White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt turned the tables on a skeptical press corps Wednesday, reminding reporters that their years-long fixation on foreign election interference makes them unlikely critics of an administration now investigating exactly that.
The exchange came during a Feb. 5 briefing where reporters pressed Leavitt on the FBI's seizure of 2020 election ballots and documents in Fulton County, Georgia, and on Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's on-the-ground presence during the operation. Leavitt didn't flinch as she turned the tables on the reporters, according to Fox News:
"Excuse me one second. It's the media who has said that there's Russian interference in American elections. You guys have been saying that for many, many years."
The moment crystallized something that has been building for weeks: a White House entirely comfortable wielding the left's own rhetoric as a weapon against them.
In January, the FBI executed a search warrant in Fulton County—the Georgia county home to Atlanta—seizing ballots and other documents tied to the 2020 election. Gabbard, who was sworn in as DNI on Feb. 12, 2025, deployed to the county to carry out an election security assessment. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is working alongside the FBI on the effort.
The operation drew immediate resistance. Fulton County filed a motion seeking the return of the seized materials and plans to sue over the FBI's actions. Democrats and media figures characterized the seizure as an unusual, politicized show of force—though notably, no specific elected official or outlet was quoted making that charge on the record.
When an unnamed reporter asked Leavitt directly whether there was any indication of foreign influence in the 2020 election, Leavitt pivoted—not away from the question, but through it.
"The people in this room, considering that you all, you all said for many years that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump, you should all be very happy that we finally have an administration that is looking into that, and we'll be happy to keep you posted."
That line did not land as a deflection. It landed as an indictment.
For the better part of four years, the Washington press corps treated foreign election interference as the defining threat to American democracy. Networks ran wall-to-wall coverage. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation consumed the capital, the airwaves, and the credibility of institutions that staked everything on the conclusion that Donald Trump's 2016 campaign colluded with Russia.
Mueller's investigation wrapped up in March 2019. It determined there was no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
No retractions proportional to the coverage. No reckoning with the years of implication, innuendo, and outright accusation that preceded it. The press moved on. The damage stayed.
Now the same reporters who insisted for years that election integrity demanded aggressive federal investigation are balking at an aggressive federal investigation into election integrity. The contradiction is not subtle. Leavitt simply made them own it.
Leavitt framed Gabbard's role in Fulton County as squarely within the DNI's mandate:
"As the director of national intelligence, it is a part of Miss Gabbard's role to make sure that American elections are free of foreign interference and that American elections are safe and secure. And so the ODNI director is working with the FBI on this effort, and the president wholeheartedly supports both Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard in ensuring that American elections are safe, secure, and free of foreign intervention."
The framing is deliberate and precise. Election security is not a partisan project—it is a core function of the intelligence community. The DNI deploying to assess election integrity in a county that has been the subject of scrutiny since November 2020 is not an escalation. It is the job description.
President Trump, according to Leavitt, wholeheartedly supports the effort. Reports indicate he called FBI agents directly to thank them for the operation. That kind of top-down engagement signals this is not a rogue initiative buried in the bureaucracy. It is an administration policy, carried out with presidential backing.
Fulton County's decision to file a motion for the return of seized materials and its plan to sue the FBI raise an obvious question: if the 2020 election in Fulton County was conducted without irregularity, what exactly is the county afraid of investigators finding?
Counties that administered clean elections should welcome the opportunity to prove it. Transparency costs nothing when there is nothing to hide. Litigation, on the other hand, costs taxpayer money and signals something other than confidence in one's own record-keeping.
The specific materials seized—ballots and documents from the 2020 election—remain in federal custody while the legal fight plays out. The FBI acted on a search warrant, meaning a judge reviewed the basis for the seizure and authorized it. This was not an extrajudicial action. It followed the same legal process that the press celebrated when search warrants were executed in other high-profile cases they favored.
What emerged from the Feb. 5 briefing is something larger than a single exchange between a press secretary and a reporter. It exposed a pattern that has defined the media's relationship with election integrity for nearly a decade:
The standard never changes: investigations are legitimate only when they flow in one direction. Leavitt exposed that double standard in real time, on camera, using the press corps' own words against them.
The legal battle between Fulton County and the FBI will proceed through the courts. The county wants its materials back. The federal government appears in no hurry to return them. Gabbard's election security assessment is ongoing, and the administration has signaled it will keep the press updated—on its own timeline.
The deeper question is whether this probe yields findings that vindicate the scrutiny Fulton County has drawn since 2020, or whether it closes the book. Either outcome serves the public interest. Only one outcome serves the interests of those now fighting to block the investigation.
For years, the press demanded that Americans take election interference seriously. An administration finally took them at their word. The outrage that followed told the whole story.
