A week after the FBI searched an Ohio voting-rights group, questions remain

FBI agents last week conducted a statewide sweep targeting the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a group that promotes voting rights — particularly those of historically disenfranchised groups. 

Condemnations by other rights groups of the searches and seizures continue to flood in. They accuse the Trump administration of trying to suppress voter-registration efforts.

Federal law-enforcement hasn’t given any on-the-record explanation of its actions or produced any legal documents justifying them.

The Ohio Organizing Collaborative has mostly been mum as well. And federal search warrants often remain under seal while any investigation is ongoing, meaning court documents explaining the suspicions behind the searches are not right now publicly available.

Last Thursday, agents searched a Cleveland office used by the collaborative and fanned out to question people associated with the group. In some cases they seized laptops and cell phones, multiple news organizations reported.

The actions raised suspicion among voter rights advocates because it’s election season and the group that was searched helps people to register to vote. The organizing collaborative focuses its efforts on communities of color and people with low incomes.

The organizing collaborative also joined the Brennan Center for Justice in a 2021 lawsuit against the Republican-controlled Ohio Redistricting Commission in an attempt to end the state’s extreme partisan gerrymandering.

While voter rights groups have alleged the searches were politically motivated, law enforcement officials have not made any public statement justifying the searches and seizures. 

The FBI field office in Cleveland and headquarters in Washington, D.C., haven’t responded to requests for comment. 

The U.S. Attorney’s office for the Northern District of Ohio responded, but it didn’t say much.

“Thank you for reaching out, but the USAO is unable to provide more information,” a spokeswoman, Jessica Salas Novak, said in an email Tuesday.

Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine was asked about the FBI search of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative during an unrelated press conference on Tuesday.  

“Don’t know enough about it,” DeWine said, declining to comment further.

Rob Weiner, voting rights director for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said the second Trump administration has repeatedly used the Justice Department to go after Trump’s perceived enemies.

“The FBI and Justice Department are unfortunately establishing a track record of using law enforcement power against political opponents,” Weiner said.

“They’ve done this with indictments” including those of former FBI Director James Comey, who investigated Trump’s ties to Russia, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully prosecuted the Trump Organization for civil fraud. 

Weiner said other actions by the Trump Justice Department also make the Ohio searches and seizures suspicious.

It seized “voting records in Fulton County, Ga., based on ridiculous theories about the 2020 election,” he said.

“So when the FBI goes into a voting-rights organization that registers to vote people of color or who are low-income it looks like an effort to suppress the organization’s activities. It makes people know they are susceptible to retaliation for the kinds of activities that all the rest of us regard as good citizenship.”

Founded in 2007, the Ohio Organizing Collaborative and an affiliated political group, the Ohio Organizing Campaign, took in more than $50 million between 2020 and 2024, the most recent year for which tax records were available.

It works on voter-registration drives and ballot issues, and gives to other social service organizations.

An analysis by Signal Statewide found that it had received large donations from the Gund Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and two groups with ties to progressive philanthropist George Soros.

While the Trump administration stays quiet about its reasons for targeting the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, other groups are offering explanations of their own. 

After years of Republican rule, Ohio this year seems headed for close elections for U.S. Senate and governor. Trump is running scared, said Katie Paris, executive director of Red Wine & Blue, a national women’s organization opposed to extremism.

“Ohio is going to play a critical role in the 2026 midterm elections,” Paris said in a written statement. “With these races so close, it’s no surprise that this administration is choosing now to use political intimidation — afraid of what Ohioans might do at the ballot box.”

She added, “No matter your political affiliation, an attack like this — trying to create fear about the simple act of voting — matters to ALL of us because it concerns ALL of us. Black or white or Brown, urban or suburban or rural, we stand together, and that’s exactly what scares them. They’re trying this state by state, and state by state, we’re going to stand up to them.”

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.