Fulton County Files Lawsuit Seeking Return Of Seized Election Materials

President Donald Trump has spent the last seven years obsessed with Georgia following his loss in the 2020 election. The FBI turned heads last week when it seized voting information related to the 2020 election from a warehouse in Fulton County. On Wednesday, attorneys for Fulton County filed a motion in federal court demanding that the federal government return the seized election materials. 

According to the New York Times, Robb Pitts, the chair of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, explained why the lawsuit was filed at a news conference on Wednesday.

“We will fight using all resources against those who seek to take over our elections. Our Constitution itself is at stake in this fight.” Pitts said. 

Georgia has continually remained a sticking point for Trump, likely due to the fact that state officials refused his request to “find the votes” in a phone call made shortly after his loss in the 2020 election. “The president himself and his allies, they refuse to accept the fact that they lost,” Pitts said during the news conference. “And even if he had won Georgia, he would still have lost the presidency.” 

While on the surface, the Fulton County raid looks like a move to placate Trump’s ego, Democrats and election officials have highlighted the chilling, underlying implications of the raid. “This case is not only about Fulton County. This is about elections across Georgia and across the nation,” Pitts said during the news conference. 

It was widely expected that the Democrats would retake the House in the midterms, as Republicans hold only a narrow majority and midterm elections are usually favorable to the opposition party. So Trump made the big brain move of convincing several Red states to undergo rare, mid-decade redistricting efforts. 

As his redistricting effort hit roadblocks in Indiana and Missouri, and Blue states like California successfully implemented their own redistricting efforts, Trump has taken a far more authoritarian tone regarding the midterms. Last month, he publicly floated outright canceling the midterms. Shortly after the raid, he appeared on former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino’s podcast and called for elections to be “nationalized.”

“Look at some of the places — that horrible corruption on elections — and the federal government should not allow that,” Trump said. “The federal government should get involved.” 

What makes all of this particularly crazy is that only a month ago, Trump justified the U.S. kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by saying he wasn’t legitimately elected. Which, to be fair, according to an independent voting firm, Maduro overwhelmingly lost the last election but declared himself the winner. It appears that this is yet another episode of “rules for thee, not for me,” as Trump is clearly willing to manipulate the midterms by any means possible to maintain the GOP’s control of Congress. There are even concerns that his willingness to deploy the National Guard to cities with Democratic leadership is a test run for how he might deploy the Guard to polling sites. 

The Fulton County raid, combined with the Department of Justice’s repeated, failed attempts to seize voter rolls from several Blue states, paints the picture of an administration that is actively trying to interfere with a free and fair midterm election. It would be such a delight if the Republicans who keep yapping about “voter fraud” would realize that the corruption is coming from inside the house.