Civil Rights Groups Sue to Protect Georgia Voter Data Seized by FBI

The federal government is being sued by civil rights organizations to protect voter data seized by the FBI in a raid at a Fulton County, Georgia, elections building last month.

The NAACP, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Georgia Coalition of the People’s Agenda, and other groups filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia Sunday to “prohibit the Trump administration from misusing the voter information” it seized as part of the raid.

Donald Trump has long claimed the 2020 election was stolen from him despite no evidence of voter fraud. Georgia was won by President Biden in that election, and as a result, the Trump administration last month launched an investigation into Fulton County, the largest and most Democratic-leaning county in the state.

“Having already failed to overturn the valid results of the 2020 presidential election by invoking false claims of widespread voter fraud, promoting fake electors, and inciting a violent insurrection, Trump and his minions are refusing to give up the ‘lost cause,’ trampling even more voting and privacy rights in the process,” said Damon Hewitt, the president and executive director of the Lawyer’s Committee, in a statement. “Ironically, this is happening in the same jurisdiction where Trump pressured state elections officials to ‘find 11,870 votes’ in an effort to declare himself the victor in 2020.”

The Georgia raid has raised concerns that Trump is trying to manufacture a justification to take over elections in battleground areas, especially considering that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was inexplicably present and found to be giving updates to Trump the next day. The president claims the raid happened on the orders of Attorney General Pam Bondi, who hasn’t cleared things up.

Gabbard has spent the last several months investigating long-debunked claims of voter fraud from the 2020 election, a departure from her supposed job overseeing U.S. intelligence. Under her watch, the FBI seized close to 700 ballots and other election materials from Fulton County, including tabulator tapes from scanners that count votes, electronic ballot images created when ballots were counted and then recounted, and all voter rolls.

This new lawsuit joins another legal action filed by the county earlier this month to return all seized materials. Meanwhile, Trump and his Republican allies continue to push for a federal takeover of elections, with the president threatening to push through voter I.D. even without Congress. It seems that the future of free and fair elections rests on whether the courts can stop the Trump administration.