American Thinker

by Joe Fried

    The FBI raided Fulton County’s Election Hub and Operations Center. The raid was authorized by a judge’s warrant, which is under seal. However, some news organizations have gotten a copy and are reporting that the FBI is seeking several types of records.

    ABC News reports:

    The search warrant authorized the FBI to search for “all physical ballots from the 2020 General Election,” in addition to tabulator tapes from voting machines and 2020 voter rolls, among other documents.

    It is likely that the warrant also includes items that were requested by the Department of Justice in December. Those items were “all used and void ballots, stubs of all ballots, signature envelopes, and corresponding envelope digital files.”

    On Wednesday (January 28), the FBI filled three large trucks with 700 boxes of ballots and other seized documents.

    The warrant was signed by magistrate judge Catharine Salinas, and it states that the FBI is seeking material that “constitutes evidence of the commission of a criminal offense” and evidence “used as the means of committing a criminal offense.”

    According to ABC News, the warrant lists possible violations of two specific statutes. One pertains to the required retention period for election records, and the other specifies “criminal penalties for people, including election officials, who intimidate voters or knowingly procure false votes or false voter registrations.”

    The reference to the first statute (required retention period) suggests that the FBI has possibly learned that someone in Fulton County is destroying records. Because of ongoing litigation, those records should have been retained.

    The second statute (“knowingly procure false votes”) suggests that the FBI may have uncovered some sort of ballot-harvesting scheme, where registrations were stolen or fabricated so that votes could be rendered by made-up people, illegal aliens, or out-of-state voters.

Could there be a whistleblower in Fulton County

    Of course, many news organizations reported the story with typical left-wing spin:

•     Reuters: The FBI is “pursuing U.S. President Donald Trump’s false claims...”
•     PBS: “Baseless claims of voter fraud have been a focus of President Trump...”
•     Georgia Recorder: “The County was at the center of “President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen in Georgia and other swing states.”
•     Politico: “Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed that former President Joe Biden did not actually win the 2020 presidential election.”

    We can expect those media organizations to reject anything the FBI finds.

In addition, Democrats are already making excuses. Some of them seem to imply that the FBI will manipulate the findings. Fulton County commissioner Marvin Arrington (Democrat) stated,

These are the original voting records, original absentee ballots. Once that stuff leaves our custody, where is the chain of custody  How can we know if we’re going to get everything back  How can we know if they might do something mischievous

    Robb Pitt, chairman of the Fulton Board of Commissioners, expressed these concerns:

    I can no longer as chair of this board, satisfy not only the citizens of Atlanta, but also the citizens of this world, that those ballots are still secure. So that is a major concern that I have right now.

    Trump critics have expressed surprise that the FBI would seek election documents, since 2020 election results have already been “audited” several times. However, those were not real audits. They were merely counting exercises.

    A true audit also entails authentication. For example, were ballots submitted in a timely manner, and were they properly signed  Are the voters registered citizens, and are they voting from the proper jurisdictions  Are there chain of custody records that can be used to trace the vote to each person between the voter and the final tabulation records  The self-audits conducted by Fulton County have not answered any of those questions.

    Recently, I had a conversation with Garland Favorito, a co-founder of VoterGA, which is a nonprofit organization promoting election integrity. Although the raid had not taken place at that time, Favorito identified several issues that might explain why the FBI is now seeking records.

    Immediately after the 2020 election, six poll-watchers claimed that several ballots contained anomalies. The signature ink appeared to be toner, abnormal paper was used, or the ballots lacked creases, even though they had to be folded to fit in the mailing envelope. Most of these ballots lacked markings for any of the down-ballot races.

    As a result, Mr. Favorito filed a lawsuit, seeking the right to inspect the paper ballots. He was denied access because, according to lower courts, he lacked standing. In 2022, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that he did have standing. Nevertheless, Fulton County has refused to give access to the ballots.

    Other problems in the election records include the following:

•     Fulton County has acknowledged that, contrary to legal requirements, 315,000 early vote ballots were unsupported by signed poll worker tabulator tapes.
•     Garland Favorito also noted that thousands of scanned ballot image files were “impossible.” For example, the tif image files were dated hours or days in advance of the SHA authentication files, even though the two files are produced simultaneously.
•     4,000 image files had precisely the same timestamp, even though it takes about 1 second to scan each one.
•     130,000 mail-in ballots had no SHA file whatever, even though SHA files are required by Georgia law.
•     For almost 18,000 votes, there are no paper or image files whatever.
•     There was a report (from an election staffer) that signatures were not reviewed in Fulton County, despite a legal requirement.

    Additional issues are identified here.

    President Trump is watching these operations with great interest. While in Davos last week, he vowed that “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did” regarding the 2020 presidential election. Let’s hope that is the case.

    Joe Fried is an Ohio-based CPA and the author of Debunked  An auditor reviews the 2020 election — and the lessons learned. In that book, Joe argues that the 2020 election should not have been certified. In addition, Joe has assisted various attorneys representing January 6 defendants. His totally free Substack account is found at joefriedcpa.substack.com.