Justice Department Cannot Demand Fulton County Elections Workers’ Personal Information, Judge Rules

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that the Department of Justice may not subpoena the names and contact information of those who worked during the 2020 election in Georgia’s Fulton County, a blow to the Trump administration’s campaign to relitigate an election he lost.

The Justice Department was demanding the names, addresses, phone numbers and emails of individuals assigned to review mail-in ballots and mobile voting locations, along with those assigned to transfer results or to transport ballots, among other positions.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge William Ray, a Trump appointee, called the Justice Department's request “unreasonable” and said it “must be quashed.” Ray added that such information is “private and sensitive.”

“Thus, everyone, whether you support the President or you do not, or whether you believe the 2020 Election was fair or believe that it was not, should be concerned about the DOJ’s ability to utilize the power of the Grand Jury to appropriate your private information without a legitimate purpose,” the ruling read.

In a statement, DOJ said the ruling “jeopardizes both the historic purview of the grand jury and a long-delayed assessment of 2020 election processes.”

“The district court’s ruling that the probable expiration of statutes of limitations prevents the grand jury from investigating the 2020 election in Georgia is at odds with numerous holdings of the Supreme Court,” a spokesperson for the Justice Department said, adding that “the Department is considering all options to challenge.”

Fulton County, Georgia's most populous county and home to the Democratic stronghold of Atlanta, has long been a point of ire for President Donald Trump. The president has repeatedly claimed without evidence that widespread voter fraud in the county cost him victory in the state — and the White House — in 2020.

Earlier this year, the FBI raided Fulton County’s elections office and seized ballots and other election materials from 2020. In May, a different federal judge ruled that DOJ can keep the election records it seized.

Fulton County officials pushed back on the subpoena of election workers’ information, arguing it was meant to “target, harass and punish the President’s perceived political opponents,” and that it was “grossly over broad and untethered to any reasonable need.”

In his ruling, Ray acknowledged that grand juries often work with federal prosecutors to investigate alleged crimes but wrote "that does not give the DOJ the right to use the Grand Jury to do whatever the DOJ wants.”

Even if he were to grant the subpoena, Ray said, it “would not lead to information that could be used to charge anyone with anything, at least not any viable charge.”