A referral by a lawyer who assisted President Donald Trump‘s efforts to challenge his 2020 election defeat, Kurt Olsen, led to a recent FBI raid that seized 2020 election ballots from Fulton County, Georgia.
A newly unsealed 22-page affidavit by FBI agent Hugh Raymond Evans shows the FBI, during the Jan. 28 raid, sought a search warrant as part of a criminal investigation into whether alleged irregularities in Fulton County’s handling of the 2020 presidential election were intentional and violated federal law.
“The FBI criminal investigation originated from a referral sent by Kurt Olsen, Presidentially appointed Director of Election Security and Integrity,” Evans wrote in the affidavit, which was filed in federal court in Atlanta and unsealed Tuesday. The affidavit also identifies Georgia State Election Board member Janice Johnston, a supporter of Trump who has questioned the county’s handling of the election, as a secondary source of information for the investigation.
Evans said investigators were examining whether election improprieties in Fulton County amounted to violations of federal statutes governing the preservation of election records and the knowing deprivation of a fair election. The affidavit does not accuse any specific individual of wrongdoing.
The filing was unsealed by U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee after the chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners and the county Board of Registration and Elections sued last week seeking the return of the seized ballots.
Federal prosecutors submitted the affidavit in support of a search warrant authorizing agents to seize physical ballots from the 2020 general election in Fulton County, including absentee ballots, as well as tabulator tapes from every voting machine and voter rolls documenting absentee, early, and Election Day voting.
Evans wrote that following the Nov. 3, 2020, election, “there were many allegations of electoral impropriety relating to the voting process and ballot counting in Fulton County, Georgia,” noting that while some claims had been disproven, others had been substantiated through admissions by the county.
“The tabulator machines used by Fulton County are designed to create and save a scanned image of each ballot,” Evans wrote. “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.”
Among the issues cited in the affidavit, Evans said Fulton County officials acknowledged they do not possess scanned images for all ballots counted during the original tally or the subsequent recount. He also said county officials confirmed some ballots were scanned multiple times during the recount.
“The tabulator machines used by Fulton County are designed to create and save a scanned image of each ballot,” Evans wrote. “Fulton County has admitted that it does not have scanned images of all the ballots counted during the Original Count or the Recount.”
The affidavit also references auditors who reported vote tallies during a hand count that were inconsistent with the actual number of votes in certain batches, as well as discrepancies in the county’s reported ballot totals around the recount deadline.
“If these deficiencies were the result of intentional action,” Evans wrote, “it would be a violation of federal law regardless of whether the failure to retain records or the deprivation of a fair tabulation of a vote was outcome determinative for any particular election or race.”
Trump lost Georgia in the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden by fewer than 12,000 votes out of nearly 5 million cast statewide. Three separate counts were conducted following the election, none of which displayed discrepancies large enough to affect the results of the election.
The Jan. 28 raid drew national attention after Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, was present at the Fulton County election center when FBI agents executed the warrant.
Gabbard later said she attended at the direction of Trump. The president more recently said her presence was at the insistence of Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Democratic lawmakers have sharply criticized both the raid and Gabbard’s involvement, arguing the actions risk undermining public confidence in elections ahead of the midterm cycle. Sens. Alex Padilla (D-CA) and Mark Warner (D-VA) called on Gabbard to schedule a classified briefing for senators on election security concerns.
“The request comes amid unprecedented investigations by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, purportedly to address ‘evidence’ of election vulnerabilities and manipulation of election results, which have not been substantiated,” the senators’ offices said in a joint statement.
Olsen, who rose to prominence after the 2020 election while advancing claims that Biden’s victory was tainted by fraud, was appointed by Trump in October 2025 as a special government employee tasked with investigating election integrity issues.
JUDGE ORDERS SEARCH WARRANT FOR GEORGIA FBI RAID UNSEALED
He previously worked on postelection litigation seeking to overturn Trump’s loss and later represented former Arizona Republican gubernatorial and Senate candidate Kari Lake in challenges to Arizona’s election systems and the 2022 gubernatorial results.
The warrant also lists Thomas Albus, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, as counsel for the government. Albus was appointed by Bondi as a special attorney overseeing election integrity matters.