{"id":567990,"date":"2026-02-05T11:44:21","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T11:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/567990\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T11:44:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T11:44:21","slug":"legal-fight-escalates-over-georgia-voting-records-as-trump-eyes-midterms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/567990\/","title":{"rendered":"Legal fight escalates over Georgia voting records as Trump eyes midterms"},"content":{"rendered":"

ATLANTA (AP) \u2014 Officials in Georgia\u2019s Fulton County said Wednesday they have asked a federal court to order the FBI to return ballots and other documents from the 2020 election that it seized last week<\/a>, escalating a voting battle as President Donald Trump says he wants to \u201ctake over\u201d elections<\/a> from Democratic-run areas with the November midterms on the horizon.<\/p>\n

The FBI had searched a warehouse near Atlanta where those records were stored, a move taken after Trump\u2019s persistent demands for retribution over claims, without evidence, that fraud cost him victory in Georgia. Trump\u2019s election comment came in an interview Monday with a conservative podcaster and the Republican president reaffirmed his position in Oval Office remarks the next day, citing f raud allegations that numerous audits<\/a>, investigations and courts have debunked.<\/p>\n

Officials in heavily Democratic Fulton County referenced those statements in announcing their legal action at a time of increasing anxiety over Trump\u2019s plans for the fall elections that will determine control of Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis case is not only about Fulton County,\u201d said the county chairman, Robb Pitts. \u201cThis is about elections across Georgia and across the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a sign of that broader concern, U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said this week that he once doubted Trump would intervene in the midterms but now \u201cthe notional idea that he will ask his loyalists to do something inappropriate, beyond the Constitution, scares the heck out of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The White House has scoffed at such fears<\/a>, noting that Trump did not intervene in the 2025 off-year elections despite some Democratic predictions he would. But the president\u2019s party usually loses ground in midterm elections and Trump has already tried to tilt<\/a> the fall races in his direction.<\/p>\n

During an interview with NBC News that aired Wednesday, the president said he will trust Republican losses in the midterms \u201cif the results are honest.\u201d It\u2019s a strategy Trump has regularly used<\/a> ahead of elections, suggesting that a loss would only be due to some type of fraud.<\/p>\n

Democratic election officials plan for interference in the midterms<\/p>\n

Democratic state election officials have reacted<\/a> to Trump\u2019s statements, the seizure of the Georgia election materials and his aggressive deployment of federal officers into Democratic-leaning cities by planning for a wide range of possible scenarios this fall. That includes how they would respond if Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were stationed outside polling places.<\/p>\n

They also have raised concerns about U.S. Department of Justice lawsuits, mostly targeting Democratic states, seeking detailed voter data<\/a> that includes dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers. Secretaries of state have raised concerns that the administration is building a database it can use to potentially disenfranchise voters in future elections.<\/p>\n

Trump and his allies have long fixated on Fulton County, Georgia\u2019s most populous, since he narrowly lost the state to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. In the weeks after that election, Trump called Georgia\u2019s secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffensperger, urged him to help \u201cfind\u201d the 11,780 ballots<\/a> that would enable Trump to be declared the Georgia winner of the state and raised the prospect of a \u201ccriminal offense\u201d if the official failed to comply.<\/p>\n

Raffensperger did not change the vote tally, and Biden won Georgia\u2019s 16 electoral votes. Days later, rioters swarmed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021<\/a>, and tried to prevent the official certification of Biden\u2019s victory. When Trump returned to the presidency in January 2025, he pardoned more than 1,000 charged<\/a> in that siege.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president himself and his allies, they refuse to accept the fact that they lost,\u201d Pitts said. \u201cAnd even if he had won Georgia, he would still have lost the presidency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pitts defended the county\u2019s election practices and said Fulton has conducted 17 elections since 2020 without any issues.<\/p>\n

\u2018The results will be the same,\u2019 says Georgia election official<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The county is also asking the court to unseal the sworn statement from a law enforcement agent that was presented to the judge who approved the search warrant. <\/p>\n

The Justice Department declined to comment on the county\u2019s motion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they\u2019re doing with the ballots that they have now, we don\u2019t know, but if they\u2019re counted fairly and honestly, the results will be the same,\u201d Pitts said.<\/p>\n

Tulsi Gabbard, Trump\u2019s director of national intelligence, was at the Fulton search last week, and Democrats in Congress have questioned the propriety of her presence because the search was a law enforcement, not intelligence, action. <\/p>\n

In a letter to top Democrats<\/a> on the House and Senate Intelligence committees Monday, Gabbard said Trump asked her to be there \u201cunder my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the NBC News interview, Trump said he didn\u2019t know why Gabbard was in Fulton County, but suggested without providing evidence that other countries were meddling in elections: \u201cA lot of the cheating, it\u2019s international cheating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump pushes for federal control of elections<\/p>\n

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that the president\u2019s \u201ctake over\u201d remarks, which included a vague reference to \u201c15 places\u201d that should be targeted, were a reference to the SAVE Act<\/a>, legislation that would tighten proof of citizenship requirements. Republicans want to bring it up for a vote in Congress. <\/p>\n

But in his remarks that day, Trump did not cite the proposal. Instead, he claimed that Democratic-controlled places such as Atlanta, which falls mainly in Fulton County, have \u201chorrible corruption on elections. And the federal government should not allow that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Constitution vests states with the ability to administer elections. Congress can add rules for federal races. One of Trump\u2019s earliest second-term actions was an executive order that tried to rewrite voting rules nationwide. Judges have largely blocked it because it violates the Constitution.<\/p>\n

Trump contended that states were \u201cagents of the federal government to count the votes. If they can\u2019t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said Wednesday said he supported the SAVE Act but not Trump\u2019s desire for a federal takeover. \u201cNationalizing elections and picking 15 states seems a little off strategy,\u201d Tillis told reporters.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press video journalist Nathan Ellgren in Washington contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Riccardi reported from Denver.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATLANTA (AP) \u2014 Officials in Georgia\u2019s Fulton County said Wednesday they have asked a federal court to order…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":567991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[7373,3881,178590,356,69,90,10104,57,4353,2055,82,8133,128421,50,80,247309,235115,16538,51587,89,94,61,67,132,68,93],"class_list":{"0":"post-567990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-2026-elections","10":"tag-ap-top-news","11":"tag-brad-raffensperger","12":"tag-courts","13":"tag-donald-trump","14":"tag-elections","15":"tag-ga-state-wire","16":"tag-general-news","17":"tag-georgia","18":"tag-government-and-politics","19":"tag-joe-biden","20":"tag-karoline-leavitt","21":"tag-mark-warner","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-politics","24":"tag-robb-pitts","25":"tag-send-to-apple-news","26":"tag-thom-tillis","27":"tag-tulsi-gabbard","28":"tag-u-s-democratic-party","29":"tag-u-s-department-of-justice","30":"tag-u-s-news","31":"tag-united-states","32":"tag-unitedstates","33":"tag-us","34":"tag-washington-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116017854245528798","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}