Fulton County officials defended their handling of the 2020 election after FBI agents seized hundreds of boxes of voting records as part of a criminal investigation.

Striking a defiant tone, officials said Thursday they were prepared for possible criminal charges even as they insisted they had done nothing improper.

Federal officials remained mostly mum Thursday about their investigation, declining to say where the thousands of ballots and other materials had been taken after they were seized from the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center in Union City.

“We do not know where our election records have been taken or what will happen to them now that they’re out of our control,” Fulton County Chair Robb Pitts said at a news conference.

“I don’t know where they are. I don’t know who has them. I don’t know what they’re doing with them.”

FBI agents raided the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center in Union City on Wednesday. Fulton officials said agents armed with a search warrant seized about 700 boxes. A warrant said they were seeking ballots and other records related to the 2020 election in Georgia.

Fulton County Elections Board Chair Sherri Allen told reporters on Thursday that no voting machines were seized. But Allen said agents also looked into other documents that she believes had “nothing to do with 2020.”

A spokesperson for the FBI’s Atlanta office declined to say where the ballots were taken or what happens next in the case, citing “investigative reasons.”

The raid marked a dramatic escalation in President Donald Trump’s more than five-year campaign to prove fraud in Georgia elections.

There has been no evidence of widespread fraud, and three tallies — an Election Day machine count, a hand-count audit and a machine recount — upheld Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow victory in Georgia.

With little federal comment, observers were left to speculate about what was behind the raid.

For starters, the search warrant authorizing the raid was sought by an out-of-state federal prosecutor — Thomas Albus, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri.

Federal officials wouldn’t say why Theodore Hertzberg, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, isn’t named in the document. Hertzberg’s office declined to comment.

But Bloomberg Law reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi has appointed Albus to handle election integrity cases nationwide.

Also getting attention: At some point before Wednesday’s raid, the former head of the FBI’s Atlanta office appears to have left the agency.

Former Special Agent in Charge Paul W. Brown is still listed on the FBI Atlanta website, but one of his former deputies, Peter Ellis, now heads the local office in an interim capacity, according to the FBI website.

Pitts said Thursday he has never shied away from calling out the Trump administration for lies and misinformation about the 2020 election, which he said put him on “the hit list.”

He acknowledged that he and other officials could now be targeted for arrest.

“I guess everything is a possibility. I’ve been told that’s the case. ... If it comes to that, so be it,” he said. “We’ve done everything right. We have complied with the law.”

Some feared the raid would be used as a pretext for state election officials to take control of Fulton ahead of the midterms.

The prospect of a state takeover drew condemnation from Democrats. State Sen. Nabilah Parkes of Duluth, who is running for state insurance commissioner, cast doubt on the motivations for the raid.

“This is not about 2020. This is about 2026. This is about who controls what comes next,” Parkes said.

But state Rep. Victor Anderson, R-Cornelia, said he has faith in the U.S. justice system.

“What we saw (Wednesday) was the lawful execution of a lawfully obtained federal search warrant that was signed by a U.S. magistrate court judge,” he said.

Legal experts wondered what federal crimes could even be prosecuted with five-year-old election records.

“The only thing they could successfully prosecute would be if they had evidence that somebody had tossed something out after 2020, not any misconduct in 2020 itself,” said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University Law School and voting rights expert, referencing a five-year statute of limitations for the laws cited in the warrant return to seize Fulton’s records.

It was still unclear on Thursday what was included in the warrant’s probable cause affidavit.

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, believes the Trump administration is more likely to make fraud claims on social media than in the courts, where the evidence would be subject to scrutiny.

“Anything that the Department of Justice says it has that it won’t present in court should raise questions, just as any claims that prosecutions are coming when prosecutions haven’t actually happened yet should raise questions,” said Becker, a former Justice Department attorney.

Federal officials will have a chance to say more about the investigation Friday.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard are expected to speak at the winter conference of the National Association of Secretaries of State in Washington D.C.

It’s not clear whether they’ll address the Fulton raid, but Gabbard was on the scene in Union City on Wednesday night.