FBI Affidavit for Fulton County Election Records Unsealed

A US District Court released documents on the FBI seizure of Fulton County, Georgia's 2020 election records on Tuesday.

The Details: The documents confirm some allegations of erroneous voting data while denying others. They state, "Auditors assisting in the Risk Limiting Audit reported counting purported absentee ballots that had never been creased or folded, as would be required for the ballot to be mailed to the voter and for the ballot to be returned in the sealed envelope requiring the voter's signature for authentication." Documents mentioned "confirmed inaccurate batch tallies," though inaccuracies alone do not prove or disprove organized election fraud. FBI Special Agent Hugh Raymond Evans said some allegations of "electoral impropriety" during the 2020 presidential election "have been disproven while some of those allegations have been substantiated, including through admissions by Fulton County."

For Context: US District Court Judge JP Boulee ordered the unsealing of the affidavit used by the FBI to seize election records in Fulton County, Georgia, on Saturday. The FBI seized nearly 700 boxes of records related to the 2020 presidential election on Jan. 29, sparking a lawsuit from Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts and other county election officials who sought the boxes' return. AllSides reported on Tuesday, "Both parties in the case indicated that they were unopposed to the unsealing of the documents."

What's Next: Boulee ordered Fulton County to respond to the unsealed FBI affidavit instead of speculating on its contents, and the county announced plans to file an amended motion by Feb. 17. Its previous motion requested that the FBI return the election records it seized.

From The Left: While media across the political spectrum highlighted Evans' report of both substantiated and unsubstantiated allegations, some on the left focused primarily on the report's drawbacks. The Washington Post (Lean Left bias) said, "The FBI relied heavily on previously debunked claims" to petition the seizure. It also noted that the investigation was "prompted by a referral from former Trump campaign lawyer and prominent election denier Kurt Olsen, who was recently appointed to a White House position tasked with monitoring election integrity." It asserted, "Many of the irregularities [the records] raised – including claims of duplicate ballots and missing ballot images – have been previously explained by county officials as the types of routine errors that frequently occur, are typically corrected in the moment, and are not significant enough to sway the outcome of an election."

Other media on the left, however, were less slanted in favor of the drawbacks. Politico (Lean Left), for example, said the affidavits "don't appear to contain any bombshell revelations of fraud, but instead a litany of alleged irregularities in ballot tallying and in the handling of related records, like digital scans of the paper ballots cast." It also stated, "The allegations largely track claims leveled by conservative activists."

From The Right: Media on the right generally focused more on the potential implications of the improprieties and the possibility of election fraud. The Federalist (Right) staunchly criticized The Washington Post and other media on the left for "smearing witnesses who raise legitimate concerns about the Fulton County election mess as – you guessed it – 'election deniers.'" The outlet said, "The Post's story says nothing of the independent monitor whose review noted Fulton County's absentee processes were 'extremely sloppy and replete with chain of custody issues.'" 

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