FBI raid in Georgia highlights Trump’s preoccupation with the 2020 election

DENVER (AP) — Donald Trump lost his bid for re-election in 2020. But for more than five years, he has been trying to convince Americans that the opposite is true by falsely saying the election was marred by widespread fraud.

He watches: FBI raids Georgia elections office as Trump administration seeks voter data from states

Now that he is president again, Trump is pressuring the federal government to support these false claims.

The FBI on Wednesday issued a search warrant at the elections headquarters in Fulton County, Georgia, which includes most of Atlanta, seeking ballots for the 2020 election. It follows Trump’s comments earlier this month when he suggested during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that election-related charges were imminent.

“The man has his misgivings, as do a fair number of people, but he is the only one who has the full power of the United States behind him,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, California.

Hasen and many others have pointed out that Trump’s use of the FBI to continue his obsession with the 2020 election is part of a pattern of the president turning the federal government into a personal tool for revenge.

Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat from Georgia, compared the search to an immigration crackdown in Minnesota that resulted in the deaths of two US citizen protesters, which Trump launched as his latest salvo against the state’s governor, against whom he is running as Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.

“From Minnesota to Georgia, the world is watching a president who is out of control and using federal law enforcement as an unaccountable tool for personal power and retaliation,” Ossoff said in a statement.

Read more: Democratic Fulton County Commissioner announces candidacy for Georgia Secretary of State

It also comes as election officials across the country begin preparing for the 2026 midterm elections, with Trump struggling to help his party maintain control of Congress. Noting that in 2020, Trump considered using the military to seize voting machines after his loss, some worry he is laying the groundwork for a similar maneuver in the fall.

“Georgia is a blueprint,” said Christine Nabers of the left-leaning group All Vote Local. “If they can get away with taking election materials here, what’s to stop them from taking election materials or machines from another state after they lose?”

Georgia was at the heart of Trump’s 2020 mania. He infamously called Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2, 2021, and asked Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 more votes for Trump so he could be declared the winner of the state. Raffensperger declined, noting that repeated reviews confirmed Democrat Joe Biden narrowly won Georgia.

Read more: Jack Smith defends criminal investigations into Trump during House hearing

Those were part of a series of reviews in battleground states, often led by Republicans, that confirmed Biden’s victory, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada. Trump also lost dozens of lawsuits that challenged the election results, and the attorney general said at the time that there was no evidence of widespread fraud.

His allies who repeated his lies were successfully sued for libel. That includes former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who reached a settlement with two Georgia election officials after a court ruled he owed them $148 million for defaming them after the 2020 election.

Voting machine companies also filed defamation cases against some conservative-leaning news sites that aired unsubstantiated claims about linking their equipment to fraud in 2020. Fox News settled one of those cases by agreeing to pay $787 million after a judge ruled that it was “absolutely clear” that none of those claims were true.

Read more: Important moments from Jack Smith’s testimony at home

Trump’s campaign to move Georgia into his column also sparked an ill-fated attempt to prosecute him and some of his allies by Fulton County District Attorney Fanny Willis, a Democrat. The case collapsed after Willis was fired over conflict-of-interest concerns, and Trump has since sought damages from the office.

On his first day in office, Trump rewarded some of those who helped him try to overturn the 2020 election results with pardons, commutations or a pledge to drop the cases of about 1,500 people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He later signed an executive order trying to set new rules for states’ election systems and voting procedures, though that was repeatedly blocked by judges who ruled that the Constitution gives states, and in some cases Congress, control of elections rather than the president.

As part of his retaliation campaign, Trump has also spoken of his desire to bring criminal charges against lawmakers who sat on the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack, suggesting that Biden’s preemptive pardons for them are legally invalid. He targeted a former cybersecurity appointee who assured the public in 2020 that the election was secure.

He watches: Jack Smith explains why Trump is the only defendant charged in the January 6 case

During a year of presidential duties, from dealing with the wars in Gaza and Ukraine to shepherding sweeping tax and spending legislation through Congress, Trump found time to turn the topic to 2020. He has falsely called the election rigged, said Democrats cheated, and even installed a White House plaque claiming Biden took office after “the most corrupt election ever.”

David Pecker, a former Justice Department voting rights lawyer and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said he was skeptical that the FBI’s search in Georgia would lead to any successful prosecutions. Trump has called for charges against several enemies, such as former FBI Director James Comey and Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James, which have stalled in court.

“A lot of what this administration has done is make claims on social media instead of going to court,” Baker said. “I think it’s more about poisoning the well for 2026.”