The FBI did not just barge into Fulton County election offices for a souvenir box of paperwork. An unsealed affidavit lays out a theory that treats ballot handling as a federal crime question, even if nobody can prove it changed a single outcome.
What You Should Know
An affidavit unsealed on February 10th, 2026, says the FBI seized hundreds of boxes of 2020 election ballots from Fulton County, Georgia, to investigate possible ballot record deficiencies. The filing cites missing scanned ballot images and some ballots scanned multiple times during a recount.
The stakes are familiar and combustible. Fulton County is the Georgia epicenter that President Donald Trump and his allies have pointed to for years while pushing claims that the 2020 election was stolen, claims that audits, courts, and state officials have repeatedly rejected. Now, a federal search warrant is forcing a narrower question into the spotlight, namely, whether documented process failures, if intentional, cross federal criminal lines.
The Affidavit That Finally Put Words on the Warrant
For weeks, the public knew the search happened, but not why the FBI believed it had to physically take election records from a local government. The affidavit, unsealed on February 10th, 2026, supplies that missing justification, and it reads like a prosecutor’s checklist.
According to the affidavit, the FBI obtained a warrant to seize hundreds of boxes of ballots from Fulton County election offices as part of a criminal investigation into possible 2020 vote count “deficiencies or defects.” The language is careful. It does not declare that the 2020 count was wrong. It does not claim that the presidential result in Georgia flipped. It focuses on records, procedures, and whether specific failures were accidental or deliberate.
The filing also includes the line that sharpens the case’s edge. “If these deficiencies were the result of intentional action, it would be a violation of federal law regardless of whether the failure to retain records or the deprivation of a fair tabulation of a vote was outcome determinative for any particular election or race,” the document says.
That one sentence changes the argument’s center of gravity. It is not, “Did Trump win?” It is, “Did someone knowingly break rules that Congress says protect elections, even when the scoreboard does not move?”
The ‘Defects’ Focus, Missing Images, and Duplicate Scans
So what, specifically, triggered the warrant?
The affidavit points to two issues that sound bureaucratic until you picture them in a courtroom. First, Fulton County has acknowledged it does not have scanned images for all ballots counted during the original count or the recount, according to the filing. Second, the county has confirmed that some ballots were scanned multiple times during the recount, the affidavit says.
On their own, those facts do not prove fraud. In election administration, missing digital images can be a records management failure, and duplicate scans can reflect workflow errors that are later corrected through reconciliation. The affidavit’s argument is not that mistakes exist. It is that the FBI needs custody of the physical and documentary evidence to test whether mistakes were paired with something darker, like the destruction of records or the inclusion of materially false votes.
The affidavit says seizure of the election records was necessary to determine whether election records were destroyed and whether the tabulation included materially false votes. It cites potential violations of a federal law on preservation and retention of election records, described in the filing as a misdemeanor, and another federal law described as a felony involving knowingly and willfully depriving residents of a fair election process.
That legal framing matters because it places the investigation in a lane that is easier to charge than grand, hard-to-prove conspiracy theories. Record retention is unglamorous. It is also concrete. Either the required records exist and match what they should be, or they do not.
Why Fulton County Matters to Trump, and to the FBI
Fulton County is not just any jurisdiction. It is Georgia’s largest county, home to most of Atlanta, and it anchors Democratic vote totals in a state that has been decided on thin margins.
It is also the place Trump’s allies have treated as the symbolic vault where the “real story” of 2020 was supposedly stored. That is why the affidavit’s timing and tone are so politically charged. The FBI is describing a criminal investigation into ballot handling and records in the same county that sits at the heart of a long-running political narrative, one that state officials and courts have rejected at the macro level.
The affidavit itself nods to that broader context, even as it tries to keep the scope tight. It notes that the allegations it outlines are largely based on claims that have circulated for years among people asserting fraud. It also underscores that audits, court decisions, state officials, and even Trump’s former attorney general have rejected the idea of widespread fraud in 2020 that could have altered the outcome.
That is the contradiction the FBI now has to manage in public, whether it wants to or not. The bureau is saying, in effect, “The big stolen-election claim has been rejected, but the paperwork and procedures still might contain crimes.” In a country that argues about elections like it argues about religion, that is a tightrope.
It also creates pressure on Fulton County officials, who are now defending the integrity of their systems in a setting that is less about politics and more about the chain of custody, recordkeeping, and sworn statements.
Fulton County’s Pushback, and the Fight Over Who Controls the Evidence
One reason this story keeps growing legs is that Fulton County has not treated the federal seizure as a routine administrative inconvenience. The county has asked a court to return election documents seized by the FBI, according to a separate PBS NewsHour report.
That kind of move signals a real dispute about control. Local election offices are used to audits, public records requests, and state-level oversight. A federal warrant, with agents taking boxes, shifts the power dynamic fast. It also raises practical questions that matter to taxpayers, like what access the county has to its own records while the federal investigation proceeds.
There is also a political communications problem embedded here. If local officials say, “This is being taken out of context,” the reply becomes, “Then why did the FBI take the records?” If they emphasize cooperation, critics will say it proves wrongdoing. If they fight the seizure, critics will say it looks like hiding. The warrant, by itself, does not prove a crime. But it forces the county into a defensive posture.
The Federal Law Theory, Outcome or No Outcome
The most consequential part of the affidavit is not the list of alleged deficiencies. It is the premise that intent can be criminal even when the election result stands.
That premise is familiar in other domains. A bank does not get a pass on recordkeeping violations because the balance sheet still adds up. A company does not get to shred documents because it insists the final decision was correct. The affidavit applies that logic to elections, which are uniquely sensitive because every missing record can be reimagined as a missing truth.
The filing also telegraphs what investigators might be building toward. If the evidence suggests sloppiness, the case could shrink into administrative enforcement or close without charges. If investigators see signs of deliberate record destruction, falsification, or intentional interference with a fair tabulation, the legal exposure becomes more serious, and the targets could expand beyond the county’s election office to contractors or others who touched the process.
Still, the affidavit itself does not declare who did what. It is a justification for a search, not a verdict. The power move is the seizure. The question is what receipts the FBI can produce from it.
What Happens Next, and What to Watch
The next phase is quieter and more consequential. Investigators will likely inventory, secure, and compare physical ballots and records against whatever digital trail exists, and they will test explanations for gaps like missing images or repeated scans. That work can take months, and it does not produce a neat headline until prosecutors decide it does.
In the meantime, there are a few tells that will signal where this is going.
- Whether court fights over returning records escalate, or whether Fulton County and federal investigators reach a practical access arrangement.
- Whether investigators frame the issue as process crimes, like record retention failures, or move toward allegations involving intentional misconduct.
- Whether public statements from political figures try to stretch this affidavit into a broader claim about 2020 results, even though the affidavit’s theory does not require an outcome change.
For now, the affidavit makes one thing plain. The FBI is treating election administration failures as potentially criminal facts, not just political talking points, and it is doing it in the county that has been the loudest symbol in a national argument that never really ended.
