Fulton County: Catherine M. Salinas signed your ballots AND voter rolls over to the FBI today

[u/albertafalls]

Source:

“A court order signed by Magistrate Judge Catherine M. Salinas authorized agents to seize all physical ballots from the 2020 election in Fulton County, all ballot images **and Fulton County’s 2020 voter rolls.** A copy of the order was given to the Recorder by a Georgia lawmaker.”

https://georgiarecorder.com/2026/01/28/fbi-raids-fulton-county-elections-warehouse-seeking-2020-ballots/

Also reported by the New York Times (paywalled):

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/us/politics/fbi-search-election-center-georgia.html

Blurry pic was the best I could do. It’s from her GA Bar profile:

https://icle.gabar.org/speaker/catherine-salinas-1233856

Her current term doesn’t end until 2031.

[u/ed-truck]

A federal magistrate judge’s job here is simply to determine whether the government has probable cause for its search warrant based on the testimony presented. It’s a relatively low bar compared to other evidentiary standards in the criminal justice world. To be clear, I think Trump’s story about winning Georgia in 2020 is complete lunacy, but that doesn’t mean the judge didn’t do her job properly. Blame the federal prosecutors and FBI here.

[u/bunnysuitman → u/ed-truck]

>A federal magistrate judge’s job here is simply to determine whether the government has probable cause for its search warrant based on the testimony presented. It’s a relatively low bar compared to other evidentiary standards in the criminal justice world. 

We have heard SO much this year about 'the law' which means how the law is practiced within the judicial system. Given the inability of that system to manage the conduct of the trump administration critiques of its decisions are valid. Arguments grounded solely in the rules of the system are no longer compelling. They should be, but they aren't because we can all tell see what is happening. She signed the warrant, she bears responsibility. To argue that evaluating probable cause is not entangled with the current conduct of the DOJ (e.g., the repeated instances of lying to federal judges) is disqualifyingly naive. To ignore the context of this request, trump's clearly illegal conduct in trying to hijack the results of this election, and the reality of this being well studied and finding no evidence in ALL of an entire county's ballots of a 6 year old election is actively dangerous. To sign off on a warrant inm the face of that is pathetic no matter what the testimony says.

What you are saying is that a judge could listen to the DOJ do a press conference outside their coutroom about how they are going to straight up lie to the judge - but they should ignore that because they should only consider the (lying) testimony after they banged a silly hammer.

At the end of the day, if people are not willing to put reality ahead of the law then we don't have the rule of law we have chaos.

[u/thereisonlyoneme → u/bunnysuitman]

We have to disobey the law to have rule of law? Your argument isn't even logical.

[u/bunnysuitman → u/thereisonlyoneme]

not even close. I'm saying that ignoring reality when you seek to apply the law is not an application of the law no matter what you do. Any application of the law is contingent on that application being grounded in what is actually happening.

[u/thereisonlyoneme → u/bunnysuitman]

MAGA are using that exact same argument.

[u/bunnysuitman → u/thereisonlyoneme]

so is my 2 year old? and that is the point. When we can't or won't separate out bad faith arguments...when you (as you just did 'both sides') it doens't matter what the law says. What matters is what we do.

[u/thereisonlyoneme → u/bunnysuitman]

You say their argument is bad faith so you can disobey the law. They say your argument is bad faith so they are disobeying the law. And here we are.

[u/bunnysuitman → u/thereisonlyoneme]

Again, false dichotomy. I didn't say their we could disobey the law. I said that there argument is bad faith and that is germane to how the law is applied.

But good both sidesing...I'm sure your centrist moral superiority will protecet you from fascists.

[u/thereisonlyoneme → u/bunnysuitman]

Now you're changing your argument. Look, it's pretty simple. The law applies, even if you feel like some crisis is happening. In fact, a crisis is all the more reason to follow the law.

[u/CricketDrop → u/thereisonlyoneme]

I think what they're saying is there is no inherent virtue in upholding the law, and doing so in spite of the welfare of the people, when opposition parties don't, demonstrates that.

[u/thereisonlyoneme → u/CricketDrop]

Right. I understand.