Dems Prepare for Trump to Seize Ballots and Interfere in the Midterms
‘Our highest risk in 2026 and potentially in 2028 is the federal government trying to disrupt and undermine our elections,’ says Colorado’s secretary of state.
When FBI agents showed up at a warehouse in the Atlanta area in late January, local officials were surprised, to say the least. The agents seized hundreds of thousands of ballots and other material from the 2020 election as part of Donald Trump’s never-ending quest to prove a stolen election that never was.
Now, Trump’s Justice Department is fighting to hold on to the ballots and other records seized by the FBI as Fulton County, Georgia, fights in court to retrieve the materials. In the process, Justice Department lawyers have made legal arguments asserting extraordinary powers over election records like those seized in late January – prompting concerns that the Trump administration could try to seize ballots, voting machines, or other equipment as votes are being counted in the November midterms.
After all, Trump did try to steal the 2020 election, and he has already said he “should have” directed his administration to seize voting machines after he lost. With Trump now explicitly using ICE to deal with a political problem – long lines at airports – concerns over armed federal agents at the polls in November have been renewed.
Trumpworld provocateur and Jeffery Epstein pal Steve Bannon on Monday called ICE’s presence at the nation’s airports a “test run” and “perfect training” for November, arguing federal agents should “check IDs” at polling locations.
Following the Fulton County raid, election officials across the country are wargaming scenarios in preparation for unprecedented federal government interference in November’s midterms. Secretaries of state, attorneys general, county attorneys, and local election officials have all taken the raid as a stark warning.
“Our highest risk in 2026 and potentially in 2028 is the federal government trying to disrupt and undermine our elections,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold tells Zeteo. “It’s not Russia, it’s not China, it’s Donald Trump.”
Trump’s administration hasn’t only taken election records in Georgia.
In Arizona, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are carrying out investigations into disproven fraud claims stemming from the 2020 election, with the FBI seizing more than three dozen hard drives and servers from Maricopa County. Last year, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard – who was present at the Fulton County raid – seized voting machines in Puerto Rico, a development that has only recently come to light.
And just last week, a GOP sheriff who is running for governor in California seized more than 650,000 ballots from a November special election on redistricting after convincing a magistrate judge – just as the Justice Department did in Fulton County – to issue search warrants for the material. The sheriff, Chad Bianco, said he had launched his investigation into the special election, a contest Republicans lost by nearly 30% and over 3 million votes, after an unnamed group “did their own audit” of the election and claimed the total number of votes was off by 45,000. Election officials have refuted the claim, and California Attorney General Rob Bonta questioned whether the search warrants should have been issued at all – another similarity to what took place in Fulton County.
The confiscation of ballots and other election records as well as equipment like voting machines in Arizona, California, Georgia, and Puerto Rico, combined with Justice Department lawsuits in more than 30 states that seek access to sensitive personal information of tens of millions of American voters, has election officials across the country preparing for a variety of scenarios in November.
“We’re in active conversations with fellow secretaries of state and local election officials about how best to respond to the lawless threats being made by the Trump administration,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows tells Zeteo. “We will use every tool in our power to resist the unconstitutional nationalization of elections. Those tools include strategic noncompliance, litigation, communications and coordination.”
‘Unchecked power’
As the Trump administration has continued to seize materials from the 2020 election, Justice Department lawyers have argued in court in Georgia that the federal government should essentially be able to seize whatever election-related materials it wants, attorneys for Fulton County have said in court filings.
The county’s attorneys argue the FBI affidavit that led to the approval of a search warrant from a state magistrate judge in late January was flimsy at best. The affidavit was based on disproven or highly questionable fraud claims championed by Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who worked to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and who is now a Trump administration special government employee tasked with “election integrity” matters. Trump has told US spy agencies to funnel intelligence regarding 2020 election fraud directly to Olsen, NBC News reported.
Fulton County has demanded the return of the records seized by the FBI as well as an evidentiary hearing to discuss the merits of the affidavit itself – and to hear testimony from its author, FBI special agent Hugh Evans. The Justice Department has rebuffed this demand, saying the testimony from Evans and a hearing on the merits of the evidence offered in the affidavit would impact an ongoing criminal investigation. Mediation between Fulton County and the Justice Department has failed, and a hearing has been scheduled for March 27.
If the Justice Department is allowed to proceed with its investigation without a hearing on the merits of the affidavit, it could “set a precedent that would grant the federal government unchecked power to interfere with the local administration of elections,” Fulton County attorneys said in a Feb. 24 filing.
That “unchecked power” is exactly what state election officials like Griswold and Bellows worry about.
“It should be shocking to Americans that that magistrate judge allowed this search warrant to go forward. It’s based on conspiracies,” Griswold said.
The Fulton County case could set legal precedents that would affect possible future attempts by the Trump administration to seize election records, said Diane Wood, a retired US circuit judge who works with the Article III Coalition of the non-partisan organization Keep Our Republic, which advocates for the independence of the judiciary. Justice Department lawyers have argued in court that the county does not have Fourth Amendment rights, and does not have a sovereignty claim regarding the records that were seized.
“We’re in this area of, can the federal government come in and run wild over the sovereignty of the state?” Wood tells Zeteo.
