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fulton county
Rights Groups Urge Court to Prevent Trump DOJ From Misusing Voter Files Seized in Georgia
“We have very serious concerns about what the Trump administration could do with the voting records of thousands of people from Fulton County."
Feb 16, 2026
Civil rights organizations are demanding that a federal court place restrictions on the Trump administration's use of materials seizedduring its unprecedented raid on an elections center in Fulton County, Georgia in January.
Five groups—the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the NAACP, the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP, the Atlanta branch of the NAACP, and the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda—on Monday asked the Atlanta Division of the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia to bar the administration from using any materials seized from the Fulton County Election Hub and Operations center for anything other than the criminal investigation outlined in the search warrant used to justify the raid.
Among other things, this would bar the administration from using materials taken from the center for voter roll maintenance, election administration, or the enforcement of federal immigration laws.
The groups argued the constraints are necessary to enforce "statutory protections for the right to vote, voter privacy, and ballot secrecy, which are fundamentally critical given the unprecedented assaults on the administration of elections."
Additionally, the groups asked the court to force the administration to create and publicly disclose a full inventory of materials seized from the voting center, as well as a catalog of all people who have accessed the materials during the investigation.
Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, claimed that the seizure of materials related to the 2020 presidential election was a continuation of Trump's years-long quest to overturn his loss to former President Joe Biden.
Hewitt also warned the raid on the Fulton County elections center should be seen as part of an assault on voter rights throughout the US.
"These actions are part of a larger pattern," he explained. "We are witnessing a broad-scale assault on fair elections on many fronts, from going after voting records and squeezing out Black voters through redistricting, to improperly purging voters from the rolls and making it harder for everyone to vote. Some have called what we are witnessing a ‘soft coup’. Whatever we call it, we must all understand that our democracy is at risk."
Robert Weiner, director of the voting rights project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said the seizure of materials raised major privacy issues for Fulton County voters.
"We have very serious concerns about what the Trump administration could do with the voting records of thousands of people from Fulton County," said Weiner. "We are talking about sensitive private information. After the DOGE disaster, voters need to be confident their private information is in safe and trustworthy hands."
The FBI last month executed a search warrant at the Fulton County election center that allowed federal agents to seize 2020 election ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data, and voter rolls.
Shortly after the raid, Fulton County Commissioner Mo Ivory predicted that this kind of operation would likely be spreading to other counties and states.
“Fulton County is right now the target," Ivory said. "But it is coming to a place near you. This is the beginning of the chaos of 2026 that is about to ensue."
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'Beginning of the Chaos': FBI Raid in Georgia Seen as Ominous Sign of Trump Plans for 2026 Midterms
"This should have people across the country absolutely shook," said Sen. Jon Ossoff.
Jan 29, 2026
The FBI's Wednesday raid on an elections center in Fulton County, Georgia is raising alarms about President Donald Trump's plans to disrupt the 2026 midterm elections.
Shortly after FBI agents executed a search warrant at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operations center to search for materials related to the 2020 presidential election, Fulton County Commissioner Mo Ivory warned that this kind of operation would likely be spreading to other counties and states.
"Fulton County is right now the target, the only county right now fighting over an election that already happened," she said, referring to Trump's election loss that he has refused to concede more than five years after it happened. "But it is coming to a place near you. This is the beginning of the chaos of 2026 that is about to ensue."
Commissioner Mo Ivory: Fulton County is right now the target, the only county right now fighting over an election that already happened. But it is coming to a place near you. This is the beginning of the chaos of 2026 that is about to ensue. pic.twitter.com/0HvPMMoQO8
— Blue Georgia (@BlueATLGeorgia) January 28, 2026
In a Wednesday interview on MSNOW, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) described the raid on the elections center as a "seismic event" that should be a flashing red light for US voters.
"This should have people across the country absolutely shook," Ossoff said. "This is a huge deal. This is an FBI raid on the Fulton County Elections office. [Trump's] conspiracy theories about the 2020 election have been based in Georgia from the very start... this is a shot across the bow at the midterm elections. He tried to steal power when he lost it in 2020. We have to be prepared for all kinds of schemes and shenanigans."
Ossoff: "This is a seismic event. This should have people across the country absolutely shook. This is a huge deal. This is an FBI raid on the Fulton County Elections office ... This is a shot across the bow at the midterm elections. He tried to steal power when he lost it in… pic.twitter.com/vb8YwcP3Pa
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 29, 2026
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) noted that US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was spotted at the elections center during the FBI raid, which he said was wholly unprecedented given that her job is supposed to be focused on foreign national security threats.
