Fulton County, Georgia, is suing the federal government for the return of 2020 election documents that the FBI seized in a raid last week.

A county spokesperson said on Feb. 4 that the county filed a motion in federal court in the Northern District of Georgia requesting the return of all 2020 election files that the FBI took on Jan. 28 under a search warrant.

The FBI carted away hundreds of boxes of ballots and other documents. A cover sheet for the warrant said the law enforcement agency was seeking all ballots and voter rolls, tabulator tapes from scanners used to tally votes, and electronic ballot images.

Fulton County Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr. said the county asked the federal court to limit the warrant to provide an opportunity for an accounting of the seized documents and to request that they remain in the state.

The warrant was executed on Jan. 28 at the Fulton County Elections Hub and Operation Center in Fairburn, Georgia, not far from Atlanta.

President Donald Trump has long argued that election improprieties in the state contributed to his loss in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election. Weeks after the vote, Trump called Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, urging him to investigate.

President Joe Biden was declared the winner of Georgia’s 16 electoral votes in the 2020 election. Biden received 2,473,633 votes, or 49.5 percent of the statewide vote, compared with Trump’s 2,461,854 votes, or 49.3 percent of the statewide vote, according to officially certified results.

In December 2025, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed suit against the county, seeking voting records from the 2020 election.

​​Last month, when discussing the 2020 election, Trump said that “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did” but did not elaborate.

County officials have expressed concern over Trump’s plans for the midterm elections in November that will determine control of Congress.

Fulton County Chairman Robb Pitts said “this case is not only about Fulton County. This is about elections across Georgia and across the nation.”

“The president himself and his allies, they refuse to accept the fact that they lost,” Pitts said. “And even if they had won Georgia, he would still have lost the presidency.”

Democratic lawmakers in Congress have also questioned why Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, was present during the search in Fulton County, given that she is not part of the law enforcement community.

Gabbard sent a letter to senior Democrats on the U.S. House and Senate intelligence committees on Feb. 2, saying the president asked her to attend at the search “under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security.”

Democratic officials in the state have also raised concerns about DOJ lawsuits, mostly aimed at Democratic states, that are seeking detailed voter data, including birthdates and partial Social Security numbers.

Trump said on Feb. 3 that Democrat-controlled places like Atlanta, which is largely within Fulton County, have “horrible corruption on elections, and the federal government should not allow that.”

Trump added that states were “agents of the federal government to count the votes. If they can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.”

Approached by The Epoch Times, the DOJ declined to comment on the new motion.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared Feb. 4, 2026, in The Epoch Times.