BREAKING: Judge Unseals Warrant and Affidavit of Probable Cause for FBI Search Warrant of Fulton County 2020 Election Records
Last month, the FBI executed a search warrant on Fulton County’s Election Hub and Operation Center seeking physical paper ballots, ballot images from the November 3rd, 2020, original count (and subsequent counts), all tabulator tapes from the 2020 election, and voter rolls used for the 2020 election.
Approximately 656 boxes were taken by the FBI to an undisclosed location. As The Gateway Pundit reported yesterday, the Director of Registrations and Elections, Nadine Williams, had previously submitted a sworn affidavit stating that there were “over 700 boxes” of election records.
The affidavit for the warrant was filed under seal until today when a federal court in Georgia unsealed the records.
According to the probable cause section, “The FBI criminal investigation originated from a referral sent by Kurt Olsen, Presidentially-appointed Director of Election Security and Integrity.”
The affidavit focuses on five “deficiencies or defects with the November 3, 2020, election and tabulation of votes”:
a. The tabulator machines used by Fulton County are designed to create and save a
scanned image of each ballot. Fulton County has admitted that it does not have
scanned images of all the 528,777 ballots counted during the Original Count or the
527,925 ballots counted during the Recount.b. Fulton County has confirmed that during the Recount of votes, some ballots were
scanned multiple times. Ballot images made available in response to public record
requests show ballots with unique markings duplicated within the ballot images.c. During the Risk Limiting Audit, auditors counting the votes by hand reported vote
tallies for batches inconsistent with the actual votes within the batch. The State’s
Performance Review Board2 reported that Secretary of State investigators
confirmed inaccurate batch tallies from the Risk Limiting Audit.d. Auditors assisting in the Risk Limiting Audit reported counting purported absentee
ballots that had never been creased or folded, as would be required for the ballot to
be mailed to the voter and for the ballot to be returned in the sealed envelope
requiring the voter’s signature for authentication.e. On the day of the deadline to report the Recount results, Fulton County reported a
recount totaling 511,343 ballots, 17,434 ballots fewer than original counted. The
following day, Fulton County then reported a total of 527,925 ballots counted.
If the deficiencies outlined were the result of “intentional action,” then they would be a violation of federal law, regardless of whether it was outcome determinative, according to the affidavit.
Missing Ballot Images
The document claims that a Georgia resident, whose name was redacted, analyzed the ballot images of absentee voters and discovered the number of ballot images did not match the number of ballots cast. This analysis discovered 17,852 missing ballot images.
This information was submitted in complaint SEB 2023-025. The Gateway Pundit has reported on these specific issues numerous times in the past, including speculation that the complaint was the basis of this search warrant.
A member of the State Election Board (SEB) wished to view the ballot images personally; however, the Secretary of State’s Office (SOS) would only allow them to view the images in person. In May 2024, the SEB member began reviewing them in person.
They were given a laptop with two flash drives and two notes next to it. One note contained her name and a password to access the computer as well as instructions not to remove the flash drive. The other note stated, “Vince must have miscounted. Only 15,464 ballot images. Short of 17,774 by 2,310.”
The SEB member right away noticed that Secure Hash Validation (SHA) files were missing. Each ballot image should have a corresponding SHA file which guarantees that the image has not been modified.
Notably, she also noticed “modification dates associated with the files well past the timeframe of the 2020 Election.” One file date was modified on January 11, 2024, “along with others modified prior to January 11, 2024.”
According to another member of the SEB, if there were technical issues or a clerical error that would have caused the images to be lost, it should be documented.
Fulton County has previously admitted that they did not preserve “the majority of ballot images” from the November 3, 2020, count.
Duplicate Ballots
Another witness, a data analyst, reviewed the ballot images and recount ballot images believed to have been obtained from an open-records request. He used a computer program that sought out duplicates based on stray or unique marks, and then allowed for a human review to confirm the duplication.
