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Judge stops Fulton County's attempt to get FBI agent to testify at hearing over seized election records

By
Dan Raby
Senior Digital Producer, CBS News Atlanta
Dan Raby, the senior digital producer for CBS News Atlanta, has been covering everything happening around Georgia for more than a decade.
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Dan Raby

/ CBS Atlanta

A judge will not force the Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who submitted the sworn affidavit in support of the federal agency's search of Fulton County election hub to testify at an evidentiary hearing on Friday.

Fulton County had been attempting to get FBI Special Agent Hugh Raymond Evans to speak about the affidavit, arguing that he had "omitted numerous pertinent facts" as part of the basis of the search and seizure of the county's 2020 election records.

Evans' affidavit says the search was part of an FBI investigation into possible "deficiencies or defects" in the Fulton County vote count, including the county's admission that it does not have scanned images of all the ballots counted during the original count or the recount. The investigation was initiated by a referral from attorney Kurt Olsen, who now serves as President Trump's "director of election security and integrity," overseeing the attempt to investigate Mr. Trump's loss.

Fulton County has pointed to multiple investigations by the Georgia secretary of state's office, an independent monitor, and a performance review by the state elections board, which found no evidence of fraud or illegal actions that would have affected the election's result.

fbi-agent-fulton.png
A screenshot of bodycam footage taken during the FBI's search of Fulton County's election hub. FBI

As part of the search, the FBI seized over 650 boxes containing the 2020 election-related materials. The county has been fighting in court to get them returned. Friday's hearing was the next step in the dispute between the county and the federal government over the records.

In a ruling filed on Thursday, U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee said that, while Fulton County disagreed with the Department of Justice's decision to refuse their attempt to get the FBI agent to testify, that decision was not "arbitrary and capricious."

"While Petitioners note that the contents of SA Evans's affidavit are already a matter of public record, it does not necessarily follow that the information surrounding the 'scope of material omissions and erroneous statements' and SA Evans's 'state of mind with respect' to those matters would remain unprivileged," Boulee wrote. "In short, given the breadth of the law enforcement privilege and the testimony sought by Petitioners, the Court cannot conclude that DOJ's decision to prohibit this type of testimony was a clear error of judgment."

While the judge's ruling means that Evans will not testify, Friday's hearing is still scheduled to happen in his court.

Boulee has previously said he would like Fulton County and the federal government to mediate the dispute instead of going to court. That mediation failed, leading to Friday's hearing.

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