The Retired MAGA Doctor Whose Years Long Crusade Led to the FBI’s Fulton County Elections Raid

When heavily armed FBI agents in camouflage body armor raided a Fulton County government building last month and seized 2020 election records, Janice Johnston, a retired obstetrician and vice chair of the state’s election board, was there.

Law enforcement standing guard prevented Johnston from entering the warehouse, and she became frustrated she couldn’t monitor the seizure from the sidelines, according to three eyewitnesses who spoke to NOTUS. Johnston called out, “But it’s our subpoena!” according to David Worley, a Democratic former member of that board who was also present at the scene.

FBI teams seized what Fulton County Superior Court Clerk Ché Alexander said was 656 boxes of election documents as part of the Department of Justice’s criminal investigation into the 2020 election. But Johnston had been fighting for 15 months with a subpoena that demanded the Fulton County clerk turn over 2020 election records directly to her Gmail account.

In many ways, Johnston was the driving force behind the Trump administration’s highly contentious incursion into state-run election operations which began years earlier. She orchestrated a MAGA takeover of the Georgia election board, pushed a slow and steady beat of 2020 election denialism and called for the second Trump administration to show up in Georgia as she fought a civil suit to get the investigation she wanted.

What Johnston couldn’t get through the civil legal process, the Trump administration took by force — by slapping a criminal label on the matter, state and federal documents show.

An FBI agent’s affidavit, unsealed on Tuesday, confirmed Johnston’s outsized role as well, listing her as a primary witness — even though her name was redacted.

“Would this have happened without Janice? No,” said Sara Tindall Ghazal, the lone Democrat on the Georgia State Election Board. “If Janice had not constantly rejected the results of board-certified law enforcement officials’ investigations of all of these claims, if she hadn’t constantly platformed election deniers and their claims, this would not be a thing.”

Johnston did not respond to questions Wednesday about her assessment of the role she’s played in the legal drama that has huge implications for the 2026 midterm elections — especially as President Donald Trump has indicated he’d like to see a federal takeover of state-run elections.

Georgia general election 2020 ballots are loaded by the FBI onto trucks at a Fulton County government building on Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart) Mike Stewart/AP

Dr. Janice Johnston is a retired OBGYN, who, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, would attend Fulton County elections board meetings as a private citizen to cast doubt on 2020 election results and demand the local elections director be fired. The Georgia Republican Party nominated her to the state election board in early 2022.

“My goal, as always, is election integrity — and whatever it takes to achieve that,” she said during one of her first meetings that year.

Since then, Johnston has vexed her more moderate colleagues. She steamrolls over Ghazal, the Democrat on the five-person state panel. William Duffey Jr., a retired federal judge who chaired the board, stepped down after years of debunking 2020 fraud claims. And Johnston doesn’t even loop in the current chair, Waffle House executive John Fervier, when she makes legal decisions on behalf of the board.

One persistent point of contention is a complaint submitted to the election board in July 2022 — that has a direct throughline to last month’s raid.

It started with a report that examined supposed “inconsistencies” in 2020 tabulator results that was put together by Joseph Rossi, who has been described in legal documents as a retired executive in Georgia, and Kevin Moncla, a conservative activist in Texas.

The election board’s official investigation results, published publicly here for the first time, concluded that most of the claims were off base.

Investigators determined that the election deniers had “conflated ballots cast with total votes,” an elementary error given that someone could cast a ballot without ever voting for a presidential candidate. The complaint that “no records” existed of 10 vote tabulators at early voting sites turned out to be a faulty assertion that relied on an earlier inaccurate explanation by the county in response to a public records request. And the 2020 truthers’ suspicions about a cybersecurity elections expert turned out to be unfounded, because he was actually an official contractor for the county.

The one thing investigators found that “partially substantiated” the complaint was that some ballot images had indeed been double-scanned during the recount. But investigators stated clearly that “these investigative findings do not affect the accuracy of the results of the 2020 General Election in Fulton County.” Trump’s net gain of seven votes (and former President Joe Biden’s loss of 932 votes) didn’t change the outcome of the race.

The board voted in May 2024 to issue a simple “letter of reprimand” to Fulton to do better. But that wasn’t enough for Johnston, who kept bringing up that complaint at board meetings as an “unresolved” matter.

Her constant beating of the drum was supported by an August 2024 letter to the board, obtained by NOTUS, in which Moncla claimed “the initial investigation was a sham.” Notably, the letter cc’d an election-denying lawyer named Kurt Olsen — who at that time had also “been in direct contact” with then-candidate Trump while MAGA affiliates prepared to potentially challenge that year’s election results, according to The New York Times.

