Officials for Fulton County, Georgia, on Tuesday accused the FBI of lying to obtain a warrant that authorized a raid on the county’s elections office on Jan. 18. File Photo by Erik S. Lesser/EPA-EFE
Feb. 17 (UPI) — Officials for Fulton County, Ga., said in a filing Tuesday that the Department of Justice lied to get a warrant to raid and seize 2020 election materials from the county’s elections office.
The officials say President Donald Trump‘s former campaign attorney, Kurt Olsen, orchestrated the search and seizure by the FBI that happened on Jan. 18 at the Fulton County Elections Hub and Operation Center.
“The affidavit admits that the entire ‘criminal investigation originated from a referral sent by Kurt Olsen,’ but it conceals the fact that multiple courts have sanctioned Olsen for his unsubstantiated, speculative claims about elections,” the officials said in an amended motion filed Tuesday.
County officials want the Justice Department to return seized election ballots, voter rolls, digital ballot images and tabulator tapes that are related to the county’s certification of the 2020 presidential election.
“Instead of alleging probable cause to believe a crime has been committed,” the county officials say the Justice Department’s application “does nothing more than describe the types of human errors that its own sources confirm occur in almost every election — with no wrongdoing whatsoever.”
The FBI did not tell the magistrate judge who approved the search warrant that the claims made against Fulton County election officials already had been investigated and debunked, county officials said in their newest filing.
The federal lawsuit was filed on Sunday in the U.S. District Court of Northern Georgia by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, the NAACP and Atlanta and Georgia State Conference branches of the NAACP.
They want to stop the Trump administration from using the voter records to purge voters, improperly disclose information or intimidate or dox voters.