Report used as basis for Fulton County raid had ‘extensive flaws,’ conservative-authored study finds

One of the key reports used to justify the re-opening of an investigation into Fulton County’s 2020 election results “provides no coherent theory or evidence of fraud,” according to a review by conservatives at the nonpartisan nonprofit States United Democracy Center (SUDC). 

The report in question, produced by election deniers under the name Election Oversight Group (EOG), “contains no legitimate conclusions about the conduct or results of the 2020 election in Fulton County,” reads the SUDC analysis, released on April 8.

However, the EOG report’s allegations have already done damage, serving as a basis for the FBI’s search warrant to raid and seize ballots from an elections warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, in January.

“The EOG Report suffers from extensive analytical and factual flaws,” reads the SUDC review. “It is deeply concerning that its allegations appear to have served as the core of the affidavit supporting the Fulton County search warrant in January 2026.”

The SUDC study was prepared by Hoover Institution senior fellow Justin Grimmer, former Republican Maricopa County Recorder and Cato Institute scholar Stephen Richer and former Georgia Secretary of State general counsel Ryan Germany.

Germany was also the lawyer on the phone with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) in 2021 when President Donald Trump asked them to find ways to overturn the state’s 2020 election results, which Joe Biden won. 

Five years later, he is still defending the state’s final vote, this time through a review of the EOG’s investigation into Fulton County’s handling of the 2020 election. The EOG report claims it found evidence that “raises serious concerns about the integrity of the election, citing missing records, unauthorized access to election systems, and the counting of ballots without proper verification.”

It was prepared by Rochelle Cabirac, Kevin Moncla, Joseph Rossi, and Melissa White – all election conspiracy theorists who have staged several unsuccessful attempts to overturn the 2020 election results through unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud. The 263-page document describes 26 “counts” of problems its authors claim have been discovered about Fulton County’s election procedures. 

However, the SUDC analysis points out that almost every one of those counts has already been examined and debunked through the numerous investigations, audits and recounts conducted since the 2020 election concluded.

For example, the EOG claims that Fulton County installed “untested” software and unsecured encryption keys onto its ballot-marking devices, in violation of federal Election Assistance Commission certification.

However, there is no documented evidence that Fulton County used uncertified software and courts found no proof that encryption services were compromised. 

Consequentially, some of the EOG’s allegations led to the FBI’s seizure of Fulton County’s 2020 ballots in January – which became a model for a similar questionable ballot seizure in Riverside County, California in February. 

For instance, EOG authors alleged that Fulton County “destroyed” hundreds of thousands of ballot images, insinuating that this had something to do with a false ballot count. This accusation became one of five “defects” cited in the FBI’s pursuit of a search warrant for the Fulton County raid.

However, as the SUDC analysis explains – along with other election experts – ballot images have nothing to do with the official vote count. They are merely electronic records of the ballots that election officials at the time had no legal obligation to preserve. 

Another EOG count falsely claimed that the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a non-profit that issues election infrastructure support grants, “administered and controlled nearly all facets of the Fulton County 2020 General election.” 

While studies found that grants like these had no noticeable effect on 2020 election outcomes, Georgia lawmakers seized on such claims to pass a law in 2023 banning counties – many of which were underfunded for election services – from accepting grants from outside groups. 

Curiously, many of the EOG’s claims didn’t actually accuse Fulton County of wrongdoing – one refers to a wrongly printed ballot incident in Spalding County, Georgia, from a 2022 election, without making connections to what that had to do with Fulton County in the 2020 election. 

Overall, the SUDC found that the EOG report “provides no coherent theory or evidence of fraud and no basis to doubt the results of the election.” 

It “does not meet the standards of a credible post-election analysis,” reads the review. “It relies on faulty and inadequate evidence, unsupported claims, meaningless comparisons, omissions and misreadings of primary sources, misunderstanding of election laws, and disregard for the election safeguards in place in 2020.”