The F.B.I.’s Extraordinary Seizure of Voting Records

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From the New York Times, I'm Michael Balbaro. This is the Daily. Today, what we're learning about the FBI's highly unusual seizure of voting records last week in Georgia, the presence of the nation's top intelligence official at the scene, and the stunning phone call that reveals how personally involved President Trump has become in the investigation. I spoke with my colleague Devlin Barrett. It's Tuesday, february 3rd. Devlin, this story begins with a dramatic.

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Scene which unfolded a few days ago in Fulton County, Georgia.

1:26

Can you just describe that to us?

1:30

Sure. So take a live look at the Fulton county elections office near Atlanta. Last Wednesday morning, a group of FBI agents show up for a massive undertaking, the collection of a huge volume of stuff related to the 2020 election in Fulton County. FBI agents spent the afternoon inside the records warehouse for the Fulton County, Georgia, Board of Elections. Fulton county contains the city of Atlanta. So obviously it has a lot of election records, but specifically, what the agents were there to get were the paper ballots from that election, but also other things such as voter rolls, such as tabulation tapes, all of which is essentially data and documentation about the 2020 election.

1:33

Just to be clear, every single ballot or close to it from an election six years ago is taken by the FBI out of this building.

2:20

Right. And it takes hours to load all those hundreds of boxes into trucks and bring them to an FBI storage facility.

2:30

And what exactly is the rationale for for this search? I think by now most people understand President Trump has a fixation on Fulton county and its recurring place in his baseless claims of election fraud in 2020 when he lost reelection. But those claims of fraud, we've covered them many times on this show in Fulton County. They have been so thoroughly litigated and relitigated that it would be hard to understand why a new investigation into them would ever be undertaken.

2:42

Right. This stuff has been investigated before. These ballots have been counted multiple times to make sure they got the count right. And it's always checked out. And so when you see an investigation like this, when you see an FBI search warrant like this, it raises the obvious question, well, why now? What has changed? What new or different information do we have to justify this search? And the reality is the affidavit that is the underlying rationale for the search warrant, we can't see that's still sealed. So we don't know exactly what evidentiary argument was made to justify this, but we know what the theoretical argument is, right?

3:14

It's just not possible to have lost Georgia. It's not possible.

3:53

Trump's been making it more or less for six years.

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In Georgia. The Secretary of State began illegally processing ballots weeks before Election Day, that somehow, some way, thousands and thousands of counterfeit ballots for Joe Biden.

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These ballots, this evidence, shows election fraud. Now, very recently, you've seen the President come back to this subject.

4:12

It's great to be back in beautiful.

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Davos, Switzerland, for example, when the President speaks at Davos, Switzerland last month, it.

4:22

Was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that they found out.

4:30

He talks about the 2020 election.

4:33

People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. It's probably breaking news, but it should be.

4:35

And he predicts that there will be prosecutions of people.

4:42

But, Devlin, how does the President start to make the threats that he issued in a place like Davos turn into reality? And how does he get to this FBI search of this voting facility in Fulton county, given the highly public lack of evidence that any fraud ever occurred?

4:47

So the administration assigns this case to a federal prosecutor in Missouri, Missouri, not Georgia. That seems notable, right? This investigative effort, this search in Georgia is not being overseen by a prosecutor in Atlanta, which I think is noteworthy, because the federal prosecutor's office in Atlanta had already looked at this years earlier and decided there was nothing to pursue. And in addition to the federal prosecutor in Missouri, the other key person driving this forward is Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence. She runs an agency that, frankly, is supposed to be looking at foreign security threats, cyber threats. And very oddly, she goes to the scene of this search. She goes to the Election Hub building in Fulton county and is on scene as part of the search group. And that is not the normal way of running an FBI search. That is certainly not something that I've seen before with any DNI or for that matter, with any senior FBI official. You know, if you want to cast back to something like the FBI search at Mar A Lago, it's not like there were senior FBI officials running that search. That, that was done by bureau personnel. There were managers there, certainly, but they weren't having the heads of agencies run it.

5:05

So, from what you're saying, the way the president gets this FBI search is he kind of cobbles together a group of willing participants who will do this for him, one of whom is the Director of National Intelligence. And as you're saying, that seems highly unusual that she would end up at the scene of this FBI search. What could explain that?

6:30

What our reporting has found is that the President ordered her to go, the president told her to go, and she is there on his direction, and she is acting on his behalf. And I think it speaks to the degree to which the president is personally interested in this investigation. The president is personally pushing forward this investigation, and it speaks to, I think, the people within his administration that are willing to do this kind of thing for him.

