As ex-DOJ officials slam FBI seizure of Fulton County ballots, judge sends worrying signal for future elections
The Department of Justice (DOJ) recklessly failed to uphold constitutional rights and liberties by allowing the FBI to seize 2020 election records in Fulton County, Georgia, using a faulty search warrant application, former top department officials alleged Thursday.
In a new court filing, the former officials accused the FBI of intentionally misleading a federal judge to secure the warrant that initiated its unprecedented raid on Fulton County’s election hub late last month. The brief’s signatories included former acting U.S. attorneys general Peter Keisler and Stuart Gerson.
“Based on the public record concerning the Search Warrant, [we] respectfully submit that DOJ appears to have failed to fulfill its essential role in our justice system when it submitted the Search Warrant for judicial review,” the former officials, who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations, wrote.
Though it pertains to an election certified almost six years ago, the raid and Fulton County’s subsequent lawsuit challenging the bureau’s records seizure have high-stakes implications for the future of free and fair elections.
Through their lawsuit, county officials are attempting to reassert local and state authority over elections and head off President Donald Trump’s attempt to undermine elections in Georgia and around the country.
But even if the county successfully argues that the FBI’s raid was unconstitutional, the federal judge presiding over the suit has suggested that the DOJ could still end up with access to the seized documents. If so, the DOJ could also wind up with untold power to seize any election-related records anywhere with impunity.
Fighting to return election records
The former DOJ officials’ filing bolsters Fulton County’s lawsuit, which seeks to force the federal government to return the over 650 boxes of election records, including original ballots, seized by the FBI through the raid.
County officials have alleged that the raid violated the Fourth Amendment because it was based on “flagrantly misleading” and uncontextualized claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election, which Trump has falsely claimed was stolen from him.
The FBI has asserted that its seizure of the records was part of its investigation into whether “deficiencies or defects” occurred in Fulton County’s handling of the 2020 election and whether its tabulation of votes resulted in violations of election record retention rules and voter fraud laws.
County officials are specifically scrutinizing the search warrant application FBI special agent Hugh Raymond Evans presented to a court to justify the FBI’s raid.
In the document, Evans predominantly presented misleading and long-debunked allegations from notorious conspiracy theorists and election deniers, some of whom now work in the Trump administration.
Had Evans included context on the credibility of the witnesses included in the affidavit, as well as other key information, a federal magistrate judge would never have approved the search warrant, county officials claim.
Citing their years of experience as federal prosecutors, the former DOJ officials agreed with Fulton County in their amicus brief Thursday.
Evans “omitted material facts from the warrant application, thereby depriving the Magistrate Judge of information necessary for judicial review to function as the Fourth Amendment requires,” they wrote.
As an example, they highlighted that, although Evans disclosed that the FBI inquiry was initiated by a criminal referral from White House official Kurt Olsen, the special agent failed to disclose to the court facts that would have contextualized Olsen’s credibility.
Olsen is a former Trump campaign lawyer who has been repeatedly censured by courts for making frivolous, unsubstantiated claims of election fraud during the 2020 election. He also specifically joined the White House in late 2025 as a “special government employee” to investigate the 2020 election.
In another example, the former officials noted that Evans claimed as a potential violation of record retention laws Fulton County’s failure to preserve images of all ballots cast in the county in 2020.
“The application fails to note that Georgia law did not require preservation of ballot images in 2020, and ballot images play no role in tabulating official results,” the former DOJ officials said.
“The application also fails to acknowledge that a prior investigation by the Georgia Secretary of State confirmed that ballots in Fulton County can be scanned and counted without storing images, and Fulton County’s results were confirmed through multiple counts of physical ballots,” they added.
Judge sends ominous message
Despite the heightened scrutiny of Evans, the Trump-appointed federal judge overseeing the county’s suit reversed course Wednesday evening and postponed an upcoming evidentiary hearing Friday that would have forced the special agent to testify about his affidavit.
Instead, U.S. District Judge Jean-Paul Boulee, who was nominated by Trump in 2019, said the DOJ and Fulton County should attempt to come to an agreement about the seized records outside of the court before he hears additional evidence in the case.
However, Boulee also suggested that even if Fulton County ultimately succeeds in arguing that the election records were unlawfully seized, the DOJ may not have to completely forfeit its access to the materials.
The judge noted that courts can order the return of the original records while allowing the government to make and retain copies of the records for use in ongoing or future investigations.
That would be an extremely worrisome precedent to set ahead of 2026 midterms, as it could potentially allow the department to seize and perpetually access records from future elections without fear of legal repercussions.
Boulee’s suggestion also increases the importance of a separate suit filed by civil rights organizations that also challenges the DOJ’s possession of the Fulton County election records.
The organizations, including the NAACP and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, asked a federal court earlier this month to ensure that records are used solely for the federal government’s stated criminal investigation — and not to purge voters from the state rolls, improperly disclose voters’ personal data or to otherwise intimidate them.
