A referral by former Trump campaign lawyer Kurt Olsen led to the recent FBI raid that seized 2020 election ballots from a Fulton County, Georgia, elections center, a newly unsealed federal court document revealed Tuesday.
The document, an affidavit by FBI Special Agent Hugh Raymond Evans, said that the FBI is conducting a “criminal investigation into whether any of the improprieties” alleged to have occurred in voting processes and ballot counting in Fulton County in 2020 “were intentional acts that violated federal criminal laws.”
“The FBI criminal investigation originated from a referral sent by Kurt Olsen, Presidentially appointed Director of Election Security and Integrity,” the affidavit document in U.S. District Court in Atlanta says.
Olsen worked on efforts after the 2020 election to overturn President Donald Trump’s loss in that contest to former President Joe Biden.
Evans’ affidavit was submitted by federal prosecutors as part of an application asking a federal magistrate judge to sign a search warrant for the election center. Olsen reportedly was hired last fall to investigate election issues.
The affidavit was ordered unsealed by Atlanta federal court Judge J.P. Boulee, who was nominated by Trump, after the chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners and county Board of Registration and Elections sued the federal government over the seizure of the ballots and sought their return.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was present at the election center on Jan. 28 when FBI agents raided the site and seized ballots.
Gabbard’s presence and the raid itself have been strongly criticized by Democratic lawmakers and others concerned that President Donald Trump is undercutting confidence in the upcoming midterm elections while resurrecting long-discredited claims that he actually won the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
Gabbard has said was at the election center at the direction of Trump. The president, in turn, has said that Gabbard was there at the “insistence” of Attorney General Pam Bondi.
On Tuesday, two Democratic senators, Alex Padilla of California and Virginia’s Mark Warner, called on Gabbard to immediately schedule an intelligence community briefing for senators on election security concerns ahead of the midterm elections.
“The request comes amid unprecedented investigations by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), purportedly to address ‘evidence’ of election vulnerabilities and manipulation of election results, which have not been substantiated,” the senators’ offices said in a statement.
The warrant signed by the magistrate judge in Georgia authorized the FBI to seize all physical ballots from the 2020 general election in Fulton County, including absentee ballots; tabulator tapes for every voting machine; and the vote rolls from the county.
The affidavit signed by Evans, the FBI agent, says, “Following the November 3, 2020, presidential election, there were many allegations of electoral impropriety relating to the voting process and ballot counting in Fulton County, Georgia.”
“Some of those allegations have been disproven while some of those allegations have been substantiated, including through admissions by Fulton County,” Evans wrote.
The agent said the investigation is focused on several “deficiencies or defects with the” 2020 election and tabulation of votes.
“The tabulator machines used by Fulton County are designed to create and save a scanned image of each ballot,” Evans wrote. “Fulton County has admitted that it does not have scanned images of all the 528,777 ballots counted during the Original Count or the 527,925 ballots counted during the Recount.”
“Fulton County has confirmed that during the Recount of votes, some ballots were scanned multiple times,” the agent wrote. “Ballot images made available in response to public record requests show ballots with unique markings duplicated within the ballot images.”
Evans also said that auditors who counted votes by hand reported vote tallies that were inconsistent with the actual number of votes within a batch, and that Fulton County reported two different vote tallies on the deadline to report recount results and on the subsequent day.
“If these deficiencies were the result of intentional action, it would be a violation of federal law regardless of whether the failure to retain records or the deprivation of a fair tabulation of a vote was outcome determinative for any particular election or race,” the affidavit said.
