Fulton says DOJ may have improperly coordinated efforts to get 2020 records

The Trump administration sought Fulton County’s 2020 election records for months before FBI agents, armed with a criminal warrant, raided a warehouse and carted off hundreds of boxes of ballots and other records.

U.S. Department of Justice lawyers tried with letters, then through civil litigation, before resorting to force.

While the federal lawsuit claimed the Trump administration had a right to copies of the records, the warrant cited potential “deficiencies” that would amount to criminal conduct if found to be intentional. Whether the raid was used as a pretext to expedite access to records for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has become the latest flashpoint in Fulton’s fight to retrieve its nearly six-year-old election records.

Fulton argued that the timing of the search warrant strongly implies that it was used as an improper means to access the 2020 election records that the Trump administration already wanted copies of but had been unable to get through the civil process.

The motive behind the Fulton raid is unclear, but a social media post from Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, wrote that Fulton refused the Civil Rights Division’s request for 2020 election records. The post attached a clip of Dhillon in an interview with journalist Catherine Herridge.

“While that case has been pending, which was filed fairly recently, just weeks ago, other colleagues of mine at the Department of Justice learned that they believed they had probable cause to obtain a search warrant regarding potential criminal violations of the law and that is what was executed in the search warrant being executed,” Dhillon said in the interview.

Fulton’s attorneys point out that the raid came after lawyers for Fulton asked a judge to dismiss the civil case. In a court hearing last month, Justice Department attorneys said they were unaware of a coordinated effort.

U.S. District Court Judge J.P. Boulee, who is presiding over Fulton’s case to retrieve its ballots, said it would be a “good argument” for Fulton if the federal government sought to circumvent civil proceedings with the criminal search warrant.

The Justice Department, however, balked at Fulton’s questions about the raid’s origins and argued that the information is irrelevant to the case and is protected.

“That information, to the extent it exists, would plainly bear on the government’s law enforcement techniques and procedures, as well as internal deliberations comprising part of a process by which governmental decisions have been formulated,” Justice Department attorneys wrote in a legal brief last week.

Fulton’s request for more information on the origins of the Justice Department’s criminal probe could be a key part of the county’s argument to recover the 2020 election documents after Boulee ruled Fulton’s lawyers could not question the lead FBI agent behind the raid.

Absent his testimony, last month’s all-day hearing revealed few new details about the investigation or what occurred ahead of the January raid.

Fulton has argued the affidavit used to secure the search warrant omitted key facts about the witnesses investigators interviewed.

The affidavit revealed that the probe relied on recycled claims that had been previously investigated. State investigators found evidence of disorganization and human error but have never found evidence of wrongdoing.

The Justice Department has said that Fulton doesn’t have the right to retrieve its records and that it hasn’t shown evidence that proves the FBI “callous disregard” for the county’s rights to the documents.

Fulton has a tougher road now that the FBI has provided the county digital copies of the records.