A federal court unsealed a battle between Fulton County, Georgia, and the Justice Department over a grand jury subpoena seeking information about individuals who helped administer the 2020 election.
The newly public docket offers the clearest look yet at a legal dispute stemming from a federal grand jury investigation in which the DOJ sought the identities, home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and other information of people who assisted in administering the 2020 general election in Fulton County.
Fulton County officials are attempting to block the subpoena, arguing it is overly broad and threatens the privacy of election workers. The case is one of the most high-profile legal disputes involving the Trump administration’s scrutiny of the county’s handling of the 2020 election, an issue that has remained politically charged since President Donald Trump challenged his election loss in Georgia and other key swing states nearly six years ago.
The federal investigation has drawn fierce criticism from county leaders. Fulton County Board of Commissioners Chairman Robb Pitts told the Washington Examiner on Monday that officials filed a motion to quash the subpoena on May 4. The case was initially sealed, but the county later sought to make the proceedings public, a request joined by several media organizations.
“The Court has ordered that the subpoena not be enforced while our Motion to Quash is being considered,” Pitts said in a statement after the court granted the motion to unseal.
U.S. District Judge William M. Ray II, an appointee of Trump, held a hearing on the county’s subpoena challenge on May 19 and created a briefing schedule for additional filing deadlines for both parties due later this month.
In a May 28 post-hearing brief, Special Attorney to the Attorney General Dan Bishop, a former Republican representative of North Carolina, urged the court to reject Fulton County’s motion and grant the government’s cross-motion to enforce the subpoena. Bishop argued that Fulton County is improperly asking the judge to speculate about whether any future charges might be barred by statutes of limitations before investigators have completed their work.
“Given that the investigation is ongoing, that simply is not feasible or procedurally proper,” Bishop wrote in the 22-page brief, arguing that prematurely evaluating possible charges would “circumvent the grand jury’s chief function as an investigative body.”
Federal grand jury subpoenas are among the DOJ’s most powerful investigative tools and generally receive substantial deference from courts. Prosecutors typically need only show that the requested information may be relevant to an investigation, while parties seeking to quash a subpoena face a significant legal burden.
The unsealing order does not resolve the underlying subpoena dispute. Instead, it allows the public and media access to the docket and future filings as the court weighs whether the subpoena should ultimately be enforced.
“As the public can now see, Fulton County is fighting and will always fight to protect the rights of our election officials, election workers, and voters,” Pitts said.
In recent days, lawyers for the county, including prominent Trump critics Norm Eisen and Abbe Lowell, have been admitted as the counsel of record for the plaintiffs challenging the DOJ’s subpoenas.
The unsealing effort comes months following a late-January FBI search warrant execution in which federal agents seized more than 600 boxes of election-related records from the Fulton County Elections Hub and Operations Center.
Fulton County has occupied a central role in election-related disputes since 2020. Trump and his allies have repeatedly argued that election irregularities affected the outcome in Georgia, while state and local election officials have consistently rejected those allegations.
JUDGE DENIES FULTON COUNTY BID TO RETRIEVE 2020 BALLOTS SEIZED BY FBI
During the May 19 hearing, a prosecutor working with the grand jury in Fulton County told a federal judge that the DOJ intends to interview local election workers who took part in the 2020 election process once it receives information from the related subpoena.
So far, the county has been unsuccessful in its efforts to regain ballot materials seized by the FBI in January. For now, the government’s subpoena for additional records related to election officials remains on hold while the court considers Fulton County’s request to block enforcement.
