Why Trump’s Georgia election raid escalates his 2020 obsession into a warning for 2026
Experts fear the 2020 ballot seizure is a ‘poisoning of the well’ that marks the start of a broader legal offensive for the 2026 elections
Donald Trump lost his bid for re-election in 2020. But for more than five years, he has been trying to convince Americans the opposite is true by falsely saying the election was marred by widespread fraud.
Now that he is president again, Trump is pushing the federal government to back up those bogus claims.
On Wednesday, the FBI served a search warrant at the election headquarters of Fulton County, Georgia, which includes most of Atlanta, seeking ballots from the 2020 election. That follows Trump’s comments earlier this month when he suggested during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that charges related to the election were imminent.
“The man has obsessions, as do a fair number of people, but he’s the only one who has the full power of the United States behind him,” said Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor.
Hasen and many others noted that Trump’s use of the FBI to pursue his obsession with the 2020 election is part of a pattern of the president transforming the federal government into his personal tool of vengeance.
Senator Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat, compared the search to the Minnesota immigration crackdown that has killed two US citizen protesters, launched by Trump as his latest blow against the state’s governor, who ran against him as Vice-President Kamala Harris’ running mate in 2024.