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It was only about four months ago that FBI agents raided Fulton County, Georgia’s election office, seizing over 600 boxes of sensitive voter data under the guise of false claims that the county submitted fraudulent ballots in an election that was six years ago. Fulton County immediately sued to get its election data back, but this week a Trump-appointed judge denied that request, raising the stakes of a government case that is nothing but smoke and mirrors. Ultimately, President Donald Trump’s goal seems to be to try to use Georgia to take over federal elections, and despite his attacks on the 2020 election there, it’s incredibly unlikely he will succeed. In the meantime, though, the Georgia probe and court rulings in its favor will continue to do damage to how American voters view the integrity of our elections.

U.S. District Judge Jean-Paul Boulee declared on Wednesday that Fulton County did not sufficiently prove that the FBI acted with “callous disregard” when it secured a search warrant to execute its January raid. The decision centered on an affidavit written by an FBI agent claiming that there were five “deficiencies or defects” with the 2020 election and how Fulton County counted its ballots. The county pushed back by arguing the FBI agent left out critical context about its ballot-counting procedures and ignored the fact that Georgia’s 2020 election had been thoroughly........

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