Federal authorities executed a search warrant at a Fulton County elections office on Wednesday, reopening scrutiny around the administration of Georgia’s 2020 presidential vote more than four years after the contest reshaped national politics.
According to the New York Post, a Justice Department official confirmed that FBI agents carried out the raid, though investigators offered few immediate details about the scope of the search or what materials were sought.
An FBI spokesperson in Atlanta said the inquiry remains active and declined to elaborate.
“Our investigation into this matter is ongoing so there are no details that I can provide at the moment,” the spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
Fulton County, Georgia’s most populous county and home to much of Atlanta, sat at the center of President Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was marred by widespread fraud.
Trump narrowly lost Georgia’s 16 electoral votes to Democrat Joe Biden by fewer than 12,000 ballots, according to the certified results.
Trump’s efforts to challenge that outcome triggered a chain of political and legal consequences, including his second impeachment in January 2021.
In 2023, Democratic District Attorney Fani Willis brought criminal charges against Trump and 18 others tied to the effort to overturn Georgia’s results.
That case, along with a related federal prosecution led by special counsel Jack Smith, was later dropped after Trump won a second, non-consecutive term in 2024.
The former and now current president frequently cited Fulton County while detailing his allegations, many of which were rejected by Georgia courts and Republican state leaders, including Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
One of Trump’s most prominent claims involved a pause in ballot counting on election night after officials reported a pipe burst in the room where absentee ballots were being processed. Trump later insisted the explanation was fabricated.
“In Fulton County, Republican poll watchers were ejected, in some cases, physically from the room under the false pretense of a pipe burst — ‘water main burst, everybody leave,’ which we now know was a total lie,” Trump said during his Jan. 6, 2021, speech.
“Then election officials pull boxes — Democrats — and suitcases of ballots out from under a table… totally fraudulent, and illegally scanned them for nearly two hours,” he added.
Trump also accused Georgia officials of overlooking large numbers of illegal votes, alleging ballots were cast by deceased individuals, incarcerated felons, underage voters, and people no longer living in the state.
Raffensperger forcefully rejected those assertions at the time.
“We’ve never found systemic fraud, not enough to overturn the election,” he said. “I wish he would have won. I’m a conservative Republican, and I’m disappointed, but those are the results.”
The Fulton County election controversy has already produced significant legal fallout. Two county election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, successfully sued Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani for defamation after he accused them of election fraud.
A jury awarded the women $148 million in damages.
What prompted Wednesday’s raid remains unclear, but the search signals that the 2020 election — and Fulton County’s role in it — continues to draw federal scrutiny years after voters cast their ballots.
