Trump’s 2020 Election Obsession Enters New Phase 

The story goes that the lawyer asked his psychiatrist after five years of analysis, “Hasn’t the statute of limitations run out on my mother?” 

Although the 2020 presidential election occurred over five years ago, any related criminal offenses, if any, are outside the statute of limitations. But Georgia and the president’s 2020 defeat are still on Trump’s mind. He telegraphed his plans in Davos, Switzerland, last month when he said that the people who were involved in the “rigged 2020 election” were going to be prosecuted soon.  

The FBI executed a search warrant shortly thereafter at the Fulton County, Georgia, Elections Operation Center. While Georgia is a purple state (Trump carried it by a slender 2.2 points in 2024), Fulton County, which includes much of Atlanta and its environs, is a Democratic stronghold. 

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the activity was “apparently connected to the Trump administration’s long-held and disproven belief that Fulton’s handling of the 2020 presidential election was rife with fraud.” 

The warrant stated that the government was seeking the following: 

• Physical ballots from the 2020 general election, in-person, absentee, and other votes, and absentee ballot envelopes. 
• Tabulator tapes for every voting machine used. 
• Ballot images that were produced during the original ballot count, which began on November 3, 2020. 
• Voter rolls from the 2020 general election, including absentee, early voting, in-person voting, and any other voting methods. This is the most disturbing. 

Two federal statutes are listed in the warrant. Title 52 USC 20701, a misdemeanor charge, requires that officials maintain election records for 22 months. Title 52 USC 20511 makes criminal election fraud by means of false voter registration applications or tabulation of ballots known to be fraudulent a felony. You can get five years in jail for that one. 

The brooding, sinister appearance of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was startling even for the Trump era. She was in the warehouse as agents collected evidence, giving her an off-piste presence in a domestic law enforcement case. Gabbard’s duties do not include on-site involvement in criminal investigative work. The Wall Street Journal reported that the narrowly confirmed former Democrat and former representative from Hawaii is the subject of a highly classified whistleblower complaint alleging wrongdoing that had stalled in her agency for at least six months on its lawful path to Congress. The whistleblower had accused Gabbard of stonewalling before a redacted version finally went to lawmakers yesterday. The complaint alleged that the distribution of a highly classified intelligence report had been “restricted for political purposes” and that an intelligence agency lawyer had failed to report a potential crime to the Justice Department.  

And then came the New York Times report that, following the search and seizure, Trump spoke directly with the frontline FBI agents on speakerphone, asking them about their work on the inquiry. 

David Laufman, who served as a senior Justice Department official in both Republican and Democratic administrations, commented on the impropriety to The New York Times: “It is extremely dangerous to our democracy and a shocking abandonment of years of sound policy for the president to be directly involved in the conduct of domestic criminal investigations, especially one that seeks to redress his personal grievances and to make the director of national intelligence an instrument of his political will.” 

Gabbard is the guiding spirit of a nationwide operation, Reuters reported, devoted to helping Trump exact retribution against his political foes. She said in a statement: “The president specifically directed my observance of the execution of the Fulton County search warrant.” For its part, Fulton County will reportedly sue the Justice Department and the FBI. 

Senator Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Gabbard was “once again demonstrating her utter lack of fitness for office that she holds by injecting the non-partisan intelligence community she is supposed to be leading into a domestic political stunt.”  

Could Gabbard, who has said Barack Obama was part of a conspiracy to steal the election from Trump, be readying ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, looking at a long prison sentence, to “confess” to helping rig the election? An intriguing article in Salon lays out some of the more outlandish conspiracy theories.  

The face of the search warrant raised another question. As Alice said in Wonderland, it gets “curiouser and curiouser.” The warrant, issued by the Northern District of Georgia, where the search took place, was based on an application by U.S. Attorney Thomas Albus in St. Louis. Conspicuously absent was the signature on the document of Teddy Hertzberg, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. 

The answer to why Albus applied for the warrant became clear when Bloomberg Law reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi had specifically appointed Albus to probe the 2020 election nationwide. Fulton County, the current focus, may be a harbinger of things to come. 

