Fulton county, Georgia, is trying to fend off a subpoena from a federal prosecutor in North Carolina seeking contact information for thousands of poll workers from the 2020 election.
The subpoena, issued in April by Dan Bishop, the interim US attorney of North Carolina’s middle district, demands the county provide rosters of election staff members who served in the November 2020 election, including their identification by name, position, residential and email address and personal telephone number.
County attorneys filed a motion to quash the federal grand jury subpoena in Georgia federal court, describing it as an act of politically motivated harassment and arguing that any criminal prosecution related to the 2020 election is beyond the statute of limitations. A widespread effort to contact poll workers “will chill their participation in elections”, and “unreasonably interferes with Georgia’s sovereign authority to administer elections”, the county’s brief states.
“Election workers are the referees of our democracy, and they’re going after the referees,” said Michael McNulty, policy director for Issue One, a voting rights organization. “This is about intimidation of election officials for 2026, and taking executive branch control of elections in 2026. Election workers are supposed to be getting gratitude and protection from the federal government, not being targeted by it. This is a sign of authoritarianism, not a democratically oriented government.”
The New York Times first reported on the subpoena after its existence became public on Monday evening, when lawyers for Fulton county filed a motion attempting to block it.
The FBI raided the offices of Fulton county’s clerk of courts and board of registration and elections in January, when agents seized about 700 boxes of original 2020 election material from a warehouse, ostensibly as part of a criminal investigation. County attorneys challenged that seizure in federal court and argued that the basis of the investigation stemmed from repeatedly debunked claims by partisan election deniers political aligned with Donald Trump.
The January raid was initiated by Kurt Olsen, Trump’s “stop the steal” lawyer in 2020 whom Trump appointed as a special government employee to investigate his 2020 election claims. Thomas Albus, US attorney for the eastern district of Missouri, signed the search warrant.
Bishop’s subpoena specifies an interest in elections department employees who worked on tabulation, reviewed mail-in ballots and helped conduct the risk-limiting audit and recount following the election. The subpoena requires the contact material to be submitted to an attorney in Bishop’s office, not to a federal grand jury where it would be protected by law from public disclosure or disclosure to third parties.
The subpoena for poll worker contact information also comes from outside Georgia.
Bishop, a former US congressman from the Charlotte, North Carolina, area, ran unsuccessfully to be North Carolina’s attorney general. His “bathroom bill” targeting transgender people as a state senator roiled North Carolina politics. He is serving as interim US attorney and has not been confirmed by the US Senate. The district court, nonetheless, appointed Bishop as the interim US attorney after his initial 120-day period expired in March. But similarly to the failed tenure of the interim US attorney and Trump loyalist Alina Habba, Bishop’s appointment as a second interim consecutively appointed to the role has raised questions about whether the appointment violates federal law.
The US attorney’s office in North Carolina deferred comment to the Department of Justice in Washington, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bishop was playing a partisan role, McNulty said.
“This is part of a pattern,” he said. “One, you spread the lies. Two, you put in election denialists who are loyal to the regime. The third step is to use those people in power to weaponize the system, to threaten people and to change the rules.”
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