FBI raids Ohio voting-rights group offices and questions staff ahead of midterm elections

Agents seized phones and laptops of Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a group that does voter registration workThe FBI raided the office of a voting rights group in Ohio on Thursday, prompting immediate concerns the Trump administration is cracking down on such organizations ahead of the midterm elections.FBI agents raided the Cleveland office of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a grassroots group that does voter registration work, said Prentiss Haney, a board member of the group. Agents seized computers and phones, he said, and also showed up at homes of people affiliated with the group throughout the state and interviewed them. Continue reading...

The FBI raided the offices of an Ohio pro-democracy organization in Cleveland Thursday and questioned employees across the state, asking questions about voter fraud.The Ohio Organizing Collaborative, which promotes voter registration and voting rights, was targeted by over 100 agents who showed up at the homes of the organization’s leadership and employees, seeking electronic devices and in some cases carrying subpoenas. The bureau also had a search warrant for the organization’s Cleveland office.“They had agents all across the state going to civil rights leaders’ and community leaders’ doors intimidating them, coming and demanding that they talk about literally anything they would ask,” Prentiss Haney, an OOC board member, told MS NOW. The agents “asked them if they’re committing voter fraud, just on their doors, in front of their houses with their children, and just following them to work and school.”Haney told the Cleveland Plain-Dealer that the agents who approached the organization’s staff at their homes in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton and Youngstown didn’t have warrants, calling their approach “just straight-up intimidation tactics.” He said the OOC is not involved in voter fraud in any way.“It was terrifying,” Haney said. “I’ve never seen this sort of force from a federal agency against regular people, regular Ohioans, who are helping people participate in elections.”The FBI and the Department of Justice have not commented publicly about the raid or any investigation into the OOC, but Democratic Representative Shontel Brown, who represents Cleveland and much of northeastern Ohio, said in a statement that she was “alarmed and outraged by reports that Trump and Kash Patel’s FBI has raided the Ohio Organizing Collective in Cleveland.”“This appears to be a blatant effort to suppress and deny the vote of people in Northeast Ohio. These raids must end immediately,” Brown said on X.The FBI’s raids bring to mind the right-wing smear campaign in 2009 to bring down ACORN, a national organization that also advocated for voting rights among other efforts aimed at low-income Americans. Even though investigations found that ACORN staff broke no laws, the organization lost almost all of its funding, depriving many communities of a valuable organization and hurting voter registration. Thursday’s raids seem aimed at depressing voter registration and creating panic about nonexistent voter fraud in a state where Democrats stand to make gains in November.