Posted by Alumni from The Atlantic
January 30, 2026
For years, they defended American elections from all threats, foreign and domestic. But this week, veterans of federal law enforcement were forced to look on as the U.S. electoral system came under assault from an unlikely source: the government they served. David Laufman once oversaw counterintelligence investigations for the Justice Department and held senior positions in the Bush, Obama, and first Trump administrations. On Wednesday, he watched images of FBI agents searching an election-office warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, confiscating ballots and other materials in the latest escalation of Donald Trump's five-year quest to prove, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. The episode felt particularly ominous to Laufman'a crossing of a sacred line, and an indication that the administration won't stay within the guardrails that have kept American voting systems free of political interference. The agents in Fulton County... learn more