Feb. 1, 2026, 6:00 AM EST

The moment the media declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election, I was on a flight from Washington, D.C., to Atlanta — deployed in my role as counsel to the Biden campaign to defend the will of Georgia voters as the state ballot counting process unfolded. For most Americans, the election was over. But my work was just getting started.

Under Georgia law, the close margin required election officials to carry out not only the regular counting process, but also a “risk limiting audit” — a hand recount of all five million ballots cast. Our legal team, and that of the Trump campaign, observed as each of Georgia’s 159 counties counted the ballots, certified the count and then counted them again by hand. After all of this, the Trump campaign demanded a third count in the form of a statewide machine recount. Georgia’s dedicated election workers counted every ballot a third time, often working overnight in shifts while contending with threats of violence and an unprecedented global pandemic. Watching it unfold, I was awed by the election staff’s dedication and their commitment to the integrity of the process.

After three counts, the results remained unchanged. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election in Georgia by nearly 12,000 votes. Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Republican Gov. Brian Kemp certified the results despite intense pressure from then-President Donald Trump. Courts rejected every attempt by the Trump campaign and the president’s allies to overturn the results.

And yet, more than five years later, President Trump has taken his most extreme step to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. On Wednesday, a phalanx of FBI agents descended on the Fulton County election operations center and seized hundreds of boxes of ballots, tabulator tapes, ballot images and other documents related to the 2020 vote.

Americans who believe in free and fair elections should be terrified. But not because the president and his cronies at the FBI and the Justice Department might find some “smoking gun” in those five-year-old boxes that finally validates years of lies and conspiracy theories. They won’t. It doesn’t exist. But Americans should be terrified because of what this portends for the 2026 midterms.

The Trump administration  dispatched federal officers to remove ballots and voting equipment from the hands of state election officials — where they belong — and placed them under federal control. This is a threat to the very foundation of free and fair elections: that ballots are cast and counted through impartial, statutorily mandated state election processes without interference by candidates on the ballot.

Let’s be clear about where our society could be headed. This fall, we are increasingly likely to see a president commanding the federal law enforcement apparatus to seize ballots and voting equipment, prosecute election workers, intimidate voters and election officials and interfere with the counting of ballots and the certification of election results.

Public officials cannot afford to wait until it’s too late to act or speak out. Governors, secretaries of state, attorneys general and other state and local election officials know that elections are a state function protected by the Constitution. As Georgia officials did in the face of threats and heavy criticism in 2020, they must continue to honor the law and the truth. Judges must scrutinize every federal intrusion brought before the courts.

Members of Congress swore an oath when they took office to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. What threat to our Constitution is greater than the demolition of impartial elections?

The FBI raid in Fulton County is only a preview of what might come if Trump remains unchecked. There is still time for Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate to do their duty and protect free and fair elections for future generations of Americans — but it is running short.

As a voter protection lawyer who worked on the two largest recounts in American history, I know that state processes to count ballots are thorough, secure and accurate. I also know that staying silent while the Trump administration takes matters, and ballots, into its own hands would irreparably harm our democracy.

“It’s meant to sow fear,” Fulton County Commissioner Mo Ivory said in the wake of the FBI search. “People who normally would stand up to exercise their free and fair right to vote get afraid to do that. And that’s exactly what [Trump] hopes will happen.”

She’s right. And we can’t let fear win.

Jacquelyn Lopez is a partner at Elias Law Group and served as voter protection counsel for the Biden-Harris campaign during the 2020 Georgia recount. She also helped lead the 2018 Florida recount team for Sen. Bill Nelson.