Judge denies Fulton County's request to return 2020 ballots seized by FBI
Source: CBS News
Updated on: May 6, 2026 / 7:26 PM EDT
A federal judge in Georgia denied a motion by officials in Fulton County, Georgia, to return ballots and other materials from the 2020 election that were taken by the FBI in a court-authorized search earlier this year. U.S. District Judge Jean-Paul Boulee said Wednesday that attorneys representing Fulton County did not establish enough evidence to prove that the FBI affidavit at the center of the case was deficient in a way that had a "callous disregard" for the county's rights.
Boulee, however, said that the affidavit was "defective in some respects" by including misleading statements about the final ballot count in 2020 in the county, and that there were "troubling" omissions about ballot mechanisms in the documents.
"While the Affidavit was certainly far from perfect, this is not a situation where an officer left out all the facts that might undermine probable cause or where an officer intentionally lied," Boulee wrote, adding, "the Court cannot say that the Affidavit was so deficient that its shortcomings rise to the 'high[] threshold' of callous disregard."
Boulee's decision comes more than two months after FBI agents executed a search warrant at a Fulton County elections office, seeking to take "all physical ballots" from 2020, as well as tapes from vote-tabulating machines, ballot images and voter rolls. Home to Atlanta, deep-blue Fulton County was crucial to former President Joe Biden's narrow 2020 win in Georgia, and Mr. Trump and his allies have long alleged — without evidence — that the county was awash with fraud.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/judge-denies-fulton-county-request-to-return-2020-ballots-seized-by-fbi/
Link to ORDER (PDF) - https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.gand.355452/gov.uscourts.gand.355452.108.0.pdf
REFERENCE - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143659850
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