The witness acknowledged there were missing ballot images; however, none of them were “hand completed ballots.” Only the in-person computer generated ballots that contain a QR code were missing.
Still, he was able to conclude that there were duplicate ballots included in both the original count and the recount. He also concluded that there were 17,852 missing digital images from the second machine recount, which was used for the official certified count.
The witness “concluded that what he observed could be intentional but was not partisan.” President Trump received 40 percent of the duplicate ballots rather than his average of 30 percent in Fulton County. However, he concluded that the duplicate ballots ” were intended to make the recount numbers match more than to affect the outcome of the election.”
This was similar to the complaint submitted by Joseph Rossi in SEB 2021-181. That complaint, which resulted in a Consent Order, found that 6,691 ballots were double and triple counted in the hand recount in order to make the numbers match. However, once discovered, the correct number was never updated on the Secretary of States official results.
Tabulator Tapes
Tabulator tapes are printed from each voting machine at the opening of the poll (“zero tape”) and at the close of the poll (“closing tape”).
“The tabulator tapes should match the number of physical ballots,” the affidavit states. “The tabulator tape is what is used as the ‘holy grail’ for the final count.”
The tabulator tapes were reviewed by Clay Parikh, who has worked in cyber security since 2003 and, specifically, for a voting systems test lab since 2008. He is currently a “Special Government Employee” working for the Executive Branch for up to 130 days.
Parikh reviewed the tabulator tape images and drafted a report regarding his findings. The report determined that closing tabulator tapes were missing from some machines. As reported by The Gateway Pundit last month, of the 138 closing tapes provided, only 16 tabulators accounted for approximately 315,000 ballots.
Parikh identified one tabulator that was used to close out 15 tabulators from 12 different locations, in violation of Georgia election rules and regulations. He also identified that “the poll closing time and report printed times on several closing tabulator tapes were close enough that [he] believed someone had to have manipulated the times on the reports.”
He believes this is evidence that the memory cards were removed from the original tabulator and inserted into a separate tabulator to print the closing tapes.
The protective counter on the machines also raised concern. The protective counter is like an odometer on a car. It increments with each ballot scanned to show the total number of ballots run through a particular tabulator during its lifetime.
“Parikh’s analysis further revealed that the protective counters on at least five tabulator tapes from the same unit were identical, and that some of the reported ballots scanned exceeded the protective counter number.” This would indicate that the ballots weren’t actually scanned through those tabulators, but that they were simply used to create the tabulator tape by closing the election on those particular machines.
Pristine Ballots
One witness stated that she observed absentee ballots that appeared “pristine,” meaning they had no folds as would be required to put the ballot into an envelope.
Another witness who had previously filed a complaint with the SEB alleged that “extra ballots were introduced during the count of the absentee ballots.”
Yet another witness who had been a poll manager for over 25 years claimed she received “boxes of ballots that had broken security seals” during the full hand count that was conducted after the first machine count. When she asked about the broken seals, she claimed she was told “they did not matter.”
She recalled receiving a batch of ballots that “seemed different.” The batch contained 110 ballots of which “107 had the exact same votes for each candidate on the ballot.” Those 107 were labeled as “absentee” ballots but appeared “pristine,” meaning no folds, and were “too clean to be absentee ballots, in her opinion.” Lastly, she observed the 107 ballots “felt different from all the other ballots and the bubbles were all filled in the same.”
Another “stack of about 60 ballots” was allegedly from a senior living center. The witness believes they should have been folded as well, but were not.
The claim of 107 ballots was supported by another witness, according to the affidavit.
Lastly, a witness who is now a Fulton County Commissioner stated she saw “individuals who were printing random ballots” after all of the “test ballots had already been printed.”
The Gateway Pundit previously reported that SEB Complaint 2023-025 and a related 26-count report were the basis for the search warrant the FBI used to obtain Fulton County election records, including physical ballots
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