FBI Raids Georgia Election Center
The big lie of 2020 continues.
The NYT reports: Move to Seize Ballots Thrusts F.B.I. Into Trump’s Election Conspiracy Claim.
F.B.I. agents executed a search warrant on Wednesday for an election center in Fulton County, Ga., seeking to seize ballots in a significant escalation of the administration’s efforts to investigate a jurisdiction that President Trump has continued to criticize over his 2020 defeat in the state.
The move harnesses the investigative power of the Justice Department and the F.B.I. behind baseless claims by Mr. Trump and his supporters that the 2020 election was stolen from him. State and local officials and election experts have repeatedly refuted those assertions.
The search warrant authorized F.B.I. agents to search for all “physical ballots from the 2020 general election” in the county, according to a copy viewed by The New York Times, as well as all ballot images produced by scanning ballots, all voter rolls from that year, and all tabulator tapes, which serve as a kind of voting machine receipt for election results.
This is clearly concerning, as it demonstrates the willingness of Trump and his allies within the federal government to utilize their power to indulge conspiracy theories about elections. Any movement into this area inches us ever closer to potential interference in the 2026 midterms, which would be another significant red line that could be crossed in a move into deeper authoritarianism.
Along these same lines was AG Bondi’s request for voter rolls in Minnesota. See, MS NOW: Minnesota quickly rejects AG Pam Bondi’s request for the state’s voter rolls.
The Georgia warrant demonstrates the administration’s willingness to forgo normal channels and to find willing accomplices as needed.
In an unusual twist, the prosecutor listed on the warrant is not from Georgia, but the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, Thomas Albus. It is unclear what would connect prosecutors in Missouri to Mr. Trump’s longstanding complaints about how the 2020 election in Georgia was conducted.
As a general matter, this is clearly using the power of the Justice Department, which has more pressing matters to attend to, to pursue Trump’s personal obsessions.
One of the thoughts that springs to mind about all of this is how utterly stupid it is. If, in fact, the 2020 election in Georgia was stolen, why in the world would the cheaters leave the evidence for anyone to find almost six years later?
There is also the maddening “logic” of conspiracy theorists, who are just, you know, asking questions.
In November, Steve Bannon implored Ed Martin, an official at the Justice Department who has promoted false theories about elections in the past, to send U.S. marshals to Fulton County to claim ballots.
“We have to adjudicate 2020, it’s the railhead of so much of the problem in the country,” Mr. Bannon said on an episode of his podcast, “War Room.” Mr. Martin said that along with Kurt Olsen, a lawyer in the White House, he “and a couple of others” had been working on election integrity, and signaled that Fulton County was in their sights.
“At this point it’s 4.5 years later, they’re fighting to keep them secret,” Mr. Martin said. “The clerk has them, supposedly down the hall, and they won’t let us see them to review them? If they want to prove the election was fine, show it to us. We’ve raised enough serious concerns.”
This is when rational people with memories note that the Georgia outcome in 2020 was highly scrutinized. Indeed, the results were confirmed thrice.
As the AP noted in December of 2020:
Georgia’s top elections official on Monday recertified the state’s election results after a recount requested by President Donald Trump confirmed once again that Democrat Joe Biden won the state, and the governor then recertified the state’s 16 presidential electors.
“We have now counted legally cast ballots three times, and the results remain unchanged,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said during a news conference at the state Capitol before the results were recertified.
The notion that there are legitimate questions about the outcome is simply absurd and is the kind of thing that either a mentally deficient person would claim, or someone wishing to create public doubt for nefarious purposes (to range from the crass making of a buck all the way up to undermining American democracy).
I think you need to do the readout of the insane conspiracy theory that Trump posted on his trash social network:
These people are not mentally sound.
@ptfe: It is reasoning like Zack’s that guarantees there is no outcome of any investigation in which any amount of evidence will convince these people that the election was not stolen.
Other bits of information about this…
1) Fulton County did recently discover that a small number of tabulation tapes that should have been signed by the election workers who generated them were unsigned.
