At the epicenter of President Donald Trump and MAGA’s racist conspiracy theories about election fraud in 2020 lies Fulton County, Georgia, where such disinformation fueled Trump supporters’ threats to former election workers like Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.

Legal experts such as MS NOW contributor Adam Klasfeld have noted the racism undergirding Trump’s baseless allegations of widespread election fraud in largely Black areas, like Fulton County. Relatedly, I wrote about Freeman and her daughter testifying to the House Jan. 6 Committee about the harassment and death threats Trump’s election lies unleashed after his loss in 2020.

And that campaign of intimidation, which had historical similarities to the white supremacist lynch mobs of the Jim Crow era, looms over the Trump administration’s subpoena for the names and other personal information of county election workers from 2020, which Fulton County is trying to block.

On Thursday, Fulton County officially submitted a motion to quash the subpoena, saying the administration had “issued an unprecedented and harassing grand jury subpoena to the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections (FBRE) seeking the disclosure of sensitive personal information of thousands of Fulton County election workers and volunteers who served in the 2020 general election in Fulton County.”

Here’s the crux of the county’s concern about the subpoena, according to the filing: 

Its purpose is to target, harass, and punish the President’s perceived political opponents; it is grossly overbroad and untethered to any reasonable need; it cannot yield any evidence that could result in a criminal prosecution (because, among other things, the statutes of limitations have expired for any purported 2020 election crimes); it burdens the First Amendment rights of election workers and will chill their participation in elections; and it unreasonably interferes with Georgia’s sovereign authority to administer elections. By any measure, the Subpoena is improper and must be quashed.

The filing specifically mentions Freeman and Moss as examples of election workers who have been “vilified by the President and his political allies over false allegations that they cheated him out of a 2020 win.”

The Trump administration’s probe of Georgia’s election results originated from a referral by Kurt Olsen, an election denier and former Trump election lawyer now in a governmental position tasked with “election security.” The administration is seeking sensitive information on election workers and voters alike to prop up Trump’s false claims about 2020 — claims Fulton County officials have said in a previous filing amount to a “misleading narrative.”

Such efforts have met with backlash even from some Georgia Republicans.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whom Trump asked in 2020 to “find” thousands of votes that could be used to declare Trump the winner, has rebuffed previous demands to turn over personal information about 2020 voters. Raffensperger said literally “hell no” earlier this year when fellow Georgia Republicans tried to force him to do so.

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