DOJ releases timeline of FBI raid on Georgia election office

KOKurt Olsen sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department on January 5, 2026, at 9:03 a.m., asking the FBI to investigate alleged fraud in Fulton County's handling of the 2020 presidential election. Olsen is the White House's presidentially appointed director of election security and integrity — a position he has held since October 2025. He was a key lawyer in some of Trump's most far-fetched 2020 election reversal schemes, and courts sanctioned him for making false election claims in 🌵Arizona. The Arizona State Bar also disciplined him for that misconduct.

At 8:36 p.m. on the same day Olsen sent the referral, the Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss a civil lawsuit that had been seeking access to the same Fulton County election records. That timing raised immediate questions about whether the criminal probe was opened to sidestep the restrictions of the civil case and gain faster access to records through a warrant.

The FBI moved faster than experts say is normal. An FBI supervisor opened a preliminary assessment on January 6, 2026 — the day after the referral arrived. Agent HRHugh Raymond Evans requested the matter be elevated to a full investigation on January 12, and the special agent in charge of the FBI's Atlanta field office approved that request on January 14. Evans drafted the investigative summary on January 19, before it was formally converted into a warrant affidavit on January 22.

On January 28 — just 23 days after Olsen sent the referral — the FBI executed a search warrant at the Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections office. Agents seized more than 650 boxes of election materials, including 2020 ballots, tabulator tapes, and ballot images from the post-election recount.

NWNadine Williams, the director of Fulton County's Department of Registration and Elections, was present when agents arrived. She said the agents just showed up and said they had a warrant. The warrant was issued by a federal magistrate judge and was based primarily on evidence from two 🍑Georgia State Election Board complaints — complaints that a separate Democracy Docket analysis found included claims the FBI itself had previously investigated and debunked.

Fulton County officials said in court filings that the criminal investigation appeared to be a pretext to acquire records that this administration was unable to quickly secure via the civil litigation process. They petitioned the court to return all seized materials.

District Judge JBJean-Paul Boulee — a Trump first-term appointee — ordered the DOJ to release the full timeline of the investigation after Fulton County asked the court for an explanation. Boulee must now decide whether to order the FBI to return all of the seized election materials. The Justice Department, under court order, released the timeline on May 2, 2026, providing the clearest picture yet of how the White House-initiated referral moved through the federal law enforcement system in less than four weeks.

Former FBI Deputy Director AMAndrew McCabe, a CNN senior law enforcement analyst who spent 21 years at the agency, said he had never in his career seen a situation in which the government initiated a criminal case on a matter that was currently the subject of a civil case. McCabe called the pace of the investigation unusual by any standard he knew.

The NAACP asked Judge Boulee to issue a protective order preventing the FBI or DOJ from misusing the voter data contained in the seized election materials. The organization raised specific concerns that the administration could use voter registration data, addresses, or ballot images for purposes beyond any legitimate criminal investigation.

Senators SWSheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) sent a letter calling for a congressional investigation into the FBI's actions in Fulton County, citing the speed of the probe and the close timing between the referral and the dismissal of the civil case as evidence that the criminal probe may have been improperly used.

The legal and institutional stakes extend well beyond 🍑Georgia. If courts find the FBI obtained the warrant improperly — by opening a criminal probe primarily to gain access to evidence unavailable in a civil case — Judge Boulee could suppress the evidence and order all seized materials returned. Such a ruling would set a precedent for how courts evaluate the use of criminal investigations to obtain records that are restricted in civil litigation.

The seized materials include not just ballots and tabulator tapes but also voter registration data for Fulton County residents. Fulton County is 🍑Georgia's most populous county and includes most of Atlanta, making its election records among the most politically significant in the state.

KOKurt Olsen's access to this criminal referral process raises questions about the line between the White House and independent law enforcement. Traditionally, the FBI and DOJ operate separately from White House policy staff to prevent political interference in law enforcement. Olsen's position — with access to classified intelligence from the intelligence community related to the 2020 election, per CNN — placed a White House political operative directly in the chain of events that led to an unprecedented FBI seizure of state election records.

🍑Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who resisted Trump's pressure to find extra votes in 2020, had not asked the FBI to investigate Fulton County. The Georgia State Election Board complaints used to support the warrant came from Trump-aligned officials, not from the state's chief election officer.

The Fulton County investigation is separate from the state criminal case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis against Trump and 18 co-defendants for alleged interference in the 2020 🍑Georgia election. That case was paused after Trump's Supreme Court-backed claim of presidential immunity. The new FBI probe focuses on alleged fraud by Fulton County election officials — the same officials who are witnesses in the DA's case — raising additional concerns about parallel proceedings targeting the same events from opposite directions.