A federal judge on Tuesday quashed a grand jury subpoena for information about 2020 election workers in Georgia, dealing a setback to an investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Various lawsuits have followed President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election and his claims of voter fraud in swing states. In Georgia, federal courts have had a central role in cases including attempts to overturn the election results and defamation suits filed by poll workers. In January, the FBI searched Fulton County’s election headquarters, seizing ballots and records. A federal judge denied a request to force the federal government to return the property in May. Fulton County is the most populous county in Georgia and includes the Democratic stronghold of Atlanta, where Joe Biden received nearly 73 percent of the vote in 2020.
The DOJ issued a grand jury subpoena in April requesting rosters of 2020 election workers, including enough information “to identify [their] name, position/function, residential and email addresses, and personal telephone number(s)” from the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections (FBRE).
The FBRE objected, arguing that the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia “should quash the Subpoena to protect thousands of election workers from potentially devastating consequences.” It characterized the subpoena as the “latest effort to target and harass the President’s perceived political enemies—this time election officials, poll workers, and volunteers in Fulton County.”
The DOJ urged the court to deny the motion to quash, contending that FBRE sought to “undermine the grand jury’s very purpose,” asserting that the subpoena sought “relevant documents” and was “not overbroad.”
District Judge William Ray called the breadth of the subpoena “staggering.” He stated that enforcing it “would not lead to information that could be used to charge anyone with anything…because the statute of limitations for any possible crime arising from the 2020 Election has long expired.” Accordingly, the DOJ’s “investigation of alleged criminal conduct of anyone that may have led to the certification of the 2020 Election in Georgia would not be a legitimate use of the Grand Jury and its subpoena power.”
Ray explained that based on Rule 17(c)(2) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, “in determining whether to quash a subpoena, courts must assess if a subpoena is unreasonable or oppressive,” so he weighed “the Government’s investigatory need for the personal information of election workers against the competing burden that Fulton County [would] suffer in compliance.”
The court found that “information sought [therein] (names, addresses, phone numbers, emails) [was] private and sensitive,” so “everyone, whether you support the President or you do not, or whether you believe the 2020 Election was fair or believe that it was not, should be concerned about the DOJ’s ability to utilize the power of the Grand Jury to appropriate your private information without a legitimate purpose.”
Ray concluded: “The subpoena power of the Grand Jury is broad, but not absolute … Given the low need for subpoenaed information and the highly burdensome nature of the disclosure of the same, the Subpoena [was] unreasonable and must be quashed pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 17(a)(2).”
