{"id":140,"date":"2025-12-12T18:42:30","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T18:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/?p=140"},"modified":"2025-12-12T18:42:30","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T18:42:30","slug":"doj-sues-georgia-county-as-trump-pushes-debunked-2020-election-fraud-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/?p=140","title":{"rendered":"DOJ sues Georgia county as Trump pushes debunked 2020 election fraud claims"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against Fulton County, Georgia, over records related to the 2020 election, escalating the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to boost the president\u2019s false claims that his loss to Joe Biden was rigged.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Citing a need to investigate \u201ccompliance with federal election law,\u201d the\u00a0lawsuit\u00a0demands Georgia election officials turn over \u201call used and void ballots, stubs of all ballots, signature envelopes, and corresponding envelope digital files from the 2020 General Election in Fulton County.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Fulton County officials previously told the Justice Department that those records are sealed and cannot be produced without a court order, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Justice Department\u2019s lawsuit comes amid\u00a0increased pressure by President Donald Trump\u00a0for members of his administration to find evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, despite those claims having been repeatedly debunked and\u00a0dismissed in dozens of cases by the courts\u00a0over the past five years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In a statement Friday, Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department\u2019s civil rights division, indirectly and without evidence accused Georgia officials of \u201cvote dilution.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cStates have the statutory duty to preserve and protect their constituents from vote dilution,\u201d Dhillon said. \u201cAt this Department of Justice, we will not permit states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to abide by our federal elections laws. If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Fulton County election officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The lawsuit against Fulton County is also in line with Trump\u2019s years-long fixation on voting results in Georgia, where Biden became the first Democrat to win the state since 1992. In January 2021, Trump\u00a0urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) in a phone call\u00a0to \u201cfind\u201d enough votes to reverse Biden\u2019s win in the state.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAll I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state,\u201d Trump told Raffensperger then.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In August 2023, a Georgia grand jury\u00a0indicted Trump\u00a0and his associates\u00a0on racketeering\u00a0charges over their efforts to overturn election results in the state. However, the case soon faced setbacks over\u00a0allegations\u00a0that the lead prosecutor, Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis, had an inappropriate relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The\u00a0case was dismissed last month\u00a0after the prosecutor who took over the case said there was \u201cno realistic prospect that a sitting President will be compelled to appear in Georgia to stand trial on the allegations in this indictment.\u201d After the case was dismissed, Trump\u00a0took to social media to vow\u00a0that they would \u201chold responsible\u201d those who perpetuated the \u201cWitch Hunt\u201d against him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Fulton County, which includes part of Atlanta, was the center of false allegations of voter fraud during the 2020 election, arising from a water leak at the ballot counting facility and wheeled ballot containers that were mischaracterized as unauthorized suitcases. Two election workers won a\u00a0defamation case\u00a0against Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani for spreading falsehoods about them that led to threats.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Fulton County mail ballots remain a source of interest in the MAGA movement because they are still in storage. Ordinarily, the ballots are required to be kept for 22 months, but a Georgia judge ordered them indefinitely preserved during litigation that unsuccessfully challenged the election.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Justice Department said Friday it also filed federal lawsuits against four states \u2014 Colorado, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Nevada \u2014 for not turning over their statewide voter registration lists to the department. All except Nevada have Democratic governors. In a statement, Dhillon cited the Civil Rights Act of 1960 as justification for demanding and inspecting statewide voter registration lists.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The lawsuits come days after Trump promised in an\u00a0interview with Politico\u2019s Dasha Burns\u00a0that there would be evidence emerging soon that supposedly proves that 2020 was \u201ca rigged election.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt was a rigged election. Now everyone knows it. It\u2019s going to come out over the next couple of months, too, loud and clear because we have all the information,\u201d Trump told Politico, reiterating his false claims.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against Fulton County, Georgia, over records related to the 2020 election, escalating the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to boost…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":141,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions\/142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}