Johnston also kept appearing at board meetings with written statements and legal assertions, causing several high-ranking officials in Georgia elections administration to begin suspecting that Johnston was receiving legal advice from nonofficial channels, three people told NOTUS.

When an election board paralegal forwarded Johnston a public records request from a Politico reporter asking for communications with any mention of “outside lawyers,” the retired doctor responded an hour later with a curt email from her iPad: “Unresponsive. Attorney-Client privilege.” Johnston had the same answer when a New York Times reporter a few days later asked specifically for any emails between Johnston and Robert Barker, a lawyer who had worked on a failed attempt to flip the Georgia election results.

Johnston kept up the pressure. Just as the polls closed during the presidential election on Nov. 5, 2024, Johnston had a subpoena seeking four-year-old general election records served on the Fulton County clerk — something that several sources described as an intimidation tactic. The elections department couldn’t possibly respond that day while workers — who’d already responded to bomb threats — were busy counting ongoing ballots. Johnston didn’t even notify the board chair, Fervier, who in a later meeting claimed he was told it was because he was considered an “obstructionist.”

Fulton County resisted the subpoena in court, claiming that copying all the requested election records would cost upwards of $400,000 — money the elections board didn’t have. So last summer, Johnston made a public cry for help.

In the closing moments of the board’s meeting on July 30, 2025, she surprised her colleagues with a new proposal and asked for a five-minute recess so they could review the draft resolution to “seek the assistance” of the DOJ in getting the documents.

The measure passed 3-2, with Johnston supported by two Trump-supporting board members.

Two months later, on Oct. 30, 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent the Fulton County Registration and Elections Board a letter demanding “all records” sought by Johnston’s subpoena. The action came just after The Wall Street Journal reported that Olsen, the election-denying lawyer, had joined the Trump administration as a “special government employee” to investigate 2020 voting-related issues.

The Justice Department sued the county on Dec. 11, starting what could have been a lengthy civil fight in federal court. But the very next week, a judge overseeing the election board’s own subpoena fight in state court issued a ruling that seemed like a compromise. Superior Court Judge Robert C.I. McBurney derided the requests as “stale and ill-timed,” but he still said the county would need to produce the documents — as long as the state board was able to pay for the work.

That tradeoff threatened to undermine the DOJ civil action underway. Now Johnston couldn’t say the records were being denied.

But then came the FBI raid in January, with agents in military gear entering the large, nondescript white warehouse on the suburban outskirts of Atlanta known as the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was spotted at the raid, raising serious questions about the involvement of spy agencies.

The unsealed FBI affidavit points to the initial complaint to the Georgia election board from Moncla and Rossi and credits Olsen, described as the “presidentially appointed director of election security and integrity,” for making a criminal referral. None of them responded to NOTUS questions on Wednesday, nor did the DOJ.

In court on Friday, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which led the lawsuit, made a startling admission: The DOJ had essentially used authorities reserved for criminal cases to get what it had previously sought in the civil context with a judge’s permission.

“Here, the criminal proceedings and the civil case appear to almost completely overlap. At issue are likely the same records, reflecting similar questions about the same transaction or event. The records seized are the object of the litigation,” a prosecutor wrote, asking the judge to pause the lawsuit for now.

The throughline from Johnston to the raid was complete. But her work isn’t done.

NOTUS obtained documents that show Johnston is pushing for even more action against locals she has long accused of improperly administering the 2020 election — on the notion that Fulton County somehow hid records from the FBI.

Seizing on the fact that Fulton County previously estimated the stash of records at approximately 700 boxes — but the FBI picked up 656 of them — she emailed her colleagues on Saturday, “Where are the 50 boxes??”

“I have grave concerns about the security of the ballots and the documents before the arrival of the FBI,” Johnston wrote.

Johnston had the election board’s executive director sign a “hold letter” dated Feb. 6 demanding that the Fulton County clerk “retain all documents” related to the 2020 election — never mind that the FBI already seized those records. She raised the same issue in a public social media post addressed to Gabbard and Bondi.

“DO NOT RETURN FULTON COUNTY BALLOTS AND ELECTION DOCUMENTS TO FULTON COUNTY UNTIL THEY HAVE ALL BEEN COPIED, REVIEWED AND INVESTIGATED,” she posted. “TOO MANY QUESTIONS TO ANSWER.”