MAGA firebrand Steve Bannon has told supporters that a controversial FBI raid in Georgia has given Donald Trump the evidence he needs to prove the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
Two months after FBI agents mysteriously seized ballots and other voting material from a Fulton County election center, lawyers appeared in federal court on Friday seeking to get the material back.
But speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas, Bannon hit out at the move in a wild rant to the MAGA faithful that was peppered with conspiracy theories.
“Right now they’ve got the toughest, most expensive lawyers from the left... in a five-hour evidentiary hearing wanting to get the evidence back, to get the ballots back. Why? Because the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and they know it,” Bannon said.
“Now we have the evidence,” he added. “We have the evidence that the Republican establishment did not want you to see: that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.”
Bannon is a former senior advisor to Trump and still a figure of influence within the MAGA movement.
But not everyone was happy that he was invited to CPAC, with some conservatives even calling for the event to be boycotted due to Bannon’s links to notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Documents released by the Justice Department showed that the pair had a chummy relationship, with Bannon even seeking to help the child sex predator rebuild his image.
The MAGA stalwart did not address the Epstein files at all at CPAC, nor did any of the other speakers who took the stage this week, despite the issue being a serious sticking point for Trump’s base leading up to the 2024 election.
Instead, speeches focused largely on issues such as the Iran war and the need to stay united ahead of the midterms.
“What’s important is not Candace [Owens] and Tucker [Carlson] and Megyn Kelly or Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro,” a fired-up Bannon said on stage on Friday, referencing the personal feuds between high-profile MAGA identities that have spilled out into the open in recent months.
“What is important is you,” he shared.
The FBI raid took place in January, when agents—arriving with a warrant—descended on Fulton County’s elections offices to seize about 700 boxes of 2020 election documents.
The raid happened despite dozens of challenges to the results of the controversial election yielding no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud.
But the incident is still shrouded in mystery, as the FBI has yet to name anyone in Georgia as a target for criminal prosecution, and officials have not explained why the material was seized.
The presence of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in Fulton County also raised concerns, given that participating in law enforcement operations is not part of her remit.
Lawyers arguing for the FBI to return Fulton County’s 2020 election records told a court on Friday that the affidavit used to conduct the raid relied on misrepresentations, leading to a “callous disregard” for the county’s rights.
“The only element that turns the election into a crime is intent, and nothing in the affidavit shows intent,” high-profile defense attorney Abbe Lowell, who is representing Fulton County, told the court.
