By KATE BRUMBACK and ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press
ATLANTA (AP) — The FBI obtained a search warrant to seize hundreds of boxes of ballots from election offices in Fulton County, Georgia, as part of a criminal investigation into possible “deficiencies or defects” in the vote count in the 2020 contest lost by President Donald Trump, according to an affidavit unsealed Tuesday.
The affidavit provides the first public justification for an FBI search last month that targeted a county that Trump and allies have long seen as central to their false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
But the allegations outlined in the affidavit are largely based on claims that have long been made by people who assert that there was fraud in the 2020 election. Audits, state officials, courts and Trump’s own former attorney general have rejected the idea that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election that could have altered the outcome.
Among the “deficiencies or defects” investigators are looking at is Fulton County’s admission that it does not have scanned images of all the ballots counted during the original count or the recount, according to the affidavit. Fulton County has also confirmed that some ballots were scanned multiple times during the recount, the affidavit says.
“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 document says.
The affidavit says seizures of the election records was necessary to determine whether election records were destroyed and or the tabulation of votes included materially false votes.” It cites potential violations of a law regarding the preservation and retention of election records, a misdemeanor. It also cites a law that makes it a crime to “knowingly and willfully” deprive residents of a “fair and impartially conducted election process,” which is a felony.
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