Ignore FBI raid noise and focus on the real story: Free and fair elections
For the purposes of this column, let’s set a few things aside:
Greenland.
Venezuela.
ICE.
Minneapolis.
Jan. 6.
Charlie Kirk.
Donald Trump’s impeachments.
Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities.
The bruising on Trump’s hands.
Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Hillary Clinton’s emails.
The COVID shutdown.
Transgender athletes.
Kristi Noem’s outfits.
Pete Hegseth’s Signal messages.
Gavin Newsom’s X account.
The Epstein files.
Your views on Stephen Miller, Greg Bovino, Pam Bondi, Fani Willis, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Ilhan Omar.
Your personal definitions of fascism and democracy.
Put all of that in a box and focus on one issue while you read this: the integrity of free and fair elections in the United States of America.
Because if we no longer have faith in that, the unraveling of this 250-year-old experiment in the governance of free people is happening faster than we realize.
The topic is worth our undivided attention, free of the maddening “whatabouts” that permeate any political discussion these days.
Trump can’t let his 2020 loss go
Joe Biden won the 2020 election in Georgia. The results were verified, audited and/or recounted on three different occasions, and confirmed each time.
President Trump did all he could to alter the outcome, instructing Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.” But Raffensperger stood his ground. So did Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, then-Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and Republican Attorney General Chris Carr.
For more than five years, the president has been unable to put the 2020 election behind him. The Department of Justice has made several attempts to pick at the scab, and each time, despite opening old wounds, the courts have declined to relitigate the outcome.
Still, emboldened by Trump’s 2024 reelection, the U.S. Department of Justice and Georgia’s State Election Board issued new subpoenas last year seeking access to 2020 election records, and those requests are being litigated.
Kemp has repeatedly stood by the 2020 results, going so far as to challenge President Trump on social media in 2023, declaring, “The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen. For three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward — under oath — and provide anything in a court of law. Our elections in Georgia are secure, accessible, and fair and will continue to be as long as I am governor.”
But what happens when he’s not?
Georgia voters will elect our next governor this November, when they’ll also cast votes for every statewide office and a U.S. Senate seat.
That’s why the Jan. 28 FBI’s raid on the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center’s massive warehouse in Union City is so important.
So far, there are more questions than answers:
- Who ordered the raid?
- What is the FBI looking for in the 700 boxes of ballots they carted away?
- And why was Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on the scene?
Trump ‘jokes’ about canceling elections
On Jan. 21, while attending the World Economic Forum, President Trump promised that “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did” in 2020. Some Fulton County officials have already speculated they may be targets of the probe.
Trump’s endgame now appears to have less to do with rewriting history than it does with securing the outcomes he wants this November and in 2028.
In 2021, the state Legislature passed a law enabling the Georgia State Election Board to replace any “underperforming” county board.
As my colleague Patricia Murphy noted in a Jan. 29 column, “the current majority on the State Election Board now includes three Republican members whom Trump infamously singled out in 2024 as ‘pit bulls fighting for honestly, transparency and victory.’” Two of them were on site as the FBI raided the warehouse.
Some local election officials fear the result of the FBI raid will be a Trump-endorsed panel overseeing Georgia’s elections.
Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, you should care about what happens next in Fulton County. Your vote matters, and you should be sure it counts.
President Trump commented recently that his party has been so successful that “when you think about it, we shouldn’t even have an election.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to walk back the comments, saying the president was “joking.”
It’s not funny.
Instead of jokes, the administration should provide some answers about what’s next. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and DNI Director Gabbard were slated to speak on Friday at the winter conference of Secretaries of State in Washington, D.C. It was reasonable to assume we might get some insight into the FBI investigation. They didn’t show.
The only official word Georgia voters have gotten about the warehouse search came from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who said we should view the raid as a sign that “election integrity is extraordinarily important to this administration.”
If that’s the case, and somewhere in those 700 boxes of documents is evidence the Fulton County Election Board, Georgia’s Republican leadership, multiple Trump-appointed judges, members of Trump’s 2020 senior team and former Vice President Mike Pence all got it wrong, let’s see it. You can stand in opposition to the president and all he stands for and still want to be certain your vote was not compromised.
If, as seems far more likely, the result of this effort to overturn a free and fair election fails again to produce any evidence of fraud, it’s time to say enough is enough. You can wear a MAGA hat and still stand up for one of the most sacred tenets of our democracy.
Our right to vote is sacred. It is the one way in which every American can use their voice to help determine the kind of nation we want to be.
For the last five years, Gov. Kemp and Secretary Raffensperger have defied the president to defend the voters of Georgia. They have put principle over party. That’s not easy to do in 2026 America. Whether you wear a red jersey or a blue one, you should demand our leaders continue to fight for the freedom we have to determine who will lead our state and our country.
Andrew Morse is the president and publisher of the AJC. He serves on the AJC editorial board.
About the Author
Andrew Morse is the president and publisher of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the flagship newspaper of Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises. Before joining the AJC, Morse held senior positions at CNN, Bloomberg, and ABC News.
