Fulton County officials say they're filing a federal lawsuit challenging the FBI seizure of 2020 election records in Ga.

Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1 10m
Fulton County officials say they're filing a federal lawsuit challenging the FBI's seizure of 2020 election records in Georgia.

Fulton County Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr. said the county argues that the search warrant and seizure went beyond what federal authorities were legally permitted to do and violated local control of elections. Arrington said the county plans to seek the immediate return of materials and will request to have the documents remain under seal in the state.

“I’ve asked the county attorney to take any and all steps available to fight this criminal search warrant,” Arrington said in a press release. “The search warrant, I believe, is not proper, but I think that there are ways that we can limit it. We want to ask for forensic accounting, we want the documents to stay in the State of Georgia under seal, and we want to do whatever we can to protect voter information.”

Arrington argued that while the FBI was authorized to copy records under a separate court order, agents instead took the original copies, including in-person, absentee and provisional ballots.

“They got copies of our voter rolls and all the original ballots,” Arrington said, adding that the county has concerns about the lack of an official chain-of-custody inventory at the time of the seizure.

“We will not give one inch to those who seek to take control of elections in Fulton County — not today, not tomorrow, not ever. We’re going to fight this in court with every resource that we have,” County Chairman Robb Pitts told reporters last week.

https://www.ms.now/news/fulton-county-is-suing-fbi-over-new-2020-election-probe-in-georgia