Court Docs: FBI Probing Possible Election Crimes In Fulton Co.

Search warrant affidavits unsealed on Tuesday lay out the FBI’s justifications for seizing hundreds of boxes of ballots and other materials related to Fulton County, Georgia’s “extremely sloppy” administration of the 2020 presidential election. So The Washington Post and the rest of the propaganda press sprang into action, smearing witnesses who raise legitimate concerns about the Fulton County election mess as — you guessed it — “election deniers.” 

But the FBI’s application for the warrant used in last month’s raid of the county’s election warehouse concludes there is probable cause that election officials may have broken federal law. A federal magistrate agreed. 

“This warrant application is part of an FBI criminal investigation into whether any of the improprieties were intentional acts that violated federal criminal laws,” the unsealed affidavit states. 

The Post insists the “FBI relied heavily on previously debunked claims of widespread election irregularities in Georgia” in obtaining the warrant, relying on “prominent election deniers” to make its case. The Trump-hating publication, however, omits some troubling information, including post-election audit reports finding “chain of custody issues, ballots left unattended, unsealed bags being used, and auditors not recording seal numbers on ballot bags,” according to the affidavit. The Post’s story says nothing of the independent monitor whose review noted Fulton County’s absentee processes were “extremely sloppy and replete with chain of custody issues.” 

FBI agent Hugh Raymond Evans acknowledges in the affidavit that some of the allegations have been disproven over the past five years, while others have been substantiated. The investigation aims to determine whether the “deficiencies” are more than the clerical errors that Democrats and other Fulton County apologists claim them to be. 

“If these deficiencies were the result of intentional action, it would be a violation of federal law,” the court document states, regardless of whether widespread fraud and corruption turned an apparent Election Day loss for Democrat Joe Biden into a narrow victory against incumbent Republican President Donald Trump in battleground Georgia in 2020. 

The affidavit notes many of the irregularities and inconsistencies detailed in a recent report from the Election Oversight Group. The 263-page report examines Fulton County’s chain of custody problems, particularly the tens of thousands of absentee ballots “accepted and counted without first performing mandatory signature verification.” 

Curious Discrepancies

As The Federalist reported, county election officials failed to properly sign more than 100 “tabulator tapes,” amounting to about 315,000 votes cast during Georgia’s early-voting period. Tabulator tapes have been likened to odometers, providing a record of starting and ending ballot counts. Evans’ affidavit hammers on the administrative failures, noting a cybersecurity expert’s findings that closing tabulator tapes were missing for some Fulton County voting machines. 

Georgia state and local election officials have shrugged off many of the lapses as simple mistakes that did not affect the election outcome. But they have yet to explain some curious discrepancies, including that the number of absentee ballots counted doesn’t match the number of credited voters, according to the Election Oversight Group.

Fulton County and state records show 148,318 absentee ballots counted in the 2020 election, although only 125,784 voters were recorded as casting an absentee ballot. That’s a difference of 22,534 votes between the absentee ballots tallied and the number of individuals given credit for voting. 

“Remember:  the margin between President Trump and Joe Biden was 11,779 votes…and that was the THIRD certified number and didn’t match either of the first two counts….the counties could not get their numbers to match from the first count to the second to the third…..” Cleta Mitchell, an election law expert and founder of the Election Integrity Network, recently posted on X. 

Fulton County’s numbers changed three times, from the original election count to the ordered recount to the audit. 

‘Demonstrably Untrustworthy’

The Post curiously left out of its latest attack on election questioners the findings of auditing specialist Philip Stark, a professor in the University of California at Berkeley’s statistics department. In a 2024 report, Stark noted there was no indication of widespread election fraud in Fulton County, but that “there is reason to distrust the election outcome.”

“Some ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, were included in the original count at least twice; some were included in the machine recount at least thrice,” Stark wrote. “…Moreover, most voters voted with demonstrably untrustworthy ballot-marking devices, so even a perfect handcount or audit would not necessarily reveal who really won.”

The Post piece rolled out left-leaning election “expert” David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. CEIR  funneled millions of dollars into the Zuckbucks campaign that opened the door to Democrat operatives and leftist nonprofits infiltrating local election administration. Becker, according to the publication, was appalled that the magistrate issued the warrant to federal law enforcement.  

“This is all very weak,” he told the Post “In order for there to be a commission of federal crimes there has to be intent, and this affidavit basically admits that there was no intent.”

Not quite. Several of the witnesses, including a poll manager who worked the audit count following the 2020 election, indicate there was intent. The FBI made clear that its criminal investigation aims to find out if any of Fulton County’s election “improprieties were intentional acts that violated federal criminal laws.” If the Democrat-controlled county that is home to Atlanta has done nothing wrong, it certainly has nothing to hide. 

Yet Fulton County officials are urging U.S. District Court Judge J.P. Boulee to quickly order the FBI to return the records it seized, the Post says. The same judge ordered the search warrant affidavits to be made public. The Justice Department did not object. 

Evans originally requested the court seal the documents out of concern that premature disclosure may jeopardize the investigation, including “by giving targets an opportunity to destroy or tamper with evidence…”

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.