Warrants unsealed in Georgia show an FBI investigation, possibly criminal, into the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden over Donald Trump.
In Fulton County, the agency said it was taking all physical ballots, including envelopes, damaged ballots, advanced voting ballots, tabulator tapes, ballot images and voter rolls, according to the warrant filed in U.S. District Court.
“These documents discuss an ongoing criminal investigation that is neither public nor known to all of the targets of the investigation,” FBI special agent Hugh Raymond Evans said in the warrant application. “Accordingly, there is good cause to seal these documents because their premature disclosure may seriously jeopardize that investigation, including by giving targets an opportunity to destroy or tamper with evidence, change patterns of behavior, notify confederates, and flee from prosecution. This warrant application is part of an FBI criminal investigation into whether any of the improprieties were intentional acts that violated federal criminal laws.”
Eleven witnesses, whose names are redacted, are listed in the warrant. One witness, listed as number 8 in the warrant, was a poll worker during the election. She told investigators that she received boxes of ballots with broken security seals.
“When she asked about the security seals, she was told by an unknown individual that they did not matter,” the warrant says.
Tabulator tapes were also questioned in the warrant. An investigation into the unsigned tabulation tapes that included 315,000 Fulton County votes came to light at a December meeting of the Georgia State Election Board.
New procedures were put in place to ensure the mistake doesn’t happen again, Ann Brumbaugh, an attorney for the Fulton County Board of Registrations and Elections, told the board after not contesting the claim. The State Election Board turned the issue over to the attorney general’s office at its January meeting.
A cybersecurity expert reviewed the tapes, telling the FBI that one tabulator was used to close out 15 tabulator machines from 12 locations, leading him to believe that the times were manipulated.
The warrant also references a January 2021 report from Seven Hills Strategies stating that Fulton County’s absentee ballot processes were “extremely sloppy and replete with chain of custody issues.”
Trump has questioned the outcome of the 2020 presidential contest in Georgia, which he lost to Biden by 11,780 votes. Biden defeated Trump 306-232 in electoral college votes; Georgia contributed 16 to the Democrats’ win, not enough of a swing (32 points) to reverse the 74-point setback.
Recounts did not find enough evidence to overturn the results.