6:51

Right.

7:17

Well, let's keep talking about Gabbard for just a moment and why she would be willing to do this. As you're saying, this doesn't exactly seem like the most natural use of her time. But Gabbard famously seems to want to please the president. And we know that because many months ago, she publicly claimed, without evidence, that former President Barack Obama had potentially criminally violated the law because his administration began the Trump Russia investigation. She suggested that perhaps Obama should be charged with a crime.

7:17

Right. And I think you've seen throughout the administration instances where she has played up many of the unfounded accusations, many of the suspicions that President Trump promotes himself. And so I think she has been a very eager participant in Trump's push to find purported evidence of voter fraud in 2020, and Trump's push to try to build a criminal case against people he doesn't like over the fact that he lost the election in 2020.

7:52

Got it. So that's how we get the Director of National Intelligence basically going to this FBI raid as the president's eyes and ears.

8:26

Right, exactly.

8:36

And what does Gabbard actually do at the scene when FBI agents are grabbing all of these ballots and voting technologies?

8:37

Right. So there's not really much for a Director of National Intelligence to do at a search, but what she is seen doing when she's there is talking to someone on the phone. She's walking around, she's visible, she's present kind of lurking.

8:46

Yeah.

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And so that's significant and unusual, but what's far more unusual is what happens after the search when she has a meeting with some of the FBI agents who conducted the search. And that meeting really reveals a lot about the President's interest in all this and also may end up undercutting everything the president is trying to achieve.

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We'll be right back.

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9:45

So, Delvin, tell us about this meeting that Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, has after the FBI search.

10:41

Right. So after the search, Tulsi Gabbard goes to the FBI field office to talk to some of the agents who worked the search. And it's not completely unheard of for a senior official to visit the FBI field office. The agents sometimes get VIP visits. But what happens in the meeting quickly becomes quite strange and quite concerning to some people. What happens is while she's talking to the agents, she decides to call President Trump. And the first time she calls, she doesn't get through. But very quickly after that, Trump calls her back, and Tulsi Gabbard puts President Trump on speakerphone to talk to the other agents.

10:49

Huh.

11:34

And what's described to us is that at first, the President is essentially just thanking them and praising them for their work. But then he starts to ask some questions, and at that point, the supervisor, the room, tries to essentially run point on answering those questions because now you're getting into a very dicey area where the president himself is asking questions of the field agents, the people on the ground doing the work. And, you know, the whole thing is incredibly, legally fraught and complicated.

11:35

Well, just explain why it's legally fraught. I can imagine practically why it's fraught, because suddenly you have a bunch of FBI agents talking with the President of the United States about a L investigation.

12:11

But.

12:21

But legally, what's the issue?

12:22

Right? I mean, on a basic level, it's A bad look, right? You have the person who has demanded this investigation, the politically powerful person who's demanded this investigation, now talking to the people who are supposedly doing an independent and very fact based investigation. But it's legally problematic for a different but related reason. And that is one of the things we've seen already in this administration is prosecutions that Trump wanted to see happen have fallen apart in part because he has so publicly and aggressively demanded certain people be prosecuted. You see that in the cases against the former FBI director, James Comey. You see that in the case against the New York Attorney General, Letitia James. There you saw arguments being made about vindictive prosecution. And what the administration has argued to sort of counter claims of vindictive prosecution is, well, it doesn't matter what the President says because it's the investigators and the prosecutors who are pursuing the case.

12:24

Right?

13:25

Well, if you have the President talking directly to the investigators, it suddenly becomes much harder to argue that there isn't a connection between what the President wants and what the investigators are doing. So you're sort of creating connective tissue for anyone who's ever charged in this, if anyone ever is to argue, look, this is unjust, this is unfair, this case should be thrown out because the President is talking to the investigators in real time while they're still investigating.

13:25

Right. You're saying at some point, when in theory somebody who ran the Fulton county election counting in 2020 is charged with a crime based on this search, you can imagine at trial perhaps FBI agents being called to the stand to testify about Trump, discussing the investigation with them, and it very much making clear how much Trump wanted these people to be charged, how personally invested he was in all this, and that that would help make the case for vindictive prosecution and perhaps ultimately get whatever charges were brought tossed.

13:53

Right. So there's a lot of reasons why legally, forget just politically or common sense wise, legally, this is not great if you ever want to try to build a criminal case out of this.

