'The answer to everyone’s question': Inside the FBI raid of an election warehouse

A conservative researcher whose theories have often been rejected by Georgia election overseers and who once pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of voyeurism is emerging as a central figure in the investigation that culminated in the FBI’s shocking seizure of 2020 election records from Fulton County, Georgia, in late January.

The researcher, Kevin Moncla, has tried repeatedly to prove that the 2020 vote in Fulton County was tainted by fraud. Although many of his claims have been discredited or debunked, they’ve continued to be cited by President Donald Trump and those connected to Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election and publicly pressed his administration to reinvestigate it.

Last week, Moncla told ProPublica he’d been interviewed twice by “investigators, attorneys of various offices, who work on behalf of the U.S. government” regarding his claims that proof of fraud could be found in Fulton County’s 2020 voting records. He said he provided them with data backing complaints he’s filed to Georgia’s State Election Board.

Other conservative activists linked to Mitchell have also claimed that Moncla’s work helped fuel government investigations related to Fulton County.

According to a recording of a December video conference call obtained by ProPublica, two activists associated with Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network alleged that the Justice Department had used files and exhibits from Moncla’s research in suing Fulton County for the same records seized by the FBI. The DOJ filed the suit the day after purportedly soliciting Moncla’s materials, the activists said.

“They went to Kevin Moncla for that information,” Garland Favorito, a leader in the Election Integrity Network, said on the call. (Moncla denied speaking with Justice Department officials but wouldn’t say which agency he dealt with.) Favorito also claimed to have sent information to the DOJ himself.

“The DOJ knows who to call to get the information that they need,” he said. “I’ll be honest with you, they rely on a lot of our stuff.”

A spokesperson for the DOJ declined to answer questions related to the claims by Moncla, Favorito and Mitchell, instead referring ProPublica to televised comments from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in which he said that the Trump administration is “investigating issues around elections to make sure we have completely fair and appropriate elections.” Blanche also said he could not comment on criminal investigations.

Mitchell didn’t respond to a request for comment from ProPublica, but on the day of the FBI raid, she pointed to information in a report authored by Moncla as the basis for the action.

“This is THE answer to everyone’s question, ‘why did the FBI raid Fulton County’s election warehouse?’” Mitchell wrote on the social media platform X, linking to Moncla’s report.

Favorito declined to answer specific questions, saying that he’d “had no contact with the FBI.”

It is not known what evidence the federal government used to show probable cause for the raid because the underlying affidavit was sealed.

Last week, Fulton County commissioners sued to unseal the affidavit, arguing that “debunked theories” from Moncla and Favorito had “supported the federal warrant.”

Experts said that if the affidavit was based on information sourced from the activists, it would raise questions about the raid’s legitimacy.

“If the underlying affidavit is based on thoroughly debunked assertions about unlawful activity, I think that is at least the basis for arguing that the probable cause does not exist,” said Danielle Lang, the vice president of voting rights at the Campaign Legal Center.

Over the weekend, the judge ordered the affidavit to be unsealed by the close of business on Tuesday.

The 263-page report by Moncla, published in early January, is part of a yearslong campaign by him, Mitchell and others to get access to Fulton County’s 2020 election records. He acknowledged that not much in the report is new, but rather a compilation of complaints he and the other contributors have filed to Georgia’s State Election Board over the past five years.

Many of the complaints have been dismissed by the board, after investigations by Georgia’s Republican secretary of state. Even when investigators have validated aspects of complaints, they’ve found no evidence of malfeasance.

In one high-profile instance, investigators reported that a small number of inconsistencies were “not due to the intentional misconduct by Fulton County’s election staff” but due to “human error in entering the data,” and that these “did not affect the result of the 2020 General Election Fulton County, which were confirmed as accurate.”

Moncla said he didn’t trust the secretary of state’s conclusions, calling him “a politician who doesn’t have any fucking credibility,” and said his own research proved the issues with Fulton County’s 2020 vote went beyond human error.

The secretary of state’s office didn’t respond to questions about Moncla’s criticism.

Trump and his lawyers have continued to cite Moncla’s claims about election fraud in Fulton County even as unsavory incidents in his past have surfaced and other conservatives have called him untrustworthy.

In 2004, Moncla pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor voyeurism charge and was subsequently ordered by a jury to pay $3.25 million in damages after secretly filming guests in his home bathroom.

Moncla told ProPublica the matter had no bearing on his election-related research. “That has nothing to do with this,” he said. “That was 20 years ago in a divorce custody battle.”

In a case stemming from the 2020 election, a lawyer for the conservative website The Gateway Pundit called Moncla “a goddamned fraud” and “a known fabricator,” according to a court filing. The messages were revealed in a defamation lawsuit against the website, which had accused two election workers in Fulton County of committing fraud. One of the site’s reporters had communicated with Moncla. The case ended in a settlement, the terms of which were not disclosed. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani was ordered to pay around $150 million for repeating related discredited claims against the two election workers.

Moncla said people were free to examine his research and make up their own minds. “I don’t want people to trust me,” he said. “I want people to trust the county’s records and facts” and the report, which he described as “meticulously documented.”

Moncla said he’d been surprised by the FBI’s raid on the Fulton County election center, which he found out about via Fox News. He also said he thought his report was being “exploited” for political gain and that what he’s found shouldn’t be the basis for a criminal action.

“I’m not saying that Trump won the election. I’m saying that Georgia’s election system is broken and needs to be fixed,” he said. “I don’t want anyone to go to jail. I don’t want anyone to be hurt.”

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