Warner then posited two explanations for her presence on the ground in Fulton County.
"Director Gabbard believes there was a legitimate foreign intelligence nexus," Warner wrote in a social media post, "in which case she is in clear violation of her obligation under the law to keep the intelligence committees 'fully and currently informed' of relevant national security concerns."
The other option, said Warner, is that Gabbard "is once again demonstrating her utter lack of fitness for the office that she holds by injecting the nonpartisan intelligence community she is supposed to be leading into a domestic political stunt designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy."
ProPublica published a report on Thursday that dove into the specifics of the search warrant executed at the Fulton County election center that allowed federal agents to seize 2020 election ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data, and voter rolls.
Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, told ProPublica that he has never seen a search warrant of this nature.
"The idea that federal officials would seize ballots in an attempt to prove fraud is especially dangerous in this context," said Hasen, "when we know there is no fraud because the Georgia 2020 election has been extensively counted, recounted, and investigated."
Derek Clinger, a senior counsel at the State Democracy Research Initiative, an institute at the University of Wisconsin Law School, told ProPublica that the sweeping search warrant marked "a dramatic escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to expand federal control over our country’s historically state-run election infrastructure."
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FBI Raids Georgia Election Hub at Center of Trump's 2020 Fraud Conspiracies
Members of the GOP-controlled election board "are abusing their power," a voting rights group said. "Perpetuating misinformation about elections can lead to threats against local election officials who refuse to cave to lies about the 2020 election."
Jan 28, 2026
The FBI on Wednesday executed a search warrant at the warehouse that serves as the election hub for Fulton County, Georgia—a location central to President Donald Trump's election fraud conspiracy theories.
Bureau sources confirmed to CBS News that they had conducted a “court-authorized activity” in connection with an investigation related to the 2020 election. A spokesperson for the FBI field office in Atlanta said no additional details can be provided because "the investigation into this matter is ongoing."
Fulton County Clerk Ché Alexander told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that a large number of agents were seen entering the warehouse and hauling out boxes of ballots.
“The FBI agents are here to get the 2020 ballots,” Alexander said. “They’re all here—trucks, everything."
Former President Joe Biden narrowly won the state of Georgia en route to defeating Trump in 2020. But Trump has long alleged—through numerous disproven claims—that his loss was the result of widespread voter fraud.
Fulton County, which contains most of the Democratic stronghold of Atlanta, was at the center of the misleading allegations spread by Trump and allies, who claimed, among other things, that election workers had surreptitiously tallied tens of thousands of fraudulent ballots.
Despite these claims being thoroughly refuted by Republican election officials in the state, Trump infamously attempted to pressure Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” for him, which would allow him to win the state in the Electoral College.
In 2023, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis brought racketeering charges against Trump and 18 of his associates over the scheme, which was described as part of a conspiracy to illegally overturn Georgia's election result. However, that case never made it to trial after being bogged down by a scandal involving a relationship between Willis and the special prosecutor assigned to the case, which ultimately led to it being thrown out in November.
At a speech last week in Davos, Switzerland, Trump seemed to warn that retribution against those he claims to have been involved with election theft was coming. Speaking of what he said was a “rigged election,” Trump said: “People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. That’s probably breaking news.”
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) had already sued Fulton County in December for access to its ballots and other records from the 2020 presidential vote, a lawsuit Democracy Docket said "came after far-right members of the state’s GOP-controlled election board asked the department for assistance in obtaining 2020 ballots and voting records."
Prior to that, Ed Martin, the head of the DOJ’s "weaponization task force," sent a letter to a Fulton County judge demanding to “immediately access” 148,000 absentee ballots being stored in a ballot warehouse, which he said were needed as part of an "election integrity" investigation being conducted by the DOJ.
In October, the New York Times reported that a top "election integrity" official in the Trump administration had urged the president to invoke a "national emergency" to allow for more federal control over election rules typically left to state and local governments.
"I would have been unsurprised if the Fulton County DA was targeted by the administration for investigation," said Anthony Michael Kreis, a political scientist at the Georgia State University College of Law. "But going directly after the Fulton County elections office is an entirely different and potentially startling development."
The voting rights group All Voting Is Local said in a statement that "by first calling on the Trump administration's Department of Justice to investigate Fulton again, and now supporting the lawsuit, the conspiracy theorists who now make up a majority of the State Election Board are abusing their power. Perpetuating misinformation about elections can lead to threats against local election officials who refuse to cave to lies about the 2020 election."
This article has been updated with a new quote from All Voting Is Local.
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