Atlanta reporter Greg Bluestein asked the right questions on Twitter: “What are they looking for? What happens next? Why was Tulsi Gabbard there? What we know—and what we don’t know—about the FBI raid of the Fulton County elections center.” Then, he added one clue. “Liberty Vote, the company that bought Dominion voting systems, is based in St. Louis. Georgia relied on Dominion’s touchscreen voting system during the 2020 election, and it’s been the target of lawsuits and criticism. So, we have another reason for Thomas Albus. 

It’s grasping at straws at this point, but one possible thread linking St. Louis, Gabbard’s DNI, and the search warrant is the long-debunked claims about Dominion voting machines and foreign interference. The company was purchased last year by a Trump-aligned Republican.  

Since his 2020 Georgia loss to Joe Biden, where Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, refused his demand to “find” him the needed 11,780 votes, Trump has continued to insist—without evidence—that the Georgia election was rigged. Now in office, Trump can resuscitate his stale conspiracy theories by using his expansive executive branch powers. Raffensperger is running for governor in November to succeed Brian Kemp, also a Republican, who is term-limited and opposed Trump’s 2020 Georgia gambit. Will Trump use the fruits of the search warrant to revive his grievances and exact revenge on Raffensperger?  

Soon after it broke that the FBI was executing the search warrant, Trump posted on Truth Social a bit about the “stolen 2020 election.” It was his familiar litany of lies and litter, including Obama diverting cash to Iran (yes, but it was unfreezing Tehran’s assets as part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or the Iran nuclear agreement signed by the U.S., China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany). Trump also offered a litany of other bogus grievances, military satellites hacking voting machines, flipping votes from Trump to Biden, and China coordinating it all to install Biden as a puppet.  

Fulton County officials called the raid alarming and defended the integrity of the records. County Commission Chair Robb Pitts said he was confident the ballots were “safe and secure” in the facility. He’s worried about what happens to them now if they remain in federal custody.  

“We don’t know where they’re being taken. We don’t know what’s going to happen to them. So, we can no longer satisfy—not only the citizens of Atlanta, but the citizens of the world—that those ballots are still secure,” he said. 

The president’s loyalists, of course, endorsed the raid. The Trump-endorsed candidate for governor, Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, who will oppose Raffensperger in a May primary, said Fulton County “couldn’t run a bake sale.” And Representative Buddy Carter, a MAGA Senate aspirant, said, “Georgians are about to get some long-overdue answers and learn just how right President Trump was in 2020.” Senator Jon Ossoff, a first-term Democrat, is seeking reelection. 

The New York Times summed it up nicely, “The move harnesses the investigative power of the Justice Department and the FBI behind baseless claims by Mr. Trump and his supporters that the 2020 election was stolen from him. State and local officials and election experts have repeatedly refuted those assertions.” 

In case you forgot, we have a mid-term election later this year, which Trump, with his approval rating in the gutter, hovering around 39 percent, must win to survive politically. In Texas, his endorsement of right-wing Republican Leigh Wambsganss for a Texas Senate seat was the kiss of death in a special election just held. Democrat Taylor Rehmet, an Air Force veteran and machinist, defeated Wambsganss for a seat that Republicans have held since the early 1990s. The two will face off again in the general election next November, but the handwriting is on the wall.  

The events in Minneapolis, the drip-feed release of the Epstein files, and economic uncertainties, his clown-like performance in Davos, among other factors, have eroded his popularity. If a Democratic House is installed next year, the political environment will be riddled with investigations and, perhaps, his third impeachment on ICE and corruption. And say goodbye to the rest of his MAGA agenda. 

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that “Meanwhile, the faction of the State Election Board aligned closely with Trump weighs the possibility of taking over elections in Georgia’s most populous—and heavily Democratic—county ahead of crucial midterm elections.”  

A reminder: MAGA heavy-handedness helped hand two U.S. Senate seats to Democrats in 2020, as Trump went to the state after Election Day but before two run-offs held on January 5, 2021, about his unfair treatment in the state. Ossoff won his Senate seat, and Raphael Warnock won a special election, defeating Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed to the seat when the incumbent, Republican Johnny Isakson, resigned in 2019. Will Trump’s meddling help Democrats again? 

As the song goes: “Georgia, Georgia, the road leads back to you.”