President Donald Trump's lawyers appeared to use some legal trickery to avoid as much judicial scrutiny as possible in their scheme to seize voting records in Fulton County, Georgia.
Last week, the Trump administration's FBI raided the Fulton County election office and hauled away nearly 700 boxes of data related to the 2020 general election. Trump has consistently claimed he won the election, even though his lawyers were unable to support the claim in more than 60 lawsuits. Trump also felt compelled to call Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and threaten him to find more than 11,000 votes so he could win the state.
Georgia officials refuted Trump's attempt to access their voter data. In response, the Trump administration filed three lawsuits to retrieve the records. One of which was filed against Raffensperger for allegedly violating the Civil Rights Act of 1960 by failing to produce the records. The administration also filed civil charges against Alexander to secure the records and filed another lawsuit in Fulton County Superior Court.
Fulton County Commissioner Marvin Arrington revealed during an interview with Adam Klasfeld of All Rise News that the Trump administration admitted in a new sealed motion on Thursday that this scheme was designed as an "end around" for the local court system.
The Trump administration was effectively trolling the waters to see where it would face the least resistance. When the civil path proved to be too costly, Arrington said the Trump administration pursued a criminal warrant.
"This was just an end-around to the civil proceedings that they filed," Arrington said. "They filed those civil proceedings, and now they've done an end around to circumvent those judges, and those judges' authority, and that's improper."
Arrington also noted that the Trump administration is investigating crimes whose statutes of limitations have expired.
"The statutes that were listed in the warrant are misdemeanor statutes that have a 5-year statute of limitations," Arrington said. "So, I think the warrants are stale because they can't even prosecute those statutes based on the 2020 elections."