FILE – Voting machines fill the floor for early voting at State Farm Arena, Oct. 12, 2020, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File)
Debunked claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election made by notorious conspiracy theorists and election deniers were the basis of the evidence used by the Trump administration to obtain a search warrant for the FBI to raid a Fulton County, Georgia election hub earlier this month, newly unsealed court records make clear.
The search warrant affidavit, which was unsealed Tuesday, revealed that the FBI’s criminal probe into the 2020 vote in Georgia — which President Donald Trump failed to subvert after losing to Joe Biden by a little over 11,000 votes — originated with Kurt Olsen, a special government employee at the White House who was recently appointed Director of Election Security and Integrity.
“It’s no surprise that the Trump DOJ is recycling the same election conspiracy theories Georgia officials have already investigated and debunked,” Fair Fight CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo said in a statement to Democracy Docket. “We’re now watching those false claims – pushed by the very same network of election conspiracy theorists who fueled misleading claims after the 2020 election – get dressed up and passed off as new ‘evidence.’”
Olsen, a former Trump campaign lawyer, played a key role in the president’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. Olsen was involved in Texas’ challenge of the election results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Olsen also pushed DOJ officials to file a motion with the U.S. Supreme Court to nullify the election results, urging the court to order a special election in four states where Trump lost.
And on Jan. 6, 2021, Olsen — who was deeply involved in the Stop the Steal efforts — spoke on the phone with Trump at least three times.
It’s not surprising to see Olsen’s fingerprints on the Fulton County raid. Olsen joined the White House as a temporary special employee in October to reportedly investigate the 2020 election and other voting-related issues — including examining election machines.
But Olsen is far from the only election denier whose long-held, debunked claims that the 2020 vote was fraudulent were used to convince a federal judge to issue a warrant for the FBI to confiscate nearly 700 boxes of ballots and voting materials from Fulton County’s central election facility.
The affidavit mentions evidence collected by Clay Parikh, a cybersecurity specialist with ties to MyPillow CEO and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, who is currently working as a special government employee. Parikh, according to the affidavit, was contacted by an unnamed witness described as a “member of the Election Oversight Group, LLC.” The witness had drafted a report regarding the election in Fulton County and asked Parikh to review the data.
It’s unclear exactly who the witness is, but the report described in the affidavit by the Election Oversight Group, LLC was released in early January and authored by a group of known election deniers led by Kevin Moncla — a conservative researcher whose claims about the 2020 election have been routinely rejected. Moncla, whose work has been promoted by leading election deniers like the anti-voting activist Cleta Mitchell, recently told ProPublica that he’d been interviewed by various federal investigators and attorneys about his Fulton County 2020 investigation.
Though the unsealed affidavit lists nearly a dozen unnamed witnesses used to justify the seizure of Fulton County’s election materials, there is information pointing to who they might be.
Witness 2, for example, is described as an “obstetrician” and the “Republican-appointed member of the Georgia State Election Board [SEB]” who has served since “February or March 2022.” Janice Johnston, a former ob-gyn, was appointed to the SEB in March 2022 and has promoted election conspiracies and been a pivotal part of the board’s sharp pro-Trump, anti-voting pivot.
In the affidavit, Witness 2 repeated a popular conspiracy theory that flash-drives supposedly containing images of scanned ballots contained missing files — something Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) refuted when he certified the election results.
Janelle King, another SEB member, isn’t mentioned by name in the affidavit, but Witness 3 — who also “confirmed there were missing ballot images — is described as “the current House-appointed State Election Board member.” King, who refused to acknowledge that Biden won 2020 and spread voting conspiracies in the aftermath of the election, was appointed to the SEB by the Georgia House of Representatives in May 2024.
The affidavit includes allegations of “pristine ballots”— part of a conspiracy theory concerning counterfeit ballots pushed by election denier Suzi Voyles. These allegations were later debunked by investigators who were “unable to substantiate the allegations that fraudulent or counterfeit ballots were counted in the 2020 General Election in Fulton County,” according to a 2021 filing made by the state of Georgia in a separate lawsuit over the ballots.
Witness 11, who raises allegations of unsecured and fraudulent ballots, is described as a former poll worker who is now a county commissioner. Fulton County Commissioner Bridget Thorne, a former poll worker, has been an outspoken anti-voting activist on the commission.
“You can’t slap a fresh coat of paint on disinformation and call it credible,” Groh-Wargo added. “Repurposing these conspiracy theories as federal justification is part of a broader campaign to re-litigate the past and lay the groundwork for interference in the 2026 elections.”