Lawyers filed an emergency motion on Sunday night requesting that a federal judge in Georgia stop President Donald Trump’s latest “chill on voting rights.”
Earlier this month, the Trump administration dispatched FBI agents accompanied by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to raid the Fulton County, Georgia, election office. Agents took around 700 boxes of material related to the 2020 general election, including ballots, voting data, and the county’s voter rolls. The warrant for the raid said the administration can turn over the documents to technical analysts who contract with the Trump team, raising concerns that the data may be used to manipulate the result of future elections.
Lawyers from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the NAACP argued in a court filing before the federal court in the Northern District of Atlanta that the raid violated their clients’ civil rights. They also argued that Trump’s repeated attempts to undermine U.S. elections are only “heightening the chill on registration and voting.”
The lawyers also asked the court to approve an expedited review and response process for the federal government, suggesting they respond to the motion by February 24.
“These repeated efforts to access 2020 election records, including by the entity that now has custody of them, heightens concerns about the privacy and security of sensitive voter data and exacerbates the chill on voting rights,” the lawyers wrote in their brief.
The Trump administration has filed more than two dozen lawsuits seeking to retrieve voter rolls from Democratic-led states. Those efforts have been shot down by courts, and the Trump administration appears to be shifting tactics to get the sensitive information.
“This relief does not turn on the legality of the warrant or the seizure,” the lawyers argued. “Rather, its justification lies in the constitutional and statutory protections for the right to vote, voter privacy, and ballot secrecy, which are fundamentally critical given the unprecedented assaults on the administration of elections.”
Read the motion and supporting documents here.
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