judge William M. Ray II – or “Billy Ray — blocked a grand jury subpoena for information about 2020 election workers in Georgia, delivering a hard rebuff to the Justice Department’s investigation into how the election was handled in the Atlanta-area.

Torpy called the whole endeavor an “overtime-sucking boondoggle” by DOJ “sychophants … to find something, anything, that President Donald Trump can use to continue spouting his lie that he unfairly lost the 2020 election.”

Worse, if he’d been successful, Trump could have fomented enough question about election integrity in Georgia’s biggest and bluest territory election denier lawmakers could declare future election results uncertain due to questions of fraud or irregularities -- or for any other justification, frankly -- and the House or Senate could simply decide who to seat, according to veteran Atlanta election attorney David Walbert.

“And there is no doubt who today’s House and Senate would seat if there is any dispute,” Walbert told Torpy.

But thankfully Ray called the DOJ request to pore through piles of Fulton County election records an “arbitrary fishing expedition.”

In his ruling, Torpy said Judge Ray “sprinkled in a little civics lesson — with a warning.”

“Everyone, whether you support the president or you do not, or whether you believe the 2020 election was fair or believe that it was not, should be concerned about the DOJ’s ability to utilize the power of the grand jury to appropriate your private information without a legitimate purpose,” wrote Ray.

Ray, added Torpy, once “walked out on a limb in 2001” and was one of only six Senate Republicans who voted to remove the Confederate symbol from Georgia’s state flag.

“That move helped cost Gov. Roy Barnes his job. But Ray never found out if it would have deep-sixed him. He was appointed as a Gwinnett County judge before he had to run again,” said Torpy. I figure he was once a pol, came from a political family and can smell political dung a barnyard away.”

“Hopefully, there are more out there like him,” Torpy added.

Federal officials have served a subpoena on one of the nation’s leading nonprofit voter outreach groups, which has financially supported the Ohio election advocacy group at the center of a deepening investigation by the Trump administration, according to a source familiar with the probe.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

The FBI served the subpoena on America Votes, a Washington-based organization founded by prominent Democratic leaders that works to turn out voters nationwide, the sources said.

America Votes, which has given the Ohio Organizing Collaborative at least $500,000 in recent years, according to its tax filings, issued a statement Wednesday confirming it had received a subpoena “asking for basic records related to funding of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. We have been informed America Votes is not a target of the investigation.”

The subpoena signals a broader FBI investigation into the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a statewide nonprofit group founded in 2007 that works on voting rights efforts. The Ohio Organizing Collaborative’s sister organization, Ohio Organizing Campaign, said it registered nearly 160,000 Ohio voters in 2024, describing the effort as the largest independent voter registration program in the country.

Prentiss Haney, an Ohio Organizing Collaborative board member and former director of the group, said the FBI appeared to be seeking information from America Votes and other voting rights groups that worked with his organization.

“This is very far reaching,” he said. “They seem to be fishing for any- and everything related to civil rights and voting rights infrastructure.”

The FBI and Justice Department did not respond to emails seeking comment. Last week, FBI special agents searched the Ohio Organizing Collaborative’s offices and questioned staff members and volunteers about potential voter registration fraud, according to Haney and others familiar with the investigation.

Haney said he did not know the full extent of the FBI investigation.

The FBI probe comes amid rising concerns ahead of the November midterm election about Trump administration efforts to question the legitimacy of voting in America. Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that voter fraud cost him the 2020 presidential election. Most recently, he accused Democrats, again without evidence, of rigging results in the California primary earlier this month.

FBI agents have seized ballots from the 2020 presidential election in Fulton County, Georgia, and secured election records in Maricopa County, Arizona.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, has been at the forefront of efforts among elections officials to scrutinize potential voter fraud. Last year, LaRose referred more than 1,200 cases to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, largely related to alleged unlawful voter registration of voting activity. LaRose said he found more than 1,000 noncitizens who had registered to vote, including 167 noncitizens who appeared to have voted in federal elections between 2018 and 2024.

But the figures represent allegations, not yet proven cases. Previous batches of LaRose voter-fraud referrals have produced few prosecutions: AP reported that of 621 criminal referrals sent to Ohio’s attorney general, prosecutors secured indictments against only nine people for voting as noncitizens over a decade.

Voter fraud is exceedingly rare across the country and studies, audits, and court cases have found no evidence that it occurs at anything close to the scale needed to alter modern statewide or federal election outcomes except in very unusual cases.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

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."