Former Georgia chief justice appointed to mediate Fulton FBI raid dispute
Former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Harold Melton will mediate a dispute between Fulton County and the U.S. Department of Justice over whether the county can retrieve its 2020 election records from the Trump administration.
Federal District Court Judge J.P. Boulee appointed Melton on Wednesday after two other mediators acceptable to both Fulton and the Justice Department were unavailable. The appointment places the former justice in the middle of a high-stakes political fight in the crucial election year for Georgia and the Trump administration.
Naveen Ramachandrappa, an attorney at Bondurant Mixson & Elmore, argued cases before Melton for years while he was on Georgia’s highest court. Ramachandrappa said he always had a lot of respect for Melton.
“He’s seen as an honest broker,” Ramachandrappa said.
He said he expects Melton to be just as effective as a mediator as he was as a judge.
Then-Gov. Sonny Perdue appointed Melton to Georgia’s highest court in 2005. He served as chief justice from 2018 to 2021 and has since joined Troutman Pepper as a partner.
Melton met with Gov. Brian Kemp in 2019 to express his interest in being appointed to U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson’s seat in Congress after Isakson announced his intention to step down for health reasons.
Melton’s task isn’t easy. Fulton has been trying to recover the more than 650 boxes of election documents seized, saying the allegations of 2020 election “deficiencies” the FBI is investigating have already been looked into, finding errors but no evidence of intentional malfeasance.
Fulton has accused the Justice Department of omitting key facts about witnesses interviewed in the affidavit used to take the ballots, the outcomes of prior investigations, and facts about Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election and referred the probe to the DOJ.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department has asked Boulee to reject Fulton’s request, saying the evidence cited in the FBI’s affidavit persuaded a federal magistrate judge to issue a search warrant, and the judge’s decision shouldn’t be voided.
The Jan. 28 ballot seizure marks the latest and most drastic escalation in the president’s more than five-year campaign to find evidence of wrongdoing in Fulton County’s 2020 election.
For years, since Trump’s narrow loss, he’s made baseless claims about a rigged election. Since returning to the White House, he’s continued those claims, installed election deniers within the administration, and recently said Republicans should “nationalize” voting.
But numerous investigations and three vote counts, including a hand-count audit of every ballot cast, upheld Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow 2020 victory. Claims of fraud have never been proved.
Boulee gave the parties until March 18 to report back on the mediation.
The Justice Department had not yet opened the seized boxes, according to a transcript of a recent status conference obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Boulee encouraged the federal government to refrain from doing so during mediation but didn’t order the records closed.
“I think the United States was kindly holding off on review of any of the materials up until my mediation order,” Boulee said. “You know, I think that the best course is for the United States to continue to do that, and I would ask that you continue to do that until you all can have your mediation. I think that’s the best way to proceed here.”
About the Author
Caleb Groves is a general assignment reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's politics team and a Kennesaw State University graduate.
