ATLANTA (AP) — The FBI relied on years-old claims about the 2020 presidential election, many of which had been thoroughly investigated and found to have no connection to widespread fraud, to obtain a search warrant for seizing ballots from election offices in Fulton County, Georgia, according to an affidavit unsealed Tuesday that shows the case began with a referral from an administration official who tried to help President Donald Trump overturn his election loss.

The affidavit provides the first public justification for an FBI search last month that targeted a county Trump and his allies have long seen as central to their false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. It cites claims that for years have been made by people who assert widespread fraud in the contest, even though audits, state officials, courts and Trump's own former attorney general have all rejected the idea of widespread problems that could have altered the outcome.

The investigation was initiated by a referral from Kurt Olsen, who advised Trump as his campaign and supporters lost dozens of lawsuits challenging the 2020 election and now serves as Trump's “director of election security and integrity” overseeing the attempt to investigate Trump’s loss, according to the affidavit.

The search of the heavily Democratic county stirred immediate concerns among Democrats that Trump was marshaling the powers of the FBI and Justice Department to pursue retribution over his persistent claims of a stolen election and because of the unusual presence of Tulsi Gabbard, the country's director of national intelligence. The affidavit makes no mention of any evidence of foreign interference in the 2020 election even though the possibility of such meddling has been a longstanding conspiracy theory among Trump supporters who question the vote count.

Democrat Joe Biden won Georgia by about 11,800 votes in an election overseen by a Republican secretary of state and certified by a Republican governor.

Georgia officials fighting in court for the return of the ballots have decried the search, with Fulton County Chairman Robb Pitts on Tuesday calling the allegations “recycled rumors, lies, untruths and unproven conspiracy theories.”

“These accusations have already been debunked, but here we go again on a merry-go-round,” Pitts said. “Fulton County will fight. We’ll fight this with every resource that’s at our disposal and we will not stop fighting.”

Uncertainty over whether any crime was committed

The affidavit says the FBI is examining possible “deficiencies or defects” in the Fulton County vote count, including its admission that it does not have scanned images of all the ballots counted during the original count or the recount. Fulton County has also confirmed that some ballots were scanned multiple times during the recount, the affidavit says.

“If these deficiencies were the result of intentional action, it would be a violation of federal law regardless of whether the failure to retain records or the deprivation of a fair tabulation of a vote was outcome determinative for any particular election or race,” the document says.

The affidavit says seizure of the election records was necessary to determine whether any records “were destroyed and or the tabulation of votes included materially false votes.” It cites potential violations of a law regarding the preservation and retention of election records, a misdemeanor. It also cites a law that makes it a crime to “knowingly and willfully” deprive residents of a “fair and impartially conducted election process,” which is a felony.

But the document also expresses uncertainty about whether the potential defects constitute a crime, noting that elections in Fulton County have already been the subject of multiple reviews.

Previous investigations found disorganization, but no evidence of fraud

Investigations into complaints by the secretary of state’s office, an independent monitor and a performance review by the state elections board, which came at the urging of the Republican-controlled legislature, reached similar conclusions.

After a particularly disastrous primary election in 2020, an independent monitor was hired to observe the general election that year as part of an agreement between the county and the State Election Board. He documented “sloppy processes” and “systemic disorganization” but found no evidence of illegality or fraud.

Republican state lawmakers in 2021 used a provision of a new law to initiate a performance review of the county’s election practices. That review found that the county’s elections had been characterized by “disorganization and a lack of a sense of urgency in resolving issues.” But it also found the county had shown marked improvement.

According to the affidavit, the review board stated, “we do not see any evidence of fraud, intentional misconduct, or large systematic issues that would have affected the result of the November 2020 election.”

Many of the 2020 election claims were thoroughly investigated

One of the central allegations is that someone inserted 17,852 “duplicate” ballot images into the Fulton County file. But the affidavit quotes one witness as noting that those potentially fake images were actually more pro-Trump than the confirmed Fulton County votes. This indicated to the witness, the affidavit states, “that the introduction of duplicate ballots was intended to make the recount numbers match more than to affect the outcome of the election.”

That was a similar conclusion as that of investigators with the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, the affidavit adds, saying the Republican-run office found the error “not intentional misconduct.”

Another allegation focuses on “pristine” absentee ballots that an unnamed poll manager said she saw when the ballots were counted by hand. She said the ballots were not folded as they would have been if they were put in an envelope, felt different from the other ballots and were all filled in the same, the affidavit says.

A former official with the secretary of state’s office told the FBI that there would be unfolded absentee ballots in every election because they would be generated by vote review panel members when they examined damaged ballots.

Investigators with the secretary of state’s office looked into claims of pristine ballots in 2021, pulling boxes and batches identified by a woman who had worked as an auditor during the hand count, and found no evidence to support her claims.

County seeks return of seized equipment

Agents armed with a warrant spent hours on Jan. 28 at the county elections hub, just south of Atlanta, before driving off with trucks loaded with hundreds of cartons of election materials.

A week after the seizure, Fulton County officials filed a motion seeking the return of the materials that had been taken and the unsealing of the sworn statement presented to the judge who signed off on the search. The warrant sought the seizure of the following documents related to the 2020 election in the county: all ballots, tabulator tapes from the scanners that tally the votes, electronic ballot images created when the ballots were counted and then recounted, and all voter rolls.

“Claims that the 2020 election results were fraudulent or otherwise invalid have been exhaustively reviewed and, without exception, refuted,” the county argued in a court filing.

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Associated Press writer Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.

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