\n<\/p>\n
ATLANTA — <\/span>A federal judge plans to hear arguments Friday on a demand by officials<\/a> in Georgia’s Fulton County that the FBI return seized ballots and other materials from the 2020 election.<\/p>\n U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee wrote in a scheduling order that the hearing was needed after the two sides failed to reach an agreement in court-ordered mediation. <\/p>\n The Jan. 28 seizure<\/a> from a warehouse<\/a> near Atlanta targeted the elections hub in Georgia’s most populous county, which is heavily Democratic and includes most of the city of Atlanta. Fulton County has been at the center of unfounded claims<\/a> by President Donald Trump and his allies<\/a> that widespread election fraud cost him reelection.<\/p>\n The FBI’s move was one of several actions by the Trump administration that have alarmed Democrats and many election officials who are concerned it is using law enforcement to pursue the president’s personal grievances and is planning ways to interfere<\/a> in this year’s midterm elections The FBI also used a subpoena earlier this month<\/a> to obtain records related to a controversial audit of the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County in Arizona, another battleground state Trump lost that year<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the same time, the Justice Department is fighting numerous states in court for access to voter data<\/a> that includes sensitive personal information. Election officials, including some Republicans, have said handing over the information would violate state and federal privacy laws.<\/p>\n Lawyers for Fulton County argued in a court filing that the seizure of its documents was \u201cimproper and unjustified\u201d and demonstrates \u201ccallous disregard\u201d for the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. The Justice Department seeks to \u201cset a precedent that would grant the federal government unchecked power to interfere with the local administration of elections,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n Justice Department attorneys argued that preparing a detailed affidavit and presenting it to a judge \u201cis the exact opposite of \u2018callous disregard\u2019\u201d for those constitutional rights. \u201cTheir goal to disrupt an ongoing federal criminal investigation is clear,\u201d they wrote of Fulton County officials.<\/p>\n The Justice Department said it is investigating \u201cirregularities that occurred during the 2020 presidential election in the County\u201d and identified two laws that might have been violated. One requires election records to be maintained for 22 months, while the other prohibits procuring, casting or tabulating false, fictitious or fraudulent ballots.<\/p>\n The filing said the FBI is looking into whether Fulton County properly retained ballot images; whether some ballots were scanned and counted multiple times; whether unfolded, unmailed ballots were counted as mail-in absentee ballots; and potential irregularities concerning tabulator tapes from the scanners used to count ballots. <\/p>\n Fulton County’s lawyers wrote that the \u201cdeficiencies\u201d or \u201cdefects\u201d in the county’s handling of the 2020 election cited in the affidavit are the kinds of human errors that commonly occur without any intentional wrongdoing and cannot establish probable cause.<\/p>\n To support their claims, Fulton officials submitted a sworn declaration from Ryan Macias, an election technology and security expert who advised the county during the 2020 election. He said the affidavit contains \u201ca multitude of false or misleading statements and omissions\u201d and offered explanations for the alleged \u201cdeficiencies.\u201d<\/p>\n Investigations by the Georgia secretary of state and independent reviews contradict the core allegations of the affidavit<\/a>, which is \u201crife with statements from witnesses lacking credibility, with extraordinary and undisclosed biases,\u201d Fulton’s lawyers argued. <\/p>\n Georgia’s votes in the 2020 presidential race were counted three times<\/a>, including once by hand, and each count affirmed Democrat Joe Biden’s win<\/a>.<\/p>\n Federal government lawyers rejected the idea that the FBI agent who wrote the affidavit \u201cintentionally or recklessly misled\u201d the judge, writing that \u201cthe supposed misrepresentations and omissions flagged by Petitioners are illusory and\/or immaterial.” They also asserted that a lapse of the statute of limitations on the potential crimes does not negate probable cause.<\/p>\n Justice Department lawyers say they don’t believe the records were \u201cproperly retained and preserved\u201d and wrote that Fulton County officials \u201ccan hardly claim a meaningful interest\u201d in the records because the clerk of courts previously sought permission from a judge to destroy them.<\/p>\n The department also noted that a federal magistrate judge reviewed the FBI affidavit and signed off on the search warrant. Fulton County sought to have the FBI agent who wrote the affidavit testify at Friday\u2019s hearing, but the Justice Department objected and the judge sided with the federal government and quashed the subpoena.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n