Wood and others have pointed out that, not only is the government making extraordinary claims of power over the ballots and other files seized in January, but that those records were already the subject of ongoing lawsuits between Fulton County, the Justice Department and members of Georgia’s election-denial network. In fact, a judge had ordered that the Justice Department receive copies of the records it later seized.
It’s also unclear who the government could charge in what Justice Department lawyers have called a “criminal investigation,” Wood said. Not only has the statute of limitations expired for charges related to errors or criminal wrongdoing in the 2020 election, but many of the Fulton County officials who held positions in the election office in 2020 have been replaced.
“Who are you actually going after criminally? The clerk? That person wasn’t there in 2020,” Wood said.
In late February, a bipartisan group of former Justice Department officials filed a brief in the Fulton County case arguing that the search warrant that led to the Jan. 28 raid should never have been issued. The officials also suggested it’s inappropriate for the Justice Department to operate at the whims of the president, as it has throughout Trump’s second term.
“DOJ is not simply counsel to the executive branch, much less a tool through which executive branch officials may pursue personal vendettas or grievances,” the officials wrote. “As previous administrations have understood, DOJ’s role in our system is to seek justice on behalf of the American people.”
Emergency powers
Simmering underneath the raid in Georgia, the subpoena in Arizona, and the equipment seizure in Puerto Rico are the so-called emergency measures that election-denial activists are pushing Trump to deploy. Trump himself has threatened to “nationalize” elections over his false claims of widespread fraud.
For months, election-denial activists have been circulating a draft of an executive order that would have Trump declare a national emergency over claims that China interfered in the 2020 election. The draft order would call for a complete ban on voting machines and mail-in ballots, similar to an executive order issued by Trump early in his term that sought to reduce the use of mail-in and absentee ballots, and attempted to change guidelines for voting machines. None of the order’s measures have been implemented, and the order is being challenged in court.
Blaming China, Venezuela, and even Italian spies for disproven claims of foreign meddling in the 2020 election has been a hallmark of the election-denial movement for years. The bones of the executive order being discussed with the White House has been mentioned in those same circles for at least a year, according to David Hancock, a pro-Trump election official in Gwinnett County, Georgia.
“I have heard from several election people that the Justice Department is working on another election EO, and the rumors are that it could be a big one,” Hancock told Zeteo in October. Hancock laid out bullet points of what the order could entail, many of which line up with the draft order being circulated by the White House’s allies.
Hancock said he expects the possibly forthcoming order to institute “one-day voting, hand-marked paper ballots (counted at the precincts), and limited mail-in voting,” and noted that “elections were designated critical infrastructure in 2017.”
“A possible scenario from those facts – DHS submits a report detailing security holes in current election equipment, Trump hops on that and issues an EO demanding his wish list,” Hancock said. “If he can’t get it through Congress, he invokes emergency powers to protect critical infrastructure.”
Disproven and questionable claims of foreign influence in 2020 are part of the reason that Gabbard’s presence at the Fulton County raid raised red flags for Democrats. Many have pointed out, however, that the FBI affidavit preceding the raid makes no claims of foreign involvement, and instead repeats accusations of errors and double-counted ballots that have been well publicized. Multiple recounts and audits found that those errors had no effect on the outcome of Trump’s loss in 2020.
“The word ‘foreign’ doesn’t even appear in any of those documents,” Wood said of Justice Department filings in the Fulton County case.
Democrats also worry Trump could try to deploy federal immigration agents – who are functioning as his personal militia – to the polls in November. Trump’s new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin wouldn’t rule out that possibility during his confirmation hearing last week.
“If you are secretary of Homeland Security, do you feel you have the authority to put uniformed officers at polling locations in 2026?” Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) asked Mullin.
“The only reason my officers would be there is if there was a specific threat, not for intimidation,” Mullin replied.
In recent days, Trump has deployed unmasked ICE agents to airports across the country, supposedly to “help” deal with long security lines. As a result of a partial government shutdown, the agency tasked with airport security, the TSA, has seen many workers call in sick and quit in droves over missed paychecks.
Vague assurances from Mullin and others that ICE will not be used to intimidate voters, and Trump’s use of ICE agents at airports, have reinvigorated concerns that Trump will send federal agents to polling locations in November.
Bellows and Griswold, the secretaries of state, say that officials need to be ready for ICE agents at the polls, search warrants for ballots and election equipment, and executive orders that attempt to fundamentally change how elections are run.
“We have to be prepared for the worst and that’s what election officials are good at,” Bellows told Zeteo. “But we’re in the driver’s seat here when it comes to the Constitution, the law, and local control over ballots and election equipment itself.”
Justin Glawe writes American Doom, a newsletter that focuses on right-wing extremism and other threats to democracy. Have a tip? Contact Justin Glawe on Signal at justinglawe.20.
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Great piece. Let's hope blue states and blue governors are preparing for this and anticipate any monkey wrenches trump and his republicans plan to remove voters or ballots. It's going to be as difficult as they can make it.
One thing is certain, the republicans will not stop trying everything and anything they can think of to attempt to thwart votes that don't support them.
Amazing how we got here, isn't it? Am hopeful the democrats aren't saying their plan out loud, but GOD willing, there better be a plan.
"...we’re in the driver’s seat here when it comes to the Constitution, the law...."
All well and good, Mr Bellows, but since when has Donald Trump or anyone in his openly Fascist Administration paid any attention whatsoever to the Constitution or the law?