|
The Fulton County raid is part of Trump's total war on voting
And it's disturbing that a magistrate judge signed off on it.
|
| |||||||||||||||
 |
PN is supported by paid subscribers. Become one ⬇️
While it may seem like the entire federal government is currently focused on violently attacking immigrants and anyone who supports them, that’s simply not true. A significant part of the federal government is also focused on destroying free and fair elections.
Now, that’s multitasking.
It’s honestly difficult to unpack all the ways in which the administration is undermining the safety, security, and constitutionality of elections in genuinely unprecedented ways. This isn’t intended to minimize the decades-long Republican efforts to dismantle the Voting Rights Act — looking at you, John Roberts. Nor should we overlook that conservatives have long touted nonexistent voter fraud as a way to suppress votes in Democratic-leaning jurisdictions. But the efforts of the Trump administration go far beyond that, into the dumbest and most dangerous places.
 |
|
The FBI’s recent raid on the elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, where federal agents descended with a search warrant alleging that 2020 ballots and other election material were evidence of a crime, is one of those things where every way you can describe it sounds overwrought. It’s unprecedented. It’s unbelievable. It’s catastrophic. The federal government seized the county’s 2020 ballots, ballot images, voter rolls, and tabulator tapes as part of President Trump’s ongoing attempt to prove he won the 2020 election.
The DOJ tried to subpoena Fulton County’s 2020 election records last fall, then filed a civil suit in December when the county didn’t respond to the subpoena. But hey, why go the civil route when you can gin up long-debunked allegations of criminal conduct to get a search warrant?
And speaking of that warrant — it’s genuinely distressing that a magistrate judge signed off on this.
Restart the steal
Magistrate Judge Catherine Salinas is no right-wing election denier or newbie. She’s been in the job for 10 years and has a background as a public defender and in legal aid. So, this can’t be automatically chalked up to malice or incompetence. However, the affidavit supporting the search warrant is fatally flawed in three glaringly obvious ways.
First, it relies on long-debunked allegations that have already been thoroughly investigated. These are things like missing ballot images or claims of duplicate ballots, evidence only of regrettable, yet routine, human error, not some nefarious plot to deny Trump the election. Beyond the fact that there were multiple audits and investigations, all of which determined that any errors did not affect the accuracy of the election results, there’s also the whole thing where Fulton County’s 2020 ballots were counted, then recounted, then recounted again, with the same results.
Fun fact: the brain geniuses in Kash Patel’s shop did not reach out to Georgia state investigators to get copies or any information about those past investigations, because they wouldn’t want any facts to get in the way of their conspiracy theories.