(The Center Square) – The U.S. Justice Department’s subpoena of Fulton County, Georgia, election workers’ personal information puts an undue burden on the county and raises questions about the department’s use of the grand jury process, a federal judge said Tuesday.
The Justice Department asked for residential addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of Fulton County poll workers who worked the 2020 election. The county filed a motion to quash the subpoena, saying it was the latest effort by President Donald Trump to “target and harass” his “perceived political enemies” in court filings.
Trump has said repeatedly that the election was “stolen” and that he won Georgia’s electoral college votes in 2020. Former President Joe Biden defeated Trump 306-232 in the Electoral College. Georgia contributed 16 electoral votes to the Democrats’ win, not enough by itself to reverse the 74 votes needed to overcome Biden.
Recounts confirmed the election results.
U.S. District Judge William M Ray II, a Trump appointee, said the breadth of the subpoena is “staggering.”
“The information sought herein (names, addresses, phone numbers, emails) is private and sensitive, so much so that should a private company fail to protect such information from electronic thieves, such company would most likely be sued in a data breach class action lawsuit,” Ray said in his order. “Thus, everyone, whether you support the President or you do not, or whether you believe the 2020 Election was fair or believe that it was not, should be concerned about the DOJ’s ability to utilize the power of the Grand Jury to appropriate your private information without a legitimate purpose.”
Even if evidence of criminal activity was found, it would be useless, according to the judge.
“That is because the statute of limitations for any possible crime arising from the 2020 Election has long expired, as the DOJ must have brought such a case, if it could, no later than late 2025 or the early weeks of 2026,” Ray said in the order.
The FBI seized more than 600 boxes of ballots, tabulator tapes and other election-related materials during a January raid on the Fulton County Elections Office.
“These documents discuss an ongoing criminal investigation that is neither public nor known to all of the targets of the investigation,” FBI special agent Hugh Raymond Evans said in the warrant.
Fulton County asked for the records back in a separate court case filed earlier this year, but another federal judge denied their motion in May.
U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee called the actions leading up to the Jan. 28 raid “unprecedented,” “defective and “troubling,” but said Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts and the election board failed to show they would be irreparably harmed since they have copies of the records.
The Department of Justice said it will challenge the decision.
“The District Court’s ruling that the probable expiration of statutes of limitations prevents the grand jury from investigating the 2020 election in Georgia is at odds with numerous holdings of the Supreme Court,” the department said in an email to The Center Square. “Because the court’s order jeopardizes both the historic purview of the grand jury and a long-delayed assessment of 2020 election processes, the department is considering all options to challenge.”