2) Fulton County was already in the process of delivering the ballots in response to a subpoena, in a way that would conform to Georgia law about ballot custody. Bondi apparently got impatient.
An honest motivation, however ridiculous and dangerous, to investigate a non-existent conspiracy centered on the 2020 election seems less probable. A warm-up exercise for interfering in the 2026 midterms seems more probable.
@Joe: This is the game. They must maintain kayfabe. GOPs can’t get elected if they allow reality to intrude. FOX/GOP do all they can to undermine faith in institutions, experts, and officials, then demand the victims somehow fix the problem.
I think it started with experts saying ban smoking in public, sparking company funded skeptics. Then corporate fueled skepticism became an industry when experts said stop burning fossil fuels. Oil and coal paid GOP pols to join the skeptics and then Trump’s panicky response to COVID made skepticism a canon of conservative faith. A canon now amplified by the algorithms feeding people confirmation.
I hate to be the one to buy into conspiracy theories, but where Trump is concerned there is a history of accusing others of doing exactly what you are doing. Perhaps it’s a diversion technique.
-the 2016 election: everyone said Hillary was going to win, and I mean everyone, until she did not. I do not believe it is a conspiracy theory that Trump or at least Trumps campaign colluded with Russia. Russian troll-bots and social media disinformation all traces back to their connection.
-the 2020 election saw trump accusing democrats of switching Dominion votes from Trump to Biden. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the opposite was true. I really would like to see a credible audit of Dominion.
-the 2024 election: didn’t NY experience statistical anomalies that Dems were pursuing in certain counties? I seem to remember voting machines being frozen by a court and it was to be decided late in 2025 but I don’t know what happened with that. Also, a bizarre but believable claim that Theil and Musk changed votes. Totally believable.
I know the voting machine companies have won lawsuits that Trump smeared them – but what a great distraction that would be if they really did the opposite….
Edit: And who trusts the FBI with Georgia votes? I GUARANTEE they will release some BS to sow doubt in the minds of the voter.
Fatso is such a weak man. Admit you lost and move on, pussy-boi.
Kash Patel is the guy who wants to go jet-skiing when meeting with the Five Eyes. I can’t see him being an engine for taking over the country.
I can see him as engaging in kayfabe to make Trump feel good, though. As long as he doesn’t have to leave his digs in Las Vegas.
I do not consider this conclusive, though. There could be other people who are on board with screwing with the election. The sort of person who says, “Right and wrong is not up for vote”.
I think the whole thing about “is this theater? distraction? Or the real thing?” is a strategic thing for them. A kind of ‘always keep them guessing’ business. I’m not sure people in Washington have the tools to figure out which is which.
@ptfe:
In their twisted minds, lack of evidence is evidence of a cover up.
@Michael Cain: I doubt Bondi got impatient. But they needed to do something to try and shift the headlines off Minnesota and rally their suddenly uncertain base with some red meat.
I’d laugh if it wasn’t so likely to work. What a country.
@Joe:
Conversely, as an artifact of the Trump administration’s destruction of the historic independence of the DOJ, there is no way anything that comes out of this FBI’s investigation will convince the court or normies that the 2020 results in Fulton County were dubious in any imaginable way. Even if they were to find some kernel that looks a little off that they could twist into a concept of a plan to steal Trump’s victory, Patel’s FBI would have absolutely zero credibility when presenting their case at trial or in the court of public opinion.
@Scott F.:
In any endeavor involving large numbers of physical objects, you expect some irregularities and omissions. Therefore something like that will be found in the illegally seized ballots and the count. Something like that would also be found in any other county with a large population.
Thinks of mass produced items like jars of sauce, bags of chips, bottles of soda, candy bars, etc. I’m sure everyone’s found a defect now and then, despite all the attention to detail, the streamlined procedures, and the various quality checks inherent in modern manufacturing.
Thing is, you don’t come across such things often, only on occasion. I’m willing to bet the same happens with ballot counting, especially if you were to audit every single race in a given ballot.
That’s the rational view. What conspiracy nuts will weave out of, say, a few hundred miscounted ballots (which ought to break close to even between the two candidates), will naturally validate their wildest notions.