Can Georgia Get its Ballots Back? Inside the Legal Fight Against Trump’s DOJ.
The decision may determine whether Trump can continue his fabricated fantasy of a rigged 2020 election.
Fulton County wants their 2020 ballots back. Based on what happened in a federal court on Friday, the largest county in Georgia has a shot in winning their lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice by exposing serious flaws in the reasoning behind the ballot seizure.
The county sued to demand the return of all the 2020 presidential election ballots and related material seized in January pursuant to a federal search warrant. The county claims the FBI relied on bad evidence when it drafted and submitted affidavits to a federal magistrate in support of the warrant request.
A decision in this case will reverberate beyond Georgia and into other looming attempts by the Trump DOJ to rehash the 2020 election results, and change the way we cast votes, by using disproved allegations and hollow arguments
.Back in January, you may have questioned, as I did, what new information could possibly exist to show evidence of a crime in an election that was already challenged in court, wherein the ballots were recounted, and independently audited and Trump’s loss affirmed. You may also have wondered, like me, what new probable cause there was to convince a federal magistrate, years after the election, to allow the FBI to seize those same ballots.
Friday’s court hearing didn’t help provide convincing answers — and raised more questions about how the FBI agent crafted his affidavit and why a magistrate signed it.
Fulton County asserts that it can demand its ballots back under the legal rule for a party that is “aggrieved by an unlawful search and seizure of property or by the deprivation of property.” The county argues that the FBI’s affidavit is inadequate as to probable cause that a crime was committed, and claims that the FBI agent affiant recklessly left out important facts in “callous disregard” for the truth.
If so, that means the search and seizure violated the Fourth Amendment. On top of that, Fulton County believes the statute of limitations is over for any of the crimes alleged in the affidavit, and that the DOJ’s actions infringe on a state’s right to run its own elections.
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