Inside the FBI raid in Georgia — and what it really means
What the Trump administration took is less important than the physical taking, Democrats say. Indictments are expected.
I’ve got some exclusive information about the FBI raid carried out on Wednesday at a Fulton County elections warehouse. Read on below or catch my full report at Zeteo. Stay tuned for much more on this developing story, as well as lots of forthcoming reporting on Homeland Security, ICE and our rapidly-expanding immigration detention system. If subscribing isn’t your thing, you can do a one-time contribution here. Now, on to the news…
The raid at a Fulton County warehouse containing records from the 2020 election appears to have been a haphazard and incomplete one. A source familiar with the operation tells me that the agents there did not confiscate all the materials inside — even though some of the boxes left behind could very well have contained records pertinent to the investigation.
Not that it matters all that much — Democrats, voting rights advocates, and election officials from both parties contend that the investigation being carried out by the Trump administration is both unnecessary and doomed to fail. That’s because there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
Still, President Donald Trump has never given up on his hopes of proving widespread fraud in 2020. To that end, his Justice Department has been coordinating with election deniers for months, as I reported in November at Zeteo.
Wednesday’s raid is part of an investigation that exists simply to propagate a narrative, Democrats say. That narrative will be used in November to call into question the results of midterm elections that Republicans in many polls look to be fairing poorly in. The narrative of election fraud will be weaponized, according to Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), to directly interfere in November’s election.
“This is not idle speculation — earlier this week AG Pam Bondi offered to withdraw ICE agents from Minnesota if the state turned over its voter rolls,” Goldman told me in a statement. “Just two weeks ago, Trump admitted that he ‘regretted’ not seizing voting machines after the 2020 election, and now, six years later, his administration is doing just that by raiding Fulton County’s board of elections.”
Goldman is among a handful of congressional Democrats who are warning that Trump could use the military or federal law enforcement to interfere in the midterms.
“It is clear that Donald Trump and Stephen Miller are using their militarized immigration agents as part of this scheme,” Goldman continued. “By sending masked, violent agents into our cities to inflame tension and incite violence, they are trying to create a sham pretext to invoke the Insurrection Act, seize more voting information, and even potentially cancel the election.”
But even if that doesn’t occur, Wednesday’s raid offers another path toward MAGA election interference, Democratic officials here tell me. It involves the MAGA-dominated State Election Board taking over election administration in Fulton County, home to Georgia’s largest and most important voting bloc — a largely Black, largely Democratic group of voters who will be crucial to determining the balance of power in Congress through Sen. Jon Ossoff’s re-election campaign.
