NAACP Sues Over 2020 Presidential Election Records FBI Seized in Fulton County, Georgia

The FBI on Jan. 28 carted away roughly 700 boxes of material.

Fulton County elections workers process absentee ballots at the new Fulton County Elections Hub and Operations Center in Union City, Ga., on Nov. 4, 2024. Elijah Nouvelage/AFP via Getty Images

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on Feb. 15 asked a federal court to restrict how the federal government may use the 2020 presidential election records that the FBI seized from a Fulton County, Georgia, election facility.

The group said that any inappropriate disclosure of the records would violate the privacy rights of voters and interfere with voting rights, and alleged that the federal government may misuse the information.

The new motion asks the court to impose “reasonable limits on the government’s use of the seized data,” and to prevent the federal government from using the data outside the FBI’s criminal investigation, such as in immigration enforcement or for election administration.

The motion, filed on behalf of the NAACP and the other parties by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, came after the FBI on Jan. 28 seized roughly 700 boxes of material related to the 2020 presidential election from the Fulton County Election Hub in Fairburn, Georgia, outside Atlanta. Earlier this month, county officials sued for the return of the election records.

The court-approved search warrant said that the FBI wanted to seize all physical ballots from the election in the county, all tabulator tapes from every voting machine, all ballot images created from ballot scanning, and all voter rolls.

The seizure followed the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) suit against Fulton County filed in December 2025 seeking voting records from the 2020 election.

President Donald Trump has long said that election improprieties in the state contributed to his loss in Georgia in the 2020 election. Last month, when discussing the 2020 election, Trump said that “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did.”

After the raid, the FBI said earlier this month that it had substantiated irregularities in how votes were tabulated in the county, according to an FBI official’s search warrant affidavit that a court unsealed on Feb. 10.

The NAACP, affiliated groups, the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, and two county voters filed the new emergency motion with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on Feb. 15.

After being given “an explicit statutory guarantee of privacy,” Georgia residents gave their “sensitive personal information” to the state so they could participate in the electoral process, the motion said.

The records seizure “breached that guarantee, infringed constitutional protections of privacy, and interfered with the right to vote,” and had the effect of “heightening the chill on registration and voting,” according to the motion.

The motion asks the court to prevent the federal government from using the seized records for reasons unrelated to the criminal investigation, and to require the federal government to provide an inventory of all seized records. It also asks the court to compel the government to disclose all persons who have accessed the records, beyond those involved in the criminal investigation itself.

Trump urged Republicans to nationalize elections in 15 places and said, “You’re going to see something in Georgia.”

The president told former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino in a Feb. 2 podcast that voting by noncitizens is distorting election outcomes and that the voting process in certain areas should be put under national authority.

“We have states that I won that show I didn’t win,” the president said. “Now, you’re going to see something in Georgia where they were able to get, with a court order, the ballots. You’re going to see some interesting things come out.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the DOJ for comment. No reply was received by publication time.

Aldgra Fredly contributed to this report.