February 6, 2026
The Trump administration’s story keeps changing about those 2020 ballots seized in Georgia and why the Director of National Intelligence was there. There have been no less than five different explanations including the latest one that came today. I’m going to tell you why that matters in a second…but first…
You need to hear what President Trump said yesterday about why DNI Tulsi Gabbard was in Georgia on January 28.
So just yesterday Trump said that Attorney General Pam Bondi insisted that Tulsi Gabbard go to Georgia and accompany the FBI to execute the search warrant in Fulton county. For the record — that’s not a normal function of the DNI…more on that in a second. Here’s the issue with trump’s story — that’s not the story Tulsi Gabbard told Congress about why she was there. She told Congress that trump himself insisted that she go. But when asked about that, two days ago – Trump said he didn’t know why gabbard was there. And before all that on Sunday Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said he didn’t know why Gabbard was there. And just to add to the confusion earlier this week the White House Press Secretary said Gabbard was there because the president tasked her with election security.
So you can clearly see there’s a lot of *this* happening. But at this point more than a week after the raid in Georgia you’d think the white house would get the story straight especially since just yesterday president trump declared that it was Bondi who told Gabbard to be there. But when asked today – Pam Bondi ducked the question.
She did not answer the question. All Bondi said was that she and Tulsi Gabbard are inseparable. Which is irrelevant to the question and doesn’t answer it at all.
So why does this matter. Well – first – you need to understand that the DNI is responsible for overseeing all of our government intelligence agencies. The DNI’s normal role when it comes to elections specifically is to identify and stop any and all potential foreign interference in American elections. I mentioned having the DNI physically present as the FBI executes a search warrant is not normal for the DNI – and that’s because domestic investigations including criminal investigations are not supposed to be political. But when a political appointee – like gabbard shows up – especially if she was there at the direction of the president who’s also not supposed to be involved in criminal investigations– that starts to call into question the integrity and fairness of whatever investigation the FBI is conducting. So let’s take Gabbard at her word and President Trump did direct her to be there—what would his motivation be? Well – he’s given two answers. One – he says he wants elections to be safe because maybe Russia or China interfered – which is an interesting thing for him to say since he called Russian interference in our elections a hoax for years and DNI Tulsi Gabbard in fact released a review last year which concluded Russian interference in 2016 was a “manufactured hoax.” So if it’s not foreign interference what other motivation may Trump have? Well – it shouldn’t be a secret. He’s talked about it a lot. We know he is obsessed with the 2020 election…which he lost. For the record — when it comes to Georgia – which Trump seems to be particularly focused on — the Republican led Georgia state legislature audited and certified the results of the 2020 election, and several lawsuits challenging those election results in that state were rejected by courts… because there was no case. But despite all that trump has not let it go. Just this week – he specifically said that election officials in Fulton County Georgia run their elections horribly. And now combine his statements about 2020 and his recent talk of nationalizing the elections– and the inability of the administration to come up with a coherent explanation for why gabbard was there — this ballot seizure starts to raise all kinds of legal questions and all kinds of concerns about the federal government’s involvement in the next election. Of course there could be a completely legitimate legal reason for all of this – but we have not heard it yet from the Trump administration. And the elections officials in Georgia believe there’s absolutely no legal authority for the FBI to take ballots – and they have sued to get them back.
Watch Trump’s statements here.
Watch Bondi’s statement here.
