Fulton County went to federal court Monday to block a Justice Department grand jury subpoena demanding the names, home addresses, email addresses, and personal phone numbers of thousands of people who worked the 2020 election, from county employees down to bus drivers and temporary poll workers. The 27-page motion, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, argues the subpoena has no legitimate prosecutorial purpose and exists to intimidate the people who ran an election the federal government lost five years ago.
The Subpoena Has No Prosecutable Target
The county's core legal argument is blunt: the statute of limitations on any federal crime connected to the 2020 election has already run out. According to the motion, the subpoena therefore "cannot yield any evidence that could result in a criminal prosecution." If there is no crime that can be charged, there is no legitimate grand jury purpose, and a subpoena without a legitimate purpose is just a demand letter with a federal seal.
The motion goes further, questioning whether a grand jury is actually driving this at all. The subpoena directs Fulton County to send records not to the grand jury itself but to an out-of-state Justice Department lawyer or to the FBI agent who wrote the affidavit used in the January ballot warehouse raid. That is an unusual routing for a document that is supposed to be a grand jury instrument.
The motion was signed by county attorney Soo Jo and prominent defense lawyer Abbe Lowell. The subpoena itself was dated April 17, 2026, and served on the county's director of elections on April 20. It commanded the board's custodian of records to appear before a grand jury in Atlanta on Tuesday, with an option to submit files electronically and sign a waiver of appearance. It also included a "Certificate of Authenticity of Domestic Records," a provision that would allow the records to be admitted as trial evidence without requiring a custodian to testify in person.
Who Is Running This Investigation
The subpoena was initiated by Dan Bishop, the interim U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina, tapped by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to lead election-related investigations nationwide. Bishop is not a neutral appointment. As a member of the House of Representatives, he voted against certifying Joe Biden's 2020 victory, objecting to electoral votes from both Arizona and Pennsylvania on January 6, 2021. He was later confirmed by the Senate on March 26, 2025, as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget before moving into the interim U.S. Attorney role.
This subpoena is separate from the January 2026 FBI raid on Fulton County's elections warehouse, which is being overseen by Thomas Albus, the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. That criminal probe was opened on January 5, 2026, via a referral from Kurt Olsen, a 2020 election denier serving in the White House as "director of election security and integrity." The FBI raided the warehouse 23 days later, on January 28, a pace that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe told CNN he had never seen in his 21-year career, particularly on a matter already the subject of a civil case.
