In response to the unprecedented execution of a federal search warrant last week at the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections office, Fulton County Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr. announced that the county will file a motion today to challenge the legality of the warrant and the seizure of sensitive election records, and force the government to return the ballots taken.
On Jan. 28, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents executed a search warrant at the Fulton County Elections Hub and Operations Center in Union City, seizing hundreds of boxes of ballots, voter rolls, ballot images and other records from the 2020 election. The warrant has been widely criticized by local officials who say it represents federal overreach.
“I’ve asked the county attorney to take any and all steps available to fight this criminal search warrant,” Arrington said. “The search warrant, I believe, is not proper, but I think that there are ways that we can limit it. We want to ask for forensic accounting, we want the documents to stay in the State of Georgia under seal, and we want to do whatever we can to protect voter information.”
Arrington, the only practicing attorney on the County Commission, stressed that while the FBI was authorized to copy records under a separate court order, agents instead took physical custody of original ballots — including in-person, absentee and provisional ballots — and voter rolls. “They got copies of our voter rolls and all the original ballots,” he said. “Now we cannot verify that we’ve received everything back because there was no chain-of-custody inventory taken at the time the records were seized.”
Fulton County leaders have publicly pushed back against the federal action while also acknowledging compliance with the warrant as executed. However, today the County’s attorneys are expected to file a lawsuit in federal court in the Northern District of Georgia at the Russel Federal Building to formally fight the action of Trump’s DOJ and the FBI.
Details of the County’s motion will be available upon its filing.
