FBI searching elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, in connection to 2020 vote

Federal investigators executed a search warrant at an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, in connection with the 2020 vote.

FBI agents were “executing a court-authorized law enforcement action” at the county’s main election office in Union City, just south of Atlanta, an FBI spokesperson said Wednesday.

An FBI source confirmed to The Independent that the bureau was undertaking “law enforcement activity” in the area, but declined to provide further details.

The search appeared to be linked to President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims that he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden because of fraud.

Meanwhile, Fulton County Court Clerk Che’ Alexander told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that a large number of federal agents were taking boxes of ballots from the warehouse where they had been stored.

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“The FBI agents are here to get the 2020 ballots,” Alexander said. “They’re all here —trucks, everything,” Alexander said.

FBI Director Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist who has also spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, had not made any public statement about the search by mid-afternoon Wednesday.

Trump lost Georgia in the 2020 election and ever since, has falsely claimed his narrow defeat to Biden was due to a “rigged” vote.

Despite his repeated claims that Biden did not actually win the race, federal judges and his own former attorney general have said there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Still, Trump and his allies have continued to spread conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud in 2020. Trump even went as far as pressuring Georgia’s then-secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to “find” him enough votes to overturn the result. A January 2, 2021, phone call in which the president tried to cajole Raffensperger into finding him more than 11,000 extra votes was leaked to the press.

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Trump was heard saying: "What I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.” He also falsely suggested that Raffensperger would be committing a criminal offense if he refused to do so. Raffensperger pushed back on the demand.

The call was used as evidence in Trump’s second impeachment later that month, and led to criminal charges against him, including racketeering, false statements and influencing witnesses, in a case that later collapsed.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis accused Trump and more than a dozen co-defendents of leading a “criminal enterprise” with a so-called “fake elector” scheme to falsely claim his victory in the election.

Willis charged Trump and over a dozen co-defendants, including allies Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman.

Several defendants had already pleaded guilty before the case came crashing down late last year.

A mugshot of Trump, following his indictment on August 24, 2023, was later used as a fundraising tool by the Republicans, featuring on merchandise including T-shirts and mugs.

However, the case was dismissed in November following a lengthy court battle over allegations involving Nathan Wade, who she hired as a special prosecutor in the case but was later revealed to have had a romantic relationship with.

Peter Skandalakis, the director of the Prosecuting Attorney’s Council of Georgia, assigned the case to himself. He then recommended last month that it be dismissed, which a judge agreed to.

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The president and his allies have kept up their claims that something went amiss during the election. In December, the U.S. Justice Department sued Fulton County, Georgia, as well as over a dozen states, looking to receive unredacted voter registration information related to the 2020 election.

The lawsuit said the department sent a letter to Che’ Alexander, the court clerk, but that she failed to produce the requested documents. Alexander has filed a motion to dismiss the suit.

Wednesday’s search comes a week after Trump, while speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said that “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did.”

Following Wednesday’s raid, Georgia Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff slammed Trump for going on a “sore loser’s crusade.”

“After losing Georgia in 2020, Donald Trump demanded state officials ‘find’ votes to change the outcome, tried to use DOJ to overturn it, and spread conspiracy theories that led to the Jan. 6 sacking of the U.S. Capitol,” Ossoff wrote in a statement.

He continued: “I suspect today’s raid is a continuation of this sore loser’s crusade, despite repeated audits and independent reviews confirming that Donald Trump was indeed defeated.”