In December 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a federal lawsuit against Fulton County Superior Court Clerk Che Alexander. The lawsuit sought to compel the production of the 2020 election records after Alexander declined to comply with an earlier DOJ request, stating that the records were under seal in accordance with state law and could not be released without a court order.
Amid this escalating pressure, the Fulton County Elections Board made a significant admission on December 23, 2025. The board acknowledged that approximately 315,000 ballots from the early voting period had been certified without the statutorily required attestations from poll workers on the corresponding tabulator tapes, describing the failure as a “clerical error.” This characterization as a “clerical error” belies the potential legal invalidity of the returns under Georgia’s election code, which requires such certification to establish an auditable chain of custody.
These legal and administrative actions created an environment of mounting pressure on county officials, setting the stage for direct federal law enforcement intervention. On January 28, 2026, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executed a court-authorized search warrant at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center in Union City, Georgia. Agents seized a wide array of materials related to the 2020 election, including ballots, tabulator tapes, computer hard drives, electronic ballot images, and voter rolls. Eyewitnesses reported seeing agents load hundreds of boxes of records into government trucks.
Key Takeaways
Key takeaways from the investigation include:
- Widespread Procedural Violations: The report asserts that Fulton County willfully failed to perform mandatory signature verification for approximately 148,000 absentee ballots, a critical anti-fraud measure. It also alleges the unlawful swapping of memory cards during a live election, the use of surrogate machines to print fraudulent official returns for ~315,000 early votes, and the deployment of voting systems that were not tested for Logic & Accuracy as required by law.
- Compromised Ballot Provenance and Chain of Custody: The investigation highlights a surreptitious, last-minute order of over one million “extra” absentee ballots without stubs or envelopes. It also points to the doubling of Fulton County’s absentee ballot count after polls closed, from ~74,000 to over 148,000, and the inclusion of 20,713 ballots from ten tabulators that lack any provenance or records.
- Destruction and Manipulation of Election Records: The report claims that all 376,863 ballot images for in-person voting (early and Election Day) were willfully destroyed. Additionally, authentication files for 132,286 absentee ballot images were intentionally deleted, raising questions of electronic manipulation.
- Significant Discrepancies Across Multiple Counts: The post-election hand-count audit was allegedly padded with 6,691 fictitious votes, and a total of 19,691 votes were found to be in conflict with the original results. The candidate-requested recount was also flawed, with 3,930 ballots intentionally scanned twice, thousands of test ballots counted, and 17,852 ballot images missing.
- Systemic Failures and Lack of Accountability: The report details the statewide installation of uncertified voting system software just before the election, voter registration rates in Fulton County exceeding the eligible population by 13.8%, and the alleged dismissal of formal complaints by the Secretary of State’s office without proper investigation.
Collectively, these findings, as presented in the source report, assert that the combination of missing records, broken chain of custody, and extensive procedural violations makes it impossible to validate the certified results of the 2020 General Election in Fulton County.
Systemic Issues and Alleged Official Inaction
The report identifies several broader issues that it claims point to a compromised election system and a lack of official oversight.
Issue | Description |
|---|---|
Voter Roll Inflation | In 2020, Fulton County had voter registrations equal to 113.8% of its Citizen Voting Age Population (CVAP). The state of Georgia as a whole had a registration rate of 103.6%. |
“Ruse” Forensic Audit | The Secretary of State claimed to have conducted a post-election forensic audit of voting machines in six counties. The report states that five of those six counties confirmed in writing that no such audit took place. |
Unprotected Encryption Keys | The report alleges that the voting system’s encryption keys were provided to counties unprotected in plain text. (Count 20) |
Dismissal of Formal Complaints | The investigation claims that multiple formal complaints filed with the State Election Board regarding these issues (e.g., SEB2022-024, SEB2023-025) were administratively closed without a proper investigation or a vote by the board. |
State Farm Arena Incident | While not delving into the details of the surveillance video, the report notes that tens of thousands of ballots arrived at the arena on and after Election Day in unsecured carts with no chain of custody. |
