SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
And the FBI executed an extraordinary raid this week in Fulton County, Georgia. It took possession of hundreds of boxes of ballots from the 2020 election. At the exact same time in Washington, D.C., the country's top voting officials met to talk about a midterm election that could see unprecedented involvement from the federal government and President Trump. NPR voting correspondent Miles Parks was at the meeting and joins us in our studios. Miles, thanks for being with us.
MILES PARKS, BYLINE: Hey, Scott. Thanks for having me.
SIMON: And let's begin, please, with Fulton County. What happened, and why was Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence, on the scene?
PARKS: So on Wednesday, the FBI executed this search warrant, as you mentioned. It seized thousands of 2020 election materials, including ballots in Fulton County, Georgia. We don't know yet the exact allegations that led a judge to sign off on this warrant since that part of this is sealed. But I will note, however, that this is really an extension of something we've seen over and over again throughout the first year of the second Trump term, that President Trump wants to use the federal government in a bunch of different ways to relitigate an election that countless reviews and audits confirmed he lost.
Just last week, he said people would face charges related to their actions in 2020. And it was notable that Tulsi Gabbard was seen on the site there. It's become clearer in recent days, both from press reports and then seeing her in Fulton County, Georgia, that her job as director of National Intelligence, a big part of it seems to be reinvestigating 2020.
SIMON: And, Miles, did the topic of this raid come up in conversation in the meeting of state voting officials?
PARKS: Oh, it was everywhere. I mean, the threat of federal government interference in their processes. This midterm cycle is no longer abstract. I was talking with the secretary of state of Arizona, Adrian Fontes, who's a Democrat. And I asked him, could you imagine a similar search warrant being executed in your state, considering the fact that Maricopa County, Arizona, has also - just like Fulton County, Georgia - been the site of numerous election conspiracy theories? And he said it would not surprise him at all.
ADRIAN FONTES: Because there's never been anything really wrong with election administration in America except for the fact that Donald Trump lies about it. That's the No. 1 problem in this country when it comes to election administration.
SIMON: And, Miles, what else was on the minds of election officials?
PARKS: I mean, it is still really all Trump. Even this week, there was this big will-they, won't-they show up involving members of Trump's cabinet. At first, it seemed like the head of the DOJ's civil rights division and a representative from the Department of Homeland Security on elections were going to address all of these state voting officials. They backed out because then it was announced that the attorney general, Pam Bondi, the head of DHS, Kristi Noem, and Tulsi Gabbard were going to address these officials, which then had everyone buzzing, thinking maybe there was going to be some big announcement made.
In the end, no one from the administration - apart from a couple low-level officials - ended up showing, which was especially notable, considering so many of the concerns that these voting officials have leading up to the midterms is related to some sort of federal involvement.
SIMON: And how so?
PARKS: I mean, Trump has just made it really clear that he wants a hand in how states operate elections. So voting officials are going to spend the next nine months how to figure out exactly how that's going to manifest. Is it going to mean another executive order on elections? Is it going to mean, potentially, federal troops being deployed somewhere?
The Justice Department has already sued this year almost half the states in the country trying to get access to their voter data. But I will note it's not just Democrats pushing back on all of this involvement. Utah, for instance, is a state that has not handed over its voter data to the federal government. And in an open session this week, the Republican lieutenant governor there, Deidre Henderson, talked about how the head of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division has accused states of not following the law.
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DEIDRE HENDERSON: The things that have been said publicly, frankly, are quite appalling. She's pretty much slandered all of us to publicly claim that secretaries of state are not doing our jobs and that the federal government has to do it for us. Not OK.
PARKS: You know, we started this conversation talking about the 2020 election. In that election, it was voting officials from both political parties who stood up to a pretty intense pressure campaign from Trump and from others. And so we'll be watching this year how those same voting officials, including Republicans, respond if we see some more tactics.
SIMON: NPR's Miles Parks. Thanks so much.
PARKS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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