Judge denies Fulton County’s request to return 2020 ballots seized by FBI

A federal judge in Georgia denied a motion by officials in Fulton County, Georgia, to return ballots and other materials from the 2020 election that were taken by the FBI in a court-authorized search earlier this year.

U.S. District Judge Jean-Paul Boulee said Wednesday that attorneys representing Fulton County did not establish enough evidence to prove that the FBI affidavit at the center of the case was deficient in a way that had a “callous disregard” for the county’s rights.

Boulee, however, said that the affidavit was “defective in some respects” by including misleading statements about the final ballot count in 2020 in the county, and that there were “troubling” omissions about ballot mechanisms in the documents.

“While the Affidavit was certainly far from perfect, this is not a situation where an officer left out all the facts that might undermine probable cause or where an officer intentionally lied,” Boulee wrote, adding, “the Court cannot say that the Affidavit was so deficient that its shortcomings rise to the “high[] threshold” of callous disregard.”

This is a breaking story; it will be updated.