14:31

So what we're seeing here is that this relentlessly hands on approach from President Trump to this particular investigation, the 2020 election, Fulton county, it's getting Trump what he wants on the front end. I mean, those ballots were seized. But it's starting to undermine his ability to get what he wants on the back end, which is election officials in prison.

14:43

Right. And to be fair, this is in keeping with how he views himself in this second term. He has said repeatedly, I am the chief law enforcement official in the United States. I run the FBI and I Run the Justice Department, not the attorney general, not the FBI, me, the president. So what you see is him acting on that belief. But I think that's a big difference from the courts accepting that this is appropriate behavior or this is the kind of behavior that will survive challenges in court.

15:05

Devlin, how are the election officials in Fulton county who have just been subjected to this raid, to this search, how are they responding to what has happened?

15:38

So we will not give one inch.

15:52

To those who seek to take control of elections in Fulton County.

15:55

They have already vowed to take the government to court to fight this, to essentially demand the evidence back.

16:00

Are they opening the boxes? Are they stuffing other ballots in there? I have no clue.

16:06

They say they're not comfortable with the Trump administration having control of these ballots.

16:11

He does not want the midterm elections to take away his power, so he's trying to create chaos.

16:16

So this is what he. Few local election officials have gone further, saying that the FBI search should scare everyone, because this, to them, is really about the next election in 2026. The midterms.

16:21

Protect your vote at all costs. I'm telling you, everybody always says your.

16:35

Life depends on it.

16:38

Oh, your life does depend on it this time.

16:39

And what do they mean there?

16:44

Look, I think the concern for a lot of election experts and a lot of Democrats is that the administration may, at some point in the future, try to use these claims of fraud to buttress their argument that some votes should not be counted or some results are not the right results. And those concerns are based on more than just this search in full. Bolton County. Over the last year, Trump's Justice Department has filed lawsuits seeking voter roll data, personal information about voters in almost half the states in the country. And that is something that hasn't been done before. That is very different and out of keeping with how voting has been managed up till now. And I think a lot of the states who are fighting the Trump administration over these types of things see a larger pattern of trying to sow doubt about the integrity of elections, trying to prepare the groundwork for maybe challenging results in 2026 if it doesn't go Trump's way. That's an election in which, you know, there's certainly a possibility that the House of Representatives could become democratically controlled, and that would significantly curtail Trump's power as president over the following two years.

16:45

Right. And as we know, doubts about election are just, at this point, central to the Trump movement. And those doubts require stoking. And this FBI search of this Fulton county election hub is an act of stoking. It puts the issue of election doubt, election denialism, back on the radar for Americans at a time when most people aren't really thinking about it.

18:06

Think for a minute about what an FBI investigation is. By its very nature, an FBI investigation sows doubt and sows suspicion about the people being investigated. The president has been sowing doubt and suspicion about elections for years when he was out of power.

18:36

Right.

18:55

And now what you're seeing is that now that he's in power, he can use the levers of government, he can use the mechanics of something like the FBI to sow that doubt. And so that suspicion and that doubt and suspicion becomes the official posture of the government.

18:55

Well, Devlin, thank you very much.

19:15

Thank you.

19:17

In a radio interview on Monday afternoon, President Trump escalated his claims of election fraud, declaring that Republicans should take control of elections across the country.

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Republicans should say, we want to take over. We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.

19:36

We have.

19:47

That prompted a swift rebuke from the Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer.

19:48

You think he believes in democracy? Does Donald Trump need a copy of the Constitution? What he's saying is outlandishly illegal.

19:54

Once again, the president's talking no different.

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We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Monday, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, announced that body cameras would immediately be given to federal officers working in Minneapolis. It was the Trump administration's latest effort to adjust its tactics amid a national outcry over the killing of two American citizens. The first, Renee Goode, by an ICE agent. The second, Alex Preddy, by two Border Patrol agents. Noem said that the body cameras would eventually be given to all Homeland Security agents across the country. And a proposed deal to end a partial government shutdown reached last week by President Trump and Senate Democrats has stumbled in the House, where some Republicans are threatening to block its passage. Several hardline conservatives have demanded policy changes to the funding package, including a requirement that people show identification before voting. Democrats who oppose such requirements say that change would kill the funding package, which could further extend the shutdown by days, if not weeks. Today's episode was produced by Astha Chaturvedi, Claire Tennisketter and Mary Wilson. It was edited by Rob Zipko with help from Michael Benoit. Contains music by Elisheba Itube and Rowingy Misto and was engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for the Daily. I'm Michael Balbara. See you tomorrow.

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