A federal judge on Tuesday halted the Justice Department’s attempt to obtain names, addresses, and contact information for hundreds of 2020 election workers and volunteers in Fulton County, Georgia.
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President Donald Trump had called for the DOJ to look into that year’s election results across the state after claiming the outcome was tainted by fraud. The final vote count showed Joe Biden ahead by around 12,000 votes.
Regarding the DOJ’s inquiry into the election results, U.S. District Judge William M. Ray said that the typical five-year statute of limitations for violations expired in 2025.
According to findings collected by volunteers from the nonpartisan election watchdog group VoterGA, various inconsistencies were found within the 2020 election in Georgia.
“The morning after the election, [Secretary of State] Brad Raffensperger acknowledged that Donald Trump had an insurmountable 103,750 vote lead over Joe Biden with only 2% of 4.7 million votes (about 94,000) left to count,” VoterGA’s summary states. It adds that Raffensperger could confirm the accuracy of Trump’s lead due to county reports that had to be surrendered by 10 p.m. on election night.
The group said it also found that, although the secretary of state had agreed to complete vote counting that day, Raffensperger allowed the process to continue for a few more days, certifying an additional 4,998 million votes. Additionally, nearly 300,000 “phantom votes” were added to the election results, altering the result of the presidential election, VoterGA claims.
In response to Tuesday’s action by the district court judge, VoterGA co-founder Garland Favorito told the Daily Signal what his group advocates to improve election integrity in Georgia.
“We advocate for hand-marked paper ballots so there’s no machine intervention,” Favorito said. “We also advocate for publicly recorded hand-counts to ensure the results are correct.”
The Daily Signal also reached out to the FBI’s office in Atlanta, but the bureau declined to comment.
Following his return to the Oval Office last year, Trump instructed various federal agencies to investigate the 2020 election. In addition, he has urged Republicans in Congress to approve various reforms to ensure election integrity.
Earlier this year, the FBI took hold of over 600 boxes of voting records from Fulton County for investigative purposes. In April, Dan Bishop, a former Republican congressman who voted against certifying the results of the 2020 election, submitted the subpoena to obtain the election workers’ names and contact information. This came after he was chosen by former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to supervise election integrity investigations nationwide.
While arguing for the subpoena, prosecutors stated that the purpose of the subpoena was to contact election workers who might be able to provide useful information in their ongoing investigation.
Although the five-year statute of limitations has expired, the DOJ found possible charges regarding the election that could be pursued: ones related to if county officials kept voting records as the law mandates.
According to Ray’s decision to block the DOJ, Bishop’s subpoena was unlikely to provide information to aid in the investigation, as many of the election workers and volunteers did not oversee record retention in the following years. Record retention is supervised by county workers.
The judge ruled that an investigation into the misconduct of anyone that could have affected the certification of Georgia’s election would not be an acceptable use of the grand jury and its subpoena power.
The DOJ has expanded its investigations into other states, including investigation into Arizona’s election results from 2020, interrogation of election employees in Wisconsin, and a search of the offices of an Ohio voter registration group.
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This article was originally published at The Daily Signal. Photo Credit: KATRIN BOLOVTSOVA on Pexels.
