After court order, DOJ divulges search warrant affidavit for FBI’s Fulton County election raid
The Department of Justice (DOJ) Tuesday complied with a court order to publicly reveal the search warrant affidavit that initiated the FBI’s raid on an election facility in Fulton County, Georgia, last month.
The document reveals that the search was largely predicated on disinformation and debunked voter fraud claims pushed by private individuals since President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, including some who now work in the Trump administration.
Through the search of the election facility, federal agents seized thousands of county records — including original ballots — from the 2020 election, which Trump has repeatedly falsely claimed was stolen from him.
Now, the affidavit’s release sheds light on what facts and evidence the DOJ presented in persuading a judge to approve the FBI’s extraordinary search warrant against Fulton County’s main election operations center.
The document does not name any specific suspects. Instead, FBI special agent Hugh Raymond Evans, who signed the affidavit, claimed that he had probable cause to believe that crimes “have been committed by unknown persons.”
The identities of many of the witnesses the government relied on in the affidavit were redacted. However, some were named, including Kurt Olsen, a former Trump campaign lawyer who played a key role in the president’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.
According to the affidavit, the FBI’s investigation into Fulton County was initiated by a referral from Olsen, who joined the White House in late 2025 as a “special government employee” to investigate the 2020 election.
Also named in the document was Clay Parikh, an election denier and cybersecurity specialist tied to prominent conspiracy theorists who is now a special government employee.
The allegations included in the affidavit have long been disproved by state audits. In fact, the document quotes from a review into Fulton County initiated by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) years after the election: “Our review reaches a similar conclusion—we do not see any evidence of fraud, intentional misconduct, or large systematic issues that would have affected the result of the November 2020 election.”
After the affidavit’s release, Fulton County Board of Commissioners Chairman Robb Pitts said at a press conference that the document showed that the FBI’s ongoing investigation is based on “recycled rumors, lies, untruths and unproven conspiracy theories.”
“Fulton County’s 2020 elections have been examined, they’ve been reexamined, they’ve been audited, there have been hand counts under microscope, and in every instance we come up clean. And any honest review going forward will also be clean,” Pitts said. “These accusations have already been debunked. But here we go again.”
The bureau’s sweeping search warrant against Fulton County’s main election operations center indicated that the raid stemmed from its investigation over alleged violations of election record retention and voter intimidation laws.
However, before the affidavit’s release, it was unknown what evidence, if any, the DOJ had presented to back the warrant.
The affidavit’s release came through Fulton County’s attempt to force the federal government to return election materials through a civil lawsuit, which claims that the search violated the constitutional rights of voters and the state of Georgia.
The local officials questioned whether the DOJ sufficiently established probable cause in securing the warrant. Instead, the officials said that there was a high likelihood that the department presented widely debunked voter fraud theories.
Based on a request from county officials, U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee, a judge Trump appointed in his first term, ordered the DOJ to release the document by the end of business Tuesday.
In an unusual move, the DOJ hadn’t opposed the search warrant affidavit’s unsealing. Typically, the department fights vigorously to keep such information sealed to protect the integrity of ongoing investigations, sources and methods.
The bureau’s sweeping search warrant against Fulton County’s main election operations center indicated that the raid stemmed from its investigation over alleged violations of election record retention and voter fraud laws.
Despite the FBI’s warrant, the legality of the search has been in question. Legal experts noted that the statute of limitations for the crimes the bureau appears to be investigating has already lapsed.
The affidavit included no discussion or acknowledgement of the statute of limitations lapsing for the alleged crimes being investigated.
The document does not offer any clarity on why Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had taken part in the FBI’s raid. For reasons that remain unclear, Trump reportedly directed Gabbard to attend the search.
As the country’s top intelligence officer, the director of national intelligence’s focus is usually on national security threats from abroad and not county-level election administration investigations.
Gabbard has been pursuing dubious claims that the election was stolen from Trump due to foreign government tampering with voting machines, but the affidavit included no allegations of foreign interference in Fulton County.
The FBI’s seizure of the election materials came after the DOJ made multiple attempts to obtain the records.
Attorney General Pam Bondi first demanded the documents in a letter. Later, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon tried to gain access to them through a lawsuit filed against the Fulton County Superior Court clerk.
In response to each attempt, the clerk informed the DOJ that the materials were under seal and could not be produced absent a court order.
Fulton County officials alleged in their lawsuit against the raid that the FBI intentionally circumvented pending civil judicial proceedings to obtain the records on behalf of the DOJ. By doing so, the federal government violated Georgia state law, the officials said.
This story has been updated with new information throughout.
