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THE FBI’S SEIZURE OF 2020 BALLOTS IN GEORGIA IS A SIGNAL OF
WHAT’S TO COME  
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Austin Sarat
February 1, 2026
The Guardian
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*
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_ The administration’s efforts show the lengths to which Trump is
willing to go to lay the groundwork for 2026 _

‘It sends a powerful signal to election officials everywhere that
they will be under scrutiny, as they never have been before.’, Erik
S Lesser/EPA

 

While the nation’s attention was focused on the ICE invasion of
Minneapolis, another part of Trump’s authoritarian state apparatus
was in action more than a thousand miles away. On Wednesday 28
January, the FBI carried out a stunning raid
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at the central election facility in Fulton county, Georgia.

Its purpose: to seize ballots cast in the 2020 election
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Such an action is
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unprecedented.

In another unprecedented development, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of
national intelligence, was on the scene when the FBI carried out its
raid. The New York Times quotes
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a “senior administration official” who explained her presence by
saying Gabbard “has a pivotal role in election security and
protecting the integrity of our elections against interference,
including operations targeting voting systems, databases, and election
infrastructure”.

The deployment of such firepower shows the lengths to which the
president is willing to go to press his claim that the 2020 election
was rigged and to lay the groundwork for the seizure of ballots in
2026. The seizure of ballots in Georgia
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across the bow.

It should prompt concerted planning by state attorneys general and
secretaries of state to resist federal interference in November. We
need more people like Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows,
who said
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after the FBI raid: “In Maine, we have strict chain of custody
controls over our ballots … There are only two people that have the
key. One of them is me. And he is not getting our ballots. He’s not
getting our voter rolls.”

But don’t be fooled, the president won’t give up on his quest to
find evidence that officials in Fulton county destroyed or altered
ballots.

That is why in addition to the physical ballots the FBI
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for every voting machine used in Fulton County … ballot images
produced during the original ballot count beginning on November 3,
2020, the recount, and any other ballot images that were created from
ballot scanning from the 2020 General Election in Fulton County”.
They also sought voter rolls from the 2020 general election including
records pertaining to “absentee” and “early voting” including
“to whom an absentee ballot was issued, from whom an absentee ballot
was received, or who participated in advanced voting or election day
voting”.

All told, the FBI took more than 700 boxes of election records
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Wednesday’s search and seizure is the latest step in a long-running
battle
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In November 2024, the Republican-dominated state election board
subpoenaed 2020 election materials from Fulton county. When the county
went to court to try to quash the subpoena, the state election board
sought help from Pam Bondi
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“to effect compliance with voting transparency”, according to a
justice department lawsuit
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In December, the justice department sued
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“the county is in violation of … the Civil Rights Act”. The suit
asserted that the attorney general had “sweeping power” to obtain
election records.

All of this makes sense when we recall the president’s obsession
with Georgia’s 2020 election results. Among other things, he claimed
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in a call with Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state,
that about 5,000 dead people had ballots cast in their names and that
“thousands and thousands who went to the voting place on November 3
were told they couldn’t vote, were told they couldn’t vote because
a ballot had been put on their name.”

The president also alleged that “at least 18,000 ... voters” were
connected to a Fulton county election worker who was a supposed
“scammer”. “[The 18,000 ballots] weren’t in an official voter
box, but they were in what looked to be suitcases or trunks, suitcases
but they weren’t in voter boxes.”

Each of those claims was proven false, and the Fulton county ballots
were subject to multiple recounts.

Nonetheless, in a recent interview with the New York Times, the
president expressed regret
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about “not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in
swing states after his loss in the 2020 election”. He “doubted
whether the Guard was ‘sophisticated enough’ to carry out the
order effectively”.

Enter the FBI.

_It seems that in the world he wants to create, there is no future
until the injuries (whether real or imagined) done to him are made
right_

After the FBI raid, the president reposted
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the following to his Truth Social account: “President Trump’s
legal team exposing the 2020 election fraud at the Georgia State Farm
Arena … running the same stacks of ballots over, and over, and over,
all through the night until Biden was ahead, stealing the election
from President Trump. This is exactly why the FBI raided the election
center today … This is only the beginning. prosecutions are
coming.”

The president added,
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“TRUMP WON BIG. Crooked election.”

It seems that in the world he wants to create, there is no future
until the injuries (whether real or imagined) done to him are made
right. Just last week, during his speech to the World Economic Forum,
Trump reiterated [[link removed]] that
2020 “was a rigged election”. And he added: “People will soon be
prosecuted for what they did.”

And in the Trump administration
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president wants, the president gets. That’s why the FBI seized what
it did in Fulton county.

In the name of election integrity, the administration seems bent on
ensuring that elections can be free and fair only if they turn out the
way the president wants. That’s why it would be a mistake to write
off the raid as just a rehashing of the past.

It sends a powerful signal to election officials everywhere that they
will be under scrutiny, as they never have been before, by an
administration that insists that the federal government will take a
leading role in policing elections and in making sure that they are
carried out to its satisfaction. The FBI raid is, in the world of
elections, what the ICE invasion of Minneapolis is in the world of law
enforcement.

An effort at intimidation.

As one of Fulton county’s election officials put it
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“All of this is about disrupting the elections in November. All this
is about Fulton – the most important County in Georgia and maybe
even the nation … This is all a distraction to make people fearful
to go to the polls in November.”

It should also serve as a wake-up call, a preview of what is in store
in several months. The FBI, the justice department, and the
intelligence community are all coming to places like Fulton county,
places where, left to their own devices, voters might not do what the
president wants them to do.

_AUSTIN SARAT, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and
political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more
than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and
America’s Death Penalty_

_GUARDIAN US Covering American and international news for an online,
global audience._

_Guardian US is renowned for the __Paradise Papers_
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investigation and other award-winning work including, __the NSA
revelations_ [[link removed]]_,
__Panama Papers_
[[link removed]]_ and __The
Counted_
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investigations._

_Support the Guardian_ [[link removed]]

* Donald Trump
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* elections
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* Georgia
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* FBI
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* Tulsi Gabbard
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* 2020 elections
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