The FBI last week fired two analysts who raised concerns that the Fulton County, Georgia, investigation into the 2020 election was thin on evidence and appeared politically motivated.
The firings followed the bureau's effort to review thousands of records obtained earlier this year after executing a search warrant and seizing "all physical ballots" from 2020, as well as tapes from vote-tabulating machines, ballot images and voter rolls, and the FBI ordered 260 analysts to help sift through the ballots and voting data.
An FBI spokesperson said, "The FBI will always investigate credible allegations of matters related to federal elections. Every employee at this FBI is expected to uphold our mission and adhere to our standards - any deviation will not be tolerated."
Each analyst is being asked to review several hundred entries in a large spreadsheet that contains names, addresses and voter IDs and to cross-check the information against the commercial database Accurint and highlight any discrepancies, with a July 17 deadline to complete the work.
The assignment has stoked concerns that Accurint data may not always be up to date and that any discrepancies identified may not necessarily indicate wrongdoing, and observers noted a likely five-year statute of limitations would have already expired in late 2025 or early 2026, raising questions about how the Justice Department could bring charges.
Some fear the Trump administration may try to use the results of the review to claim the 2020 election results were wrong, a move that could stoke doubts about election integrity ahead of the midterm elections or be used to pressure Republicans to pass the SAVE Act, which would require Americans to show proof of citizenship in person to register to vote; the probe was referred to the FBI by Kurt Olsen, who previously fought to overturn the 2020 results as part of the Stop the Steal Movement and was sanctioned by a court while representing Kari Lake in her bid to overturn a 2022 election loss, and Olsen now works for the Justice Department and is assigned in Miami to help investigate the so-called "grand conspiracy" into whether Obama- and Biden-era officials conspired to keep President Trump out of office; a judge in May denied Fulton County's request to return the seized ballots and earlier this month quashed a grand jury subpoena seeking the names and personal contact information for every person who worked during the 2020 election in the county.