By KATE BRUMBACK<\/p>\n
ATLANTA (AP) \u2014 The U.S. Department of Justice cannot have the names and personal contact information for every person who worked during\u00a0the 2020 election<\/a>\u00a0in Georgia\u2019s Fulton County, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.<\/p>\n The Justice Department in April obtained a\u00a0grand jury subpoena<\/a>\u00a0seeking the names and personal contact information of county employees and volunteer poll workers. President Donald Trump has long\u00a0claimed without evidence<\/a>\u00a0that widespread voter fraud in Georgia\u2019s most populous county, a Democratic stronghold, cost him victory in the state in 2020.<\/p>\n Fulton County asked a judge to quash the subpoena, arguing it was meant to \u201ctarget, harass and punish the President\u2019s perceived political opponents\u201d and that it was \u201cgrossly over broad and untethered to any reasonable need.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGiven the low need for the subpoenaed information and the highly burdensome nature of the disclosure of the same, the Subpoena is unreasonable and must be quashed,\u201d U.S. District Judge William Ray wrote in his ruling.<\/p>\n While grand juries often work with federal prosecutors to investigate alleged crimes, \u201cthat does not give the DOJ the right to use the Grand Jury to do whatever the DOJ wants,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n Even if the records sought by the Justice Department could help find people who worked for the county during the 2020 election who support the theory that the election was unfair, the information couldn\u2019t be used to charge anyone, Ray wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is because the statute of limitations for any possible crime arising from the 2020 Election has long expired,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n The subpoena came after the FBI in January served a search warrant at the Fulton County election hub and\u00a0seized hundreds of boxes of ballots<\/a>\u00a0and other documents from the 2020 election. A federal judge in May\u00a0denied the county\u2019s request<\/a>\u00a0to force the federal government to return the ballots.<\/p>\n The Justice Department argued in a court filing that the subpoena was the \u201cnext step in the normal investigative process\u201d and that it seeks \u201crecords identifying persons with relevant knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n Kamal Ghali, a lawyer for the county, argued that the subpoena \u201cwill chill participation by election workers\u201d and that the statute of limitations for any of the alleged misconduct had already lapsed.<\/p>\n Justice Department lawyer William McComb said the statute of limitations issue is not relevant at the investigative stage. The point of the investigation is to figure out what charges can be brought, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cMy point is, as we sit here now, we are not sure what charges can be brought. That\u2019s the whole point of the investigation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The request for election workers\u2019 contact information, McComb said, \u201cwould simply be a pathway to determine and speak with and interview certain individuals who worked at the polls who may have seen, heard or done something in and of themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n During a hearing in May, the judge said he was going to focus on whether the federal government\u2019s request for the election worker contact information was reasonable.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, an overly broad fishing expedition is bad and is not allowed,\u201d Ray said. \u201cBut one that\u2019s not overly broad is kind of okay. And the question is, how do we \u2014 how does \u2014 how do I as a judge decide when does it go too far?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By KATE BRUMBACK ATLANTA (AP) \u2014 The U.S. Department of Justice cannot have the names and personal contact…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[81247,1054,157029,81231,10979,16047,9295,74,76,75,73130],"class_list":["post-389589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-2020-election","tag-doj","tag-election-workers","tag-fulton-county","tag-georgia","tag-judge","tag-privacy","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-subpoena"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}