Footage released of FBI search and seizure of Fulton County records tied to the 2020 elections

Caption

The Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center, is seen Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026, in Union City, Ga, near Atlanta, as FBI agents search at the main election facility.

Credit: AP Photo/Mike Stewart

ATLANTA — Body camera footage of the FBI's search of the Fulton County election hub, that has been central to unfounded conspiracy theories over President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, has emerged.

Under open records law, GPB has acquired footage recorded by Fulton County law enforcement of the operation, which occurred Wednesday, Jan. 28. 

In a 51-second segment edited from hours of video, Fulton County officers ask for a warrant before walking deeper into the election warehouse, where FBI agents give instructions to county personnel.

The search at Fulton County’s main election facility in Union City, near Atlanta, sought records related to the 2020 election, county spokesperson Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez said. It appeared to be the most public step by law enforcement to pursue Trump’s claims of a stolen election, grievances rejected time and again by courts, state officials and audits that have found no evidence of fraud that would have altered the outcome.

It also unfolds against the backdrop of FBI and Justice Department efforts to investigate perceived political enemies of Trump, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock said he's pressing the Trump administration for answers about the search. He also said doing everything in his power to support Fulton County's legal challenges to the operation at a federal level.

"Elections are held at the state level, and the Constitution is clear about that," Warnock said.

Warnock sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi requesting a briefing on the search and why it was conducted.

Since then, Trump has called for Republicans to "federalize elections," which Warnock says both parties need to reject.

• RELATED: What does the FBI's seizure of Fulton County ballots mean for elections? An explainer

Trump has for years focused on Fulton, Georgia’s most populous county and a Democratic stronghold, as a key example of what he claims went wrong in the 2020 election. His pressure campaign there culminated in a sweeping state indictment accusing him and 18 others of illegally trying to overturn the vote.

An FBI spokesperson said Jan. 28 that agents were “executing a court authorized law enforcement action” at the county’s main election office in Union City, just south of Atlanta. The spokesperson declined to provide any further information, citing an ongoing matter.

Corbitt-Dominguez said a warrant “sought a number of records related to 2020 elections,” but declined to comment further because the search was still underway.

At a press conference during the archive seizure, Fulton County Chairman Robb Pitts said he’s not sure what will happen to the ballots now that they’ve been moved.

“I can no longer, as chair of this board, satisfy not only the citizens of Atlanta but the citizens of the world that those ballots are still secure,” he said. “So that is a major concern that I have right now. Again, my point is once they were here, as long as they were here in the control of Fulton County, I was confident that they were safe and secure.”

Fulton County leaders are worried there is no chain of custody documenting who handles the estimated 700 boxes of ballots taken from the facility. 

Fulton County has since filed a motion in federal court seeking the return of all documents from the 2020 election that were seized last week from a warehouse near Atlanta by the FBI, officials in the Georgia county said Wednesday.

• RELATED: Georgia's Fulton County seeks return of 2020 election documents seized by FBI

Trump has long insisted that the 2020 election was stolen even though judges across the country and his own attorney general said they found no evidence of widespread fault that tipped the contest in Democrat Joe Biden’s favor.

The president has made Georgia, one of the battleground states he lost in 2020, a central target for his complaints about the election and memorably pushed its secretary of state to help “find” enough votes to overturn the contest.

The week before the search, in reference to the 2020 election, he asserted that “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did.” It was not clear what in particular he was referring to.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in August 2023 obtained an indictment against Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. That case was dismissed in November after courts barred Willis and her office from pursuing it because of an “appearance of impropriety” stemming from a romantic relationship she had with a prosecutor she had appointed to lead the case.