The Fulton County election office in Georgia was raided by the FBI on Wednesday, escalating President Donald Trump‘s years-long false claims that there was mass voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
According to CNN, the raid is part of the Justice Department’s effort to seize election records as part of a broader probe of alleged voter fraud in the county, which includes Atlanta. In December, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division sued Fulton County, along with several states, seeking copies of ballots from the 2020 election.
Fulton County was a major focus of Trump’s election conspiracy campaign. The county is composed mostly of Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters who played a major role in Trump’s defeat in Georgia. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election in Georgia eventually led to criminal charges brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in 2023; however, the case was ultimately dismissed after Trump was re-elected in the 2024 election.
“Trump is terrified of what’s coming in the Midterm elections this year. He’s afraid of Democrats who will actually hold him accountable winning out in the May primaries. And he’s trying to interfere more broadly with the General election outcomes in November,” Dr. Everton Blair, GA-13 congressional candidate, told theGrio.
The former board chair of the Gwinnett County School Board added, “Trump is using 2020 as a smokescreen to engineer a takeover of our votes in 2026 because he knows he lost already. This isn’t about 2020; it’s about 2026.”
Georgia State Senator RaShaun Kemp, who represents Fulton County, called the seizing of ballots an “unprecedented escalation designed to sow doubt and fear around our election.”
“For years, election workers in Fulton County have endured false accusations, political intimidation, and even threats simply for doing their jobs and upholding the will of the voters. Now, we are watching a president weaponize the FBI against the very people responsible for administering free and fair elections,” said Kemp. “Donald Trump knows he and his party are headed toward defeat in 2026, and this is what desperation looks like–using the power of the federal government to undermine confidence in elections before a single vote is next.”
Nadine Smith, president of the civil rights advocacy group, Color Of Change, called the FBI raid in Fulton County a “dangerous escalation” in the Trump administration’s campaign to “weaponize federal law enforcement against election officials and undermine our democracy.”
“This is part of a broader neo-segregationist agenda to strip Black political power through voter suppression and intimidation,” Smith said in a statement. “This follows a clear pattern: when Black voters organize and deliver electoral victories, they face coordinated efforts to delegitimize their votes and punish those who count them.”
She added, “Fulton County’s majority-Black electorate delivered Georgia for Biden in 2020. Trump’s infamous call to ‘find’ votes to overturn that result is well documented. Now, five years later, armed federal agents are raiding election offices.”
“Despite Trump’s lies about voter fraud in Georgia, judges across the country and even his own attorney general found no evidence. So now he sends in his goons to raid election offices? This is what a weak, sore loser does,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson.
“The president needs to focus on righting the economy, releasing the Epstein Files, and reigning in his unqualified and unchecked ICE squad that is murdering Americans in cold blood. Not wasting taxpayer dollars on a wild goose hunt.”
