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A federal judge on Wednesday denied Fulton County Board of Commissioners’ request to force the FBI to return more than 600 boxes of 2020 general election ballots seized earlier this year from an election facility in Atlanta.
In a 68-page ruling, U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee said county officials failed to show that their rights had been “callously disregarded” — a key legal standard in the dispute — and had not demonstrated they would suffer irreparable harm if the ballots remained in federal custody.
Still, Boulee sharply criticized the circumstances surrounding the FBI’s seizure of the election materials in the heavily scrutinized battleground state.
“This Court acknowledges that the events leading up to this case are, in a variety of ways, unprecedented,” Boulee wrote, later adding that “the seizure in this case was certainly not perfect.”
The FBI seized the ballots in January as part of an investigation into alleged “irregularities” in the 2020 election in Fulton County, where President Donald Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed widespread fraud cost him the state.
An affidavit supporting the federal search warrant cited concerns involving missing ballot images and allegedly duplicated ballots.
Fulton County sued the federal government in February, arguing the seizure was unlawful and disrupted local election administration.
Robb Pitts, chair of the county’s Board of Commissioners, criticized the judge’s decision Wednesday and vowed to continue fighting the matter in court.
“I certainly agree with the court that the FBI warrant was ‘defective,’ ‘problematic’ and ‘troubling,’ and that the events in this case are ‘unprecedented,’” Pitts said in a statement. “But I strongly disagree with the judge’s denial of Fulton County’s request for the FBI to return the election records it wrongly seized.”
A prominent elections expert testified last month that the evidence cited by the FBI did not support allegations of criminal conduct, arguing that the purported ballot irregularities were either misunderstood or did not amount to election crimes.
The legal battle intensified this week after a federal grand jury subpoena became public Monday showing the Justice Department is seeking the names and contact information of Fulton County election workers and volunteers involved in the 2020 presidential election.
Fulton County played a central role in post-election efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 results in Georgia.
After the election, Trump famously urged Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” — the exact number needed to reverse Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
The county was also at the center of a sweeping election interference case brought by former Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis against Trump and several allies. That case was later dropped after Willis was removed over conflict-of-interest allegations.
