Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Lauren Groh-Wargo: Thanks for having me.
Groh-Wargo: Kurt is one of the important players. He is an attorney who has had several bar investigations against him. He is close to the White House and has been given broad authority by Trump directly to oversee intelligence and security issues related to the elections. It’s kind of a classic, very nebulous role. And there’s actually been reporting that this guy is disliked within the White House, but he just goes around any normal process.
Groh-Wargo: Yeah, absolutely. So at the core of this alleged crime—there’s no crime, to be clear—is a 263-page report authored by a whole set of discredited election deniers. And Greg, you cannot make this stuff up. This 263-page report is all rehashed, debunked conspiracy theories about 2020. And that is what then has become the evidence that led to the raid. And the raid, which happened two weeks ago, was done by national FBI agents, not our local folks here locally—clearly an entire political hit job.
Groh-Wargo: That is correct. And so then two weeks ago today, about two dozen FBI agents showed up at the warehouse in South Fulton County where the ballots have been stored, demanding access to them.
Sargent: So what exactly is the FBI doing with the seizure of Fulton County materials? What’s the goal? There’s the ostensible goal, which is to investigate “criminal activity” based on nonsense, as we’ve established. But what’s the real goal, do you think?
And why getting the federal government’s hands on ballots in particular is an escalation is they have no right to ballots. Ballots remain in the custody of local elections officials. The federal government does not run elections—no matter what Donald Trump thinks, it’s very clear in our Constitution.
Sargent: All right, so let’s get into why this is so alarming. Media Matters flagged an example of at least one well-connected right-wing pundit predicting that the FBI is going to do a similar ballot seizure in Arizona.
Groh-Wargo: I mean, this is the question, right? How does this manifest? Donald Trump, I believe it was last year, said that he should have seized voting machines and is mad at Bill Barr for holding him back in 2020.
On the “could they do this?”—there are very specific laws around what the federal government can and cannot do in terms of law enforcement being at polls and ballots. Ballots are in the custody of local elections officials, period. And the other thing is federal law enforcement—there’s actually a law on the books that federal law enforcement cannot be near polling locations. Federal law enforcement—that would include ICE, the FBI—cannot be near polling locations.
But what they can do is immediately get the right lawyers on the phone and immediately file for an emergency action in the court to get them returned. So here is a very dark piece of good news: If this was going to happen, I’m glad it happened this early in the year, because now it is not a hypothetical. I can tell you the elections officials, lawyers, and advocates are now getting ready much earlier to be ready for this later in the year.
So it’s going to take a huge effort of average citizens volunteering and being poll workers, and then using our legal system to try and smack this down so that we could have a count that is fair.
So, you know, hopefully the local elections officials are up on their rights. Hopefully they’re in touch with their lawyers, but maybe it actually comes to pass that the FBI seizes some boxes and then everybody goes into court and there’s a fight over that. But the damage could be done, right? The counting could be interrupted by something like this. Is that the nightmare scenario?
But we all know we’re dealing with a bunch of vigilante thugs here. Look at what they’re doing to American citizens on the streets of Minnesota. So that only gives me so much peace. The reality is what you say—that is one of many pieces here. I mean, the bottom line is they’re trying to control and block people from registering, intimidate people from voting. They’re already using all that rhetoric and then trying to monkey with the count, right? This is autocratic behavior.
And so my expectation is that we’re in for a fight. They’re going to try new things. They’re testing the waters; they’re moving the needle. We’re going to see more of that in the first half of the year. And what advocates like ourselves—how we view our role here, Greg—is to then learn the lessons now, use all of this as dry runs so that we are best prepared collectively to navigate the fall.
Here’s my final question for you, though: We’re not going to hear any Republicans in Congress or other high-profile Republicans—maybe one or two here and there—come out against this thing. And that is a major part of the problem here. There’s no longer bipartisan condemnation of what appears to be extreme lawlessness. Isn’t that the basic problem here?
And I agree: We’re going to need forceful pushback. And I will remind any Republicans listening to this: If they start raiding ballots and upending the count, it could cause Republican officials to not be seated. It could cause all kinds of downstream chaos to state legislatures, to other local officials. They didn’t just raid Democratic ballots in Fulton; those are Republican votes and many others. We have Republican members in the legislature.
Sargent: Lauren Groh-Wargo, I think the real key thing that you said here was that extreme vigilance is going to be required, and it’s going to require all of us to be part of that. Otherwise, you know, all bets are off and the very worst could happen. Lauren, thanks so much for coming on with us. We really appreciate it.
Groh-Wargo: Thanks for having me.
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