Federal judge blocks DOJ subpoena for 2020 Fulton County election workers’ names

A federal judge on July 7 rejected the Justice Department’s attempt to obtain the names and personal contact information of every person who worked during the 2020 election in Georgia’s Fulton County, ruling that the grand jury subpoena was too broad and could not be justified by the government’s stated investigative need.

U.S. District Judge William Ray quashed the subpoena, writing that the request was unreasonable given the “low need” for the information and the burden of disclosing personal data for county employees and volunteer poll workers, the Associated Press reported.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) obtained the grand jury subpoena in April as part of its renewed investigation into the handling of the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia’s most populous county and a longtime focus of President Donald Trump’s criticism of the 2020 vote.

Fulton County asked the court to block the subpoena, arguing that the government’s demand would expose ordinary election workers to harassment. County lawyers said the request appeared designed to target people who participated in the 2020 election rather than pursue a viable criminal charge.

Ray agreed that the government had failed to justify its demand for private information. He also noted that any possible crimes arising from the 2020 election itself would now be outside the statute of limitations, AP reported. Even if some of the requested records helped investigators find people who believed the election was unfair, he wrote, that information could not itself be used to prosecute anyone for election-related conduct in 2020.

The DOJ had argued that the subpoena was a normal next step in the investigative process. Federal attorney William McComb told the court that prosecutors are still determining what charges, if any, could be brought and that the requested information would help investigators identify people who may have seen or heard something relevant during the election.

The subpoena followed a January FBI search at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center in Union City, Georgia, where federal agents seized hundreds of boxes of ballots and election records from the 2020 vote. FOX 5 Atlanta reported that agents loaded hundreds of boxes of ballots and records into trucks during that operation.

Another federal judge ruled in May that the Trump administration could keep possession of the seized Fulton County ballots and records while the investigation continues. In that case, U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee acknowledged flaws in the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant but also said Fulton County had not met the legal standard required to force the government to return the materials, according to Reuters.

Reuters also reported that the broader investigation concerns possible election record-retention issues and allegations that Fulton County residents were deprived of a fair election. Fulton County lawyers have argued that the federal investigation rests on claims that had already been examined and either rejected or attributed to mistakes rather than intentional wrongdoing.

The July 7 ruling does not end the DOJ’s broader Fulton County probe. Ray wrote that Congress, the DOJ, or others remain free to continue investigating claims about the 2020 election. But he said the grand jury process, which exists to investigate crimes and bring viable indictments, cannot be used to gather private citizen information without a legitimate criminal-law purpose.

“Everyone,” Ray wrote, should be concerned if the government can use grand jury power to obtain private information without such a purpose.

Fulton County became a center of national controversy after the 2020 election, when Trump and his allies disputed the results in Georgia and pointed to the county as a focus of their complaints. The official results in the state were certified for Joe Biden in 2020 before Georgia swung back to Trump in the 2024 presidential election.