Lawsuit to Return Fulton County Ballots: Judge Boulee’s Ruling

Fulton County’s lawsuit to recover more than 650 boxes of 2020 election records seized by the FBI ended on May 6, 2026, when U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee ruled the Justice Department can keep the materials while its investigation continues. In a 68-page decision, Boulee called the FBI’s warrant affidavit “misleading” but held that the county had not met the “extraordinarily high” legal threshold required to force the return of evidence before a criminal investigation concludes.¹²

What the FBI Took

On January 28, 2026, FBI agents searched the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center in Union City, Georgia, and seized 656 boxes of original 2020 election records.³ The warrant, signed by Magistrate Judge Catherine M. Salinas and based on an affidavit by FBI Special Agent Hugh Raymond Evans, authorized the taking of all physical ballots from the 2020 election in Fulton County, along with ballot images, tabulator tapes, digital data, and voter rolls.⁴

The warrant originated not with the local U.S. Attorney in Atlanta but with Thomas Albus, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, whom Attorney General Pam Bondi had granted special nationwide authority over election-related cases.⁵ The affidavit cited information from 11 anonymous witnesses and focused on five categories of alleged problems: missing ballot images, ballots scanned multiple times, inconsistent vote counts during a hand-count audit, ballots improperly added to totals, and changing vote totals during a machine recount.⁶ Most of those allegations had already been examined by state investigators, including a joint FBI–Georgia Bureau of Investigation–Secretary of State inquiry that found “no evidence of any type of fraud as alleged.”⁷

How Fulton County Took the Case to Court

On February 5, 2026, Fulton County Board of Commissioners Chairman Robb Pitts and the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections filed an emergency motion in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. The case was docketed as Pitts v. United States, No. 1:26-cv-00809.⁸

The motion was brought under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(g), the mechanism that lets a party aggrieved by a search seek the return of seized property. Represented by attorney Abbe Lowell, the county asked the court for three things: immediate return of all seized materials, an order preventing the government from reviewing the records in the meantime, and unsealing of the affidavit that supported the warrant.⁹¹⁰

The county’s core argument had two parts. First, the seizure rested on allegations “repeatedly disproven” at the state level, and the affidavit leaned on unverified anonymous witnesses while omitting contradictory information. Second, the criminal warrant was “pretextual”: the DOJ had already sued the Fulton County clerk on December 12, 2025, under the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to get the same records, and when that civil case stalled, prosecutors used a criminal warrant as a workaround.⁹¹¹

Civil rights groups joined the fight. On February 15, the NAACP, the Georgia NAACP, the Atlanta NAACP, and the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, represented by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, filed their own Rule 41(g) motion asking the court to confine government use of the seized voter data strictly to the warrant’s criminal investigation. They flagged the presence of Social Security numbers in voter rolls and the risk the data could feed voter purges, immigration enforcement, or intimidation.¹² The ACLU, on behalf of a cross-partisan group called Georgia First, filed an amicus brief on February 11 supporting the county and proposing time limits on the seizure and monthly government progress reports to the court.¹³

The Evidentiary Hearing

Judge Boulee held an evidentiary hearing on March 27, 2026. A pretrial fight over whether Special Agent Evans would testify about his affidavit ended with the judge quashing the county’s subpoena on March 26, citing the government’s interest in protecting an ongoing investigation.¹⁴

Without Evans on the stand, the county’s main witness was Ryan Macias, a former U.S. Election Assistance Commission official who had advised Fulton County during the 2020 election. Macias testified that the irregularities cited in the affidavit “doesn’t make sense” as evidence of criminal activity, that the FBI’s witnesses appeared “misinformed” and used “contradictory terminology,” and that the alleged problems were routine administrative issues common to any large election. He explained, for example, that “duplicate” ballot images referred to ballots photographed twice for quality control rather than counted twice.¹⁰³

Assistant Attorney General Tysen Duva, representing the DOJ, called Macias’s testimony “woefully inadequate” and argued the county lacked a “particularized need” for the original ballots. The government maintained the criminal investigation was independent of the civil case and that no statute of limitations restricts the execution of search warrants.³

In April, Judge Boulee ordered the DOJ to disclose the dates of the referral from White House election official Kurt Olsen, the opening of the investigation, and the drafting of the affidavit, finding the government’s refusal to provide those basic dates “arbitrary and capricious.”¹⁵

What Judge Boulee Decided

The May 6 ruling was unusual in sharply criticizing the FBI’s work while still siding with the government.

