Fulton Commission Dems mistrust colleague listed as witness for FBI raid
Some Democrats on the Fulton County Commission are questioning whether fellow Commissioner Bridget Thorne can be trusted with confidential information about the county’s legal effort to claw back troves of 2020 election documents seized by the FBI.
Specifically, two of the Democrats say Thorne should not be present in closed-door executive sessions where commissioners discuss legal strategy with attorneys.
Thorne, a Republican who has said there could have been voter fraud in the 2020 election, is listed as a witness in an unsealed affidavit laying out key evidence the U.S. Department of Justice used as probable cause to justify last month’s raid of a county election operations center.
Thorne’s inclusion in the FBI affidavit also has caused some of the county’s Democratic commissioners, and her opponent in this year’s election, to further question whether the commissioner’s loyalty lies with the county or with MAGA Republicans.
Thorne, one of two Republicans on the seven-member commission, said any suggestion she would leak information from an executive session is completely false. She also said her colleagues on the commission should have brought their concerns to her, and not the media.
“I represent a district, so I may not agree with them, but I do represent a voice,” Thorne said in an interview Monday. “All the information (the FBI) had is all public information. It’s something I’ve said before, nothing new.
“I have an affidavit out there already, an affidavit that if I perjure myself, it’s a felony.”
Nonetheless, District 3 Commissioner Dana Barrett, a Democrat who is running for Georgia secretary of state, said Thorne being privy to privileged legal discussions is “a little bit like a fox in the hen house.”
Thorne “is supportive of the other side of a legal case against Fulton County,” Barrett said.
“She’s sitting in the room hearing the strategy about what our defense is, and I think that is a conflict of interest,” Barrett said in an interview. “I think she should recuse herself and not be in executive session for discussion of these matters.”
It is unclear what, if anything, Democrats can do to keep Thorne out of executive session meetings, which are permitted by state law for discussions of pending litigation, personnel matters and real estate transactions.
The other Republican commissioner, Bob Ellis, declined to comment on whether Thorne should be part of those discussions but said it’s typically up to the individual commissioner to recuse themselves if they believe they have a potential conflict of interest.
Commissioner Mo Ivory, a Democrat who represents District 4 but plans to run for commission chair, said she is already being careful what she says around Thorne but acknowledged that Thorne does have a right to be in executive sessions.
“We’re being attacked by the president of the United States, and she is like a 100% supporter of a man who is doing illegal activity, who has no regard for the law, who does not follow the Constitution,” Ivory said. “So, do I worry about one of his biggest fans being a commissioner? Of course.”
District 5 Commissioner Marvin S. Arrington Jr., who also is challenging Commission Chair Robb Pitts in this year’s election, was more succinct. He called Thorne “a mole.”
“We should absolutely have those conversations outside of her presence,” Arrington told the AJC, adding that he agrees that Thorne should not be allowed in executive session discussions on the matter.
In a court filing Tuesday, the county said the FBI affidavit omitted facts and relied on “possible” — rather than probable — cause in securing the search warrant.
The filing says the ballot seizure violated the Fourth Amendment, noting that federal authorities admitted they will find “evidence of a crime only if certain hypotheticals are true.”
The affidavit
About 10 days before the Jan. 28 raid, Thorne said the FBI unexpectedly showed up at her home in Alpharetta, asking her to confirm all the information in her affidavit from 2020.
She said she did not hear from federal authorities again until Feb. 10, when the FBI informed her she was a witness listed in the affidavit for the search warrant.
Now that more than 650 boxes of 2020 ballots have been seized, Thorne said she is “glad” the DOJ has them because she believes in “transparency” and hopes “either side will trust” whatever the federal officials say they find.
“I’m ready to put 2020 to rest,” Thorne said. “There’s been some serious questions about the 2020 election, and to some people, it can’t be answered unless they see the physical ballots.”
Thorne’s opponent in this year’s election, Democrat Maggie Goldman, said she thinks the commissioner is unable to represent the county without bias. Goldman lost to Thorne by a razor-thin margin in 2022.
“We risk her leaking information to the election deniers who started this fight to begin with,” Goldman said in an email.
Thorne responded to that criticism with an insult, saying Goldman “knows nothing.”
“The Democrats want people to believe that all the witnesses sat around the table with the DOJ, the FBI and the president to plot how to retrieve the ballots,” Thorne said. “This couldn’t be further from the truth.”
The affidavit used to justify the Jan. 28 raid attributes the following account to Thorne:
She was asked to assist with testing to ensure all the machines were working properly. While performing the testing in the Georgia World Congress Center, Thorne was assigned to a station where test ballots were printed to run through the machines.
Thorne said “there were stacks of paper to use as test ballots that were unsecured” and that she “could have printed any ballot she wanted.”
Thorne alleged that she saw other people “printing random ballots,” even though all the test ballots had already been printed, and she ripped up some of them.
While she was conducting tests, she said ballots started coming in from an early voting location. She believed these “were actual voted ballots” and they were “removed from the machines and were unattended for a period of time before they were gathered in ballot cases.”
Thorne said her affidavit from 2020 was circulated, leading to her being asked to speak on Dec. 3 of that year during a hearing of the state Senate Judiciary subcommittee, one of the legislative hearings where Rudy Giuliani promoted falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the state’s election at the behest of key Republican leaders.
Thorne said she was fired after she spoke at the hearing, ending her nearly nine years of working for Fulton County Elections.
In Monday’s interview, Thorne said she had no idea the FBI was planning to raid the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center in Union City.
Commissioner Khadijah Abdur-Rahman of District 6 did not respond to a request for an interview. A request to interview board Chairman Pitts also went unanswered.
About the Author
Reed Williams is an enterprise reporter on the Local team at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
