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ATLANTA — Georgia’s Fulton County has gone to federal court seeking the return of all ballots and other documents from the 2020 election that were seized by the FBI last week from a warehouse near Atlanta.

Its motion also asks for the unsealing of a law enforcement agent’s sworn statement that was presented to the judge who approved the search warrant, the county chairman, Robb Pitts, said Wednesday. The filing on behalf of Pitts and the county election board is not being made public because the case is under seal, he said.

The Jan. 28 search at Fulton County’s main election facility in Union City sought records related to the 2020 election. Many Democrats have criticized what they see as the use of the FBI and the Justice Department to pursue President Trump’s political foes.

The Republican president and his allies have fixated on the heavily Democratic county, the state’s most populous, since the Republican narrowly lost the election in Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden that year. Trump has long insisted without evidence that widespread voter fraud in the county cost him victory in the state.

“The president himself and his allies, they refuse to accept the fact that they lost,” Pitts said. “And even if he had won Georgia, he would still have lost the presidency.”

Pitts defended the county’s election practices and said Fulton has conducted 17 elections since 2020 without any issues.

“This case is not only about Fulton County. This is about elections across Georgia and across the nation,” Pitts said, citing comments by Trump earlier this week on a podcast where he called for Republicans to “take over” and “nationalize” elections. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt has said the president was referring to legislative efforts.

A warrant cover sheet provided to the county includes a list of items that the agents were seeking related to the 2020 general election: all ballots, tabulator tapes from the scanners that tally the votes, electronic ballot images created when the ballots were counted and then recounted, and all voter rolls.

The FBI drove away with hundreds of boxes of ballots and other documents. County officials say they were not told why the federal government wanted the documents.

“What they’re doing with the ballots that they have now, we don’t know, but if they’re counted fairly and honestly, the results will be the same,” Pitts said.

Andrew Bailey, the FBI’s co-deputy director, and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, were seen on-site, at the time. Democrat in Congress have questioned the propriety of Gabbard’s presence because the search was a law enforcement, not intelligence, action.

In a letter to top Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence committees Monday, she said Trump asked her to be there “under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security.”

Brumback writes for the Associated Press.

But in an email to a “Ferg” in 2011, Epstein writes: “of course you can have mothers army, it was always for you„ Im not sure how to transfer it, but rest assured , it is your in its entirety, I will ask how the transfer is accomplished, we just want to be careful that there is no downside at the moment to have a transaction between you and I.”

The United States Justice Department has released a massive new tranche of investigative files related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

At a news conference on Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department was releasing more than 3 million pages of documents, as well as more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images.

He said the release means the department has met a legal requirement passed by Congress last year.

“Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people and compliance with the act,” Blanche said.

But the administration of President Donald Trump has faced scrutiny over the pacing of the files’ release and redactions within the published documents.

Trump himself has been confronted with questions about his past relationship with Epstein, who cultivated a roster of influential contacts.

On Friday, Blanche dismissed rumours that the Justice Department had sought to protect powerful individuals, including Trump.

While Trump has acknowledged a years-long friendship with with the financier, he has denied any knowledge of the underage sex-trafficking ring that prosecutors say Epstein led.

“There’s this built-in assumption that somehow there’s this hidden tranche of information ‌of men that we know about, that we’re covering up, or that we’re not we’re choosing not to prosecute,” Blanche said. “That is not the case.”

The Justice Department had initially missed a December 19 deadline set by Congress to release all the files.

The publication is the result of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was published in November with bipartisan support to force the release of all federal documents pertaining to Epstein.

In response to the law, the Justice Department said it had tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the records to determine what needs to be blacked out to protect the identities of sexual abuse victims.

Blanche said the department withheld any materials that could jeopardise ongoing investigations or expose potential victims.

All women in the Epstein files other than Ghislaine Maxwell — an ex-girlfriend who was also convicted of child sex trafficking — have been obscured from the videos and images being released on Friday, according to Blanche.

In the past, some of Epstein’s victims have slammed the department’s redactions and withholdings as excessive, with critics pointing out that previously published documents were among the files blacked out.

In December, the Justice Department released an initial batch of Epstein-related documents, though it fell short of the full publication mandated by November’s law.

That release, however, included previously unreleased flight logs showing that Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet in the 1990s. Those trips appeared to happen before Trump has said the pair had a falling out.

The recent releases also contain images showing prominent individuals like tech billionaire Bill Gates, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, director Woody Allen and former US President Bill Clinton socialising with Epstein, sometimes on his private island.

To date, none of the individuals depicted in the releases have been charged with any crimes, outside of Maxwell.

Following her conviction in 2021, she is serving a 20-year prison sentence, though she has continued to deny any wrongdoing.

Epstein died from of apparent suicide in a New York jail cell in August 2019, a month after he was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges.

He had previously been convicted of state sex-offender charges in Florida in 2008 as part of a plea deal that was widely slammed for its leniency. He spent a total of 13 months in custody.

One of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, also filed lawsuits against him, accusing him of arranging sexual encounters with politicians, business titans, academics and other influential figures while she was underage.

All of the men identified by Giuffre, who died in April 2025 in Australia, have denied the allegations.

Among the people she accused was Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, who denied the clams but settled a lawsuit filed by Giuffre for an undisclosed sum.

In October, his brother, King Charles III of the United Kingdom, stripped Mountbatten-Windsor of his royal titles as a result of the controversy.