Fulton County urges judge to return 'all' 2020 election files as legal expert exposes Trump's unconstitutional call to 'take over' voting

After the FBI raids in Fulton County, Georgia, where Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was spotted on the ground and President Donald Trump was heard on the phone with agents last week, local officials have filed a motion under seal demanding the return of "all" seized files.

Fulton County specifically and Georgia more broadly have been a fixation of Trump's since 2020, when his attorney Rudy Giuliani defamed election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss and when the president, days before Jan. 6, pressured the state's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find 11,780" votes.

Not even one month ago, the administration attempted to recast the violence of Jan. 6 as the fault of Democrats, claiming "mere trespassers or peaceful protesters" Trump went on to issue blanket pardons to were "treated as insurrectionists." This ignored that Jan. 6 was the culmination of Trump and his allies' monthslong baseless stolen election rhetoric and the Trump campaign's failures to make the case anywhere in court that systemic, election-altering fraud had handed Joe Biden the presidency.

Now, with a loyalist in FBI Director Kash Patel and DNI Gabbard physically present for the raid in an apparent oversight role, the Trump administration is, in the view of local officials, making Fulton County the "epicenter" of the president's newly stated agenda to "nationalize" elections based on feelings that widespread fraud must have occurred for him to lose.

The federal court case against the federal government, County Chairman Robb Pitts said Wednesday at a press conference, demands the return of 2020 election ballots, tabulators, and voter rolls, and additionally "seeks the unsealing of the affidavit that was filed in support of the search warrant that the FBI used to raid our warehouse."

Pitts, remarking that Gabbard's presence signified "something sinister" is "going on," told a reporter that he agreed Fulton County is "in fact the epicenter" of an effort to nationalize elections.

"They're fixated on 2020," Pitts said, calling the raid the "first step of whatever they're going to do to suppress voters" in the fast approaching election cycle, also worrying that the feds may tamper with seized evidence in the absence of an inventory of the 700 or so boxes that were taken.

Fulton County is significant to the president for another reason. It's where his jail mug shot was taken, after DA Fani Willis, a Democrat, launched an election RICO case against Trump and 18 of his allies, only for the case to crash and burn due to Willis' "improper conduct."

The motion comes days after Trump said on ex-FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino's show that Republicans should be saying "We want to take over, we should take over the voting in at least 15 places" and "nationalize the voting."

Benjamin Ginsberg, a Republican election lawyer, made an appearance Tuesday on CNN, telling anchor Jake Tapper that Trump's aims are "certainly not constitutional or legal."

"It's certainly not constitutional or legal. The Constitution does give the power to run elections to the states. Congress can put rules in for Senate and congressional elections. The president has zero authority under the Constitution to do what he's suggesting," Ginsberg said. "As a legal matter, it's wrong."

Ginsberg added that Trump is turning "upside-down" conservative Republican orthodoxy.

"For years and years, it has been an article of faith that power should come up from the states to the federal government," he said.

In a 2020 op-ed, two months before the election Trump still won't admit he lost, Ginsberg wrote that the president, his then-Attorney General Bill Barr, and Republican lawmakers were wrong to say U.S. elections are marred by widespread, systemic fraud and "rigged" as a consequence of mail-in ballots.

Ginsberg, citing his experience working for Republican causes since 1984, wrote that his job was to look for fraud and he did not find "proof of widespread fraud."

"Each Election Day since 1984, I've been in precincts looking for voting violations, or in Washington helping run the nationwide GOP Election Day operations, overseeing the thousands of Republican lawyers and operatives each election on alert for voting fraud," he said. "The truth is that after decades of looking for illegal voting, there's no proof of widespread fraud. At most, there are isolated incidents — by both Democrats and Republicans. Elections are not rigged."

Ginsberg, also remembered for playing a key role in the Florida recount in the 2000 presidential election that led to the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore and resulted in George W. Bush's presidency, added that it was "painful" for him to conclude that "rule of law" Republicans were politicizing the mail-in vote to gain an "electoral advantage," not out of "sincere concern."

The attorney went on to testify before the Jan. 6 Committee that the 2020 election, unlike the 2000 election, "was not close," and the Trump campaign's dozens of lawsuits simply failed to establish or even allege the fraud that the president and his allies decried outside of court.

"In all the cases that were brought—60 cases, with more than 180 counts—the simple fact is that the Trump campaign did not make its case," Ginsberg testified.

Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report.