Trump: Fulton FBI raid will show 2020 election was stolen

President Donald Trump on Monday said last week’s FBI seizure of Fulton County 2020 election ballots will confirm his belief that the election was stolen from him.

The president also told a podcast host that Republicans should consider nationalizing elections or taking over the administration of elections in some states.

Meanwhile, Fulton County was considering a legal response to the raid, which continued to reverberate in Georgia politics. Here’s the latest on the federal investigation.

Trump weighs in

Trump said last week’s raid of the Fulton County election office will justify his repeated assertions that the 2020 election in Georgia was stolen from him.

“You’re going to see something in Georgia where they were able to get with the court order and the ballots,” Trump said. “You’re going to see some interesting things come out.”

The president’s comments came Monday on the relaunched podcast of former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino.

Trump did not go into detail about what the government hoped to uncover as a result of the raid. Multiple recounts, audits and court decisions confirmed that President Joe Biden received more votes than Trump in Georgia in 2020.

During Bongino’s show, Trump said that Republicans should consider nationalizing elections or taking over administering elections in up to 15 states he claims he should have won in 2020.

Fulton County weighs its legal options

Early Monday, Fulton County Commissioner Marvin Arrington announced the county would file a motion in federal court challenging the legality of the warrant and FBI seizure of the county’s 2020 election records.

But no such motion had become public by late Monday, and County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts later suggested the county was still weighing its response.

“There’s a lot of speculation, a lot of talk, but this is a serious matter for the county,” he said in an interview. “We’re taking it seriously, and we’re taking our time to develop whatever legal strategy may be needed at the proper time.”

Trump spoke with FBI agents

President Donald Trump last week spoke with some of the FBI agents who conducted last week’s seizure of Fulton County election records, The New York Times reported Monday.

According to the newspaper, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard met with the agents the day after the raid. During the meeting, she used her phone to call Trump, who called her back and spoke with the agents on speakerphone.

According to the Times, the FBI agent in charge of the squad answered Trump’s questions in what was described as a short conversation, which one official comparing the call to a coach’s pep talk.

The newspaper noted that Trump’s contact with the agents is a major departure from past practice, in which the Justice Department sought to insulate investigations from political pressure.

Raffensperger speaks up

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger addressed the Justice Department investigation indirectly with a familiar refrain: The 2020 election is over, and Georgians deserve better than a “rerun” of the same election fight.

In a statement issued Monday, Raffensperger — a Republican candidate for governor — said Georgia’s election results have been confirmed repeatedly through audits, recounts and court review. And he urged elected officials to help “move the debate forward” by approving proposals he said would improve election security. Those include citizenship verification, a national “real ID” for federal elections and other proposals.

“The path forward is through national reform, not repetition of old arguments that don’t add up,” Raffensperger said. “I urge lawmakers to focus on strengthening state administration of elections rather than rehashing the same outdated claims or worse — moving to federalize a core function of state government.”

Partisan divide

Democrats continued to blast the FBI raid Monday. State Rep. Saira Draper, an Atlanta Democrat and the party’s go-to voting expert in the House, said she expects Republicans to seize on the raid to advance new overhauls that could further restrict access to the ballot.

“There is no reason to do this unless you are trying to raise additional questions, additional doubts,” Draper said. “It’s all pretext for doing the other things they wanted to do.”

Republicans see it differently.

“Well, we need Fulton County to follow the law, and that would be step No. 1,” Sen. Brian Strickland, R-McDonough, said in an interview last week. “That’s not complicated. Other counties can figure out how to run elections. Fulton County can’t.”