ATLANTA (AP) — The Department of Justice is seeking the names of every person who worked in the 2020 election in Georgia’s Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold that Donald Trump has long accused of widespread voter fraud he says cost him victory against Joe Biden in the state that year.
Lawyers for the county filed a motion on Monday night to quash a grand jury subpoena that asks for the names and contact information of county employees and volunteer
poll workers. This latest action comes after the FBI in January went to a Fulton County elections warehouse and seized ballots and other documents from the 2020 election, which Georgia’s certified totals showed Trump lost in the state to Biden by 11,779 votes out of nearly 5 million cast. Trump still insists the 2020 election was stolen from him even though judges and his own attorney general concluded otherwise.
Monday's court filing says the subpoena is meant to “target, harass and punish the President's perceived political opponents.” The request is “grossly overbroad and untethered to any reasonable need,” the county's lawyers argue.
The January seizure of the ballots and other records from Fulton County was the first in a string of moves by Trump's Republican administration to obtain past election records from critical swing states. The FBI in March used a subpoena to get records related to an audit of the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County in Arizona. And the Justice Department in April demanded that Michigan’s Wayne County turn over its ballots from the 2024 election, which Trump won against Biden's vice president, Kamala Harris.
The Justice Department is also fighting numerous states in court for access to voter data that includes sensitive personal information. Election officials, including some Republicans, have said handing over the information would violate state and federal privacy laws.
