Fulton County is headed to court to seek the return of its 2020 election ballots seized in an FBI raid last week, county commission Chair Robb Pitts told reporters Wednesday.
It’s the county’s latest bid to defend its elections against intensifying attacks from President Donald Trump and his Republican allies.
“Last week, I committed to the voters of Fulton County, and the world for that matter, that we will use every resource at our disposal to fight for their vote, and that we will fight, using all resources, against those who seek to take over our elections,” Pitts said at a press conference. “Our Constitution itself is at stake in this fight.”
The motion from Fulton County was filed under seal, meaning details were not immediately public. The county, Pitts said, is also seeking the unsealing of the affidavit used to support the FBI’s search of its election office.
The president has long maintained, falsely, that the 2020 election was rigged against him. He’s cast Fulton County, home to Georgia’s capital city Atlanta, as central to his unfounded allegations of widespread voting fraud.
Trump himself once faced charges in Fulton County stemming from his actions to overturn the 2020 election. That case was ultimately dismissed in November.
Since returning to the presidency, Trump has focused his attention on relitigating his 2020 election loss and said he wants to play a much larger role in elections, worrying election officials and Democratic politicians across the country. Trump said that Republicans should nationalize the country’s elections in an appearance on former Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino’s podcast Monday.
“People will soon be prosecuted for what they did,“ he told attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January.
The FBI declined to comment on the motion, and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Fulton County, make no mistake, in my opinion, we are the poster child here of all the states, all the counties, all the cities that may involve, is Fulton County, Georgia, because of the 2020 elections,” Pitts said. “The president himself and his allies, they refuse to accept the fact that they lost.”
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