Kash Patel’s FBI raided the offices of a voting rights group in Ohio and showed up at staffers’ homes in what the group’s leaders described as fishing expedition to satisfy Donald Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud.
Agents on Thursday raided the Cleveland offices of Ohio Organizing Collaborative, pro-democracy group that helps register voters, MS NOW reported.
They also fanned out across the state to question the group’s leaders, staff members, and volunteers, in some cases carrying subpoenas and demanding access to electronic devices, and in other cases approaching people without warrants, sources told the network.
Board member Prentiss Haney told MS NOW that the agents were “basically trying to fish for information” using “straight-up intimidation tactics.”
“They had agents all across the state going to civil rights leaders’ and community leaders’ doors intimidating them, coming and demanding that they talk about literally anything they would ask,” he said.
Haney added that the agents “asked them if they’re committing voter fraud, just on their doors, in front of their houses with their children, and just following them to work and school.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the FBI for comment.
Ohio Organizing Collaborative works in the state’s major metropolitan areas to help underrepresented communities register to vote, and has joined lawsuits challenging redistricting efforts that dilute Black voting power.
Sources told MS NOW they were worried the raid was part of Trump’s effort to sow distrust in swing-state elections ahead of the November midterm elections.
The FBI has spent months trying to seize ballots, gain access to personal information about poll workers, and interview election officials in swing states in response to Trump’s baseless claims that he beat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
Agents raided an election hub in Georgia, seized images of ballots and other election data in Arizona, demanded ballots in Michigan, and visited the homes of current and former election officials in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
In their interviews with former Wisconsin officials, the agents honed in on topics that have fueled discredited claims of voter fraud in Wisconsin.
Patel has also demanded access to a wide range of state election information, including demanding the names and addresses of 2020 election workers in Fulton County, Georgia, where Biden won more than two-thirds of the 517,000 votes cast for president, CNN reported in May.
The county has opposed to the move in court, saying the request is a “fishing expedition” meant to “target and harass” the president’s perceived political enemies.