On the affidavit itself, Boulee wrote that it was “misleading” and omitted “innocent explanations” for the alleged irregularities. He noted that a delay in reporting recount results, which the affidavit treated as suspicious, actually came from a scanner programming error. He described the government’s arguments regarding ballot images and tabulator tapes as “troubling” and “problematic,” observed that some of the alleged discrepancies were issues that “occur in virtually every election,” and pointed out that prior state investigations had “already found no evidence of fraud or intentional misconduct.”¹

That criticism did not translate into a win for the county. Under Rule 41, a party asking for the pre-indictment return of seized evidence must show the government acted with “callous disregard” for its constitutional rights. Boulee found the affidavit “certainly far from perfect” but concluded its flaws did not clear that bar.¹ He also observed that Fulton County still had copies of the seized materials, which weakened its claim of irreparable harm.¹⁶

On the pretext theory, Boulee acknowledged the county’s concerns had some weight but found sufficient evidence that the criminal investigation had an independent basis apart from the civil litigation timeline. He cited the Eleventh Circuit’s ruling in the Mar-a-Lago special master case to emphasize that courts must apply the same legal standards “without regard to numbers, wealth, or rank.”¹

Where the Case Stands

Pitts v. United States was terminated on the day of the ruling, May 6, 2026. The docket shows no indication the county has filed an appeal.⁸ After the ruling, Chairman Pitts said, “We intend to vigorously pursue all available legal options.”¹⁷

The practical effect: the DOJ retains the 656 boxes and may continue its investigation. FBI Director Kash Patel said in April 2026 that arrests tied to the 2020 election were imminent, but none had been announced as of June 2026. Election law experts note that the five-year statute of limitations for most relevant federal charges expired in 2025, though broader conspiracy charges could still be available.¹⁸

A Separate Fight Over Election Worker Data

The ballot-return ruling did not end the court conflict between Fulton County and the DOJ. On April 20, 2026, an FBI agent served a grand jury subpoena demanding the names, addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information of thousands of 2020 Fulton County election workers across ten categories of staff, from permanent employees to bus drivers for mobile voting sites.¹⁹

On May 4, 2026, the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections moved to quash the subpoena, calling it “grossly overbroad and untethered to any reasonable need” and arguing the statute of limitations for 2020 election-related crimes had already run.²⁰ Chairman Pitts said the request amounted to “harassment.”²¹ As of late May 2026, a federal judge ordered the subpoena not be enforced while the court considers the motion. After a hearing on May 19, the court set a briefing schedule for the following weeks.²² That dispute is separate from Pitts v. United States and remains open.

1
Democracy Docket. Judge Lets DOJ Keep Fulton County Ballots Despite Misleading FBI Affidavit Claims
2
PBS NewsHour. Justice Department Can Keep 2020 Ballots Seized From Fulton County in Georgia, Judge Rules
3
Courthouse News Service. Election Expert: No Intentional Misconduct by Fulton County in FBI Seizure of 2020 Ballots
4
Georgia Recorder. FBI Raids Fulton County Elections Warehouse Seeking 2020 Ballots
5
Bloomberg Law. Bondi Hands St. Louis Prosecutor Nationwide Election Fraud Remit
6
KOSU. The FBI Seizure of Georgia 2020 Election Ballots Relies on Debunked Claims
7
Georgia Secretary of State. SEB2020-059 Report of Investigation
8
CourtListener. Pitts v. United States
9
Election Law at Ohio State. Fulton County Board of Elections Emergency Motion to Unseal Affidavit
10
NBC News. Election Expert Testifies FBI Evidence Fulton County Ballot Case
11
Democracy Docket. DOJ Fulton County Ballot Seizure Timeline Harmeet Dhillon Revealed
12
NAACP. NAACP Files Court Order to Protect Georgia Voters After Department of Justice Seizes Election Records
13
ACLU. Pitts v. United States Amicus
14
ABC News. FBI Agent Fulton County Ballot Seizure Warrant Testify
15
Democracy Docket. Trump DOJ Must Reveal Details on Fulton County Ballot Seizure, Judge Orders
16
6ABC. Justice Department Can Keep 2020 Election Ballots Seized From Fulton County, Judge Rules
17
Politico. Fulton County Records Judge Ruling
18
Votebeat. FBI Investigation 2020 Election Trump Milwaukee Fulton Maricopa
19
The Hill. Fulton County DOJ Election Worker Data Trump 2020
20
CNN. Fulton County DOJ Subpoena 2020 Election
21
New York Times. Trump 2020 Georgia Election Workers
22
Fox 5 Atlanta. Federal Judge Unseals Fulton County Election Subpoena Lawsuit