Fulton County, Georgia, is fighting a subpoena from a federal prosecutor in North Carolina that demands contact information for thousands of poll workers from the 2020 election. The subpoena, issued in April by Dan Bishop, interim US attorney for North Carolina's middle district, seeks rosters of election staff members who served in the November 2020 election, including names, positions, residential and email addresses, and personal telephone numbers.
County attorneys have filed a motion to quash the federal grand jury subpoena in Georgia federal court, describing it as politically motivated harassment. They argue that any criminal prosecution related to the 2020 election is beyond the statute of limitations. The motion states that a widespread effort to contact poll workers will chill their participation in elections and unreasonably interferes with Georgia's sovereign authority to administer elections.
Michael McNulty, policy director for Issue One, a voting rights organization, said, 'Election workers are the referees of our democracy, and they're going after the referees. 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 it became public on Monday evening, when Fulton County lawyers filed a motion to block it. The FBI raided the offices of Fulton County's clerk of courts and board of registration and elections in January, seizing about 700 boxes of original 2020 election material from a warehouse as part of a criminal investigation. County attorneys challenged that seizure in federal court, arguing that the investigation stems from repeatedly debunked claims by partisan election deniers 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 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 from public disclosure.
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 appointed Bishop as interim US attorney after his initial 120-day period expired in March. However, similarly to the failed tenure of 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 it 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. McNulty said Bishop was playing a partisan role. '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.'
