An election expert told a federal judge that the witnesses the FBI relied on during its investigation that led to the seizure of ballots from the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia, misunderstood elections.
Former U.S. Election Assistance Commission official Ryan Macias, “testified that the list of irregularities the FBI identified didn’t represent a crime and that the witnesses the government based their investigation on appeared misinformed,” NBC News reported.
The witnesses the FBI cited “use contradictory terminology and it represents a misunderstanding of how elections work,” Macias said.
Macias also told a judge that the evidence the Bureau used to justify the controversial seizure of the ballots “doesn’t make sense.”
Fulton County officials submitted a sworn declaration from Macias, who had advised the county during the 2020 election, the Associated Press reported. He said the Justice Department’s affidavit contains “a multitude of false or misleading statements and omissions” and offered explanations for the alleged “deficiencies.”
Fulton County is suing to force the return of its election materials. Its attorney, Abbe Lowell “criticized the government’s witnesses and information, which were laid out in a since-unsealed sworn affidavit that is ‘full of inaccuracies,'” NBC reported.
Lowell also argued that the government’s witness list couldn’t be trusted because it included “someone who was sanctioned twice by the courts for lying about elections.”
The person Lowell referred to, NBC reported, was Kurt Olsen, “a Republican who tried to overturn the 2020 election results. Olsen was appointed by President Donald Trump to investigate the 2020 election from within his administration.”
Lowell also told the judge that there was no crime because there was no proof of intentional wrongdoing.
“The only element that turns normal election irregularities into crime is intent,” he said.
