The back of an FBI agent. File photo from Getty Images.
Last week, FBI agents conducted a statewide operation targeting the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a group that promotes voting rights – especially those who have been historically disenfranchised.
Condemnations of searches and seizures continue to come from other right-wing groups. They accuse the Trump administration of trying to suppress voter registration efforts.
Federal law enforcement agencies have provided no official explanation for their actions or provided any legal documents to justify them.
The Ohio Organizing Collaborative is also mostly mom. Federal search warrants often remain sealed while an investigation is ongoing, which means that court documents explaining the suspicions underlying the searches are not currently publicly available.
Last Thursday, agents searched a Cleveland office used by the collaboration and spread out to question people associated with the group. In some cases, laptops and cell phones were seized, multiple news organizations reported.
The actions have raised suspicions among voting rights advocates as it is election season and the raided group helps people register to vote. The organizing cooperative focuses its efforts on communities of color and low-income people.
The organizing collaborator also joined the Brennan Center for Justice in 2021 lawsuit against the Republican-controlled Ohio Redistricting Commission in an attempt to end the state extreme partisan gerrymandering.
Although voting rights groups maintain that the searches were politically motivated, law enforcement officials have made no public statements justifying the searches and seizures.
The FBI’s Cleveland field office and headquarters in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio responded but didn’t say much.
“Thank you for contacting us, but USAO is unable to provide more information,” spokeswoman Jessica Salas Novak said in an email Tuesday.
Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine was asked about the FBI’s search of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative during Tuesday’s news conference.
“I don’t know enough about it,” DeWine said, dwindling to comment further.
Rob Weiner, director of voting rights at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, said the second Trump administration repeatedly used the Justice Department to prosecute perceived enemies of Trump.
“The FBI and the Department of Justice unfortunately have established a history of using law enforcement powers against political opponents,” Weiner said.
“They did this through indictments,” including those brought by former FBI Director James Comey, who led the investigation Trump’s connections with Russiaand New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully prosecuted the Trump Organization for civil fraud.
Weiner said other actions by Trump’s Justice Department also raise suspicions about searches and seizures in Ohio.
caught “voting records in Fulton County, Georgia, based on absurd theories about the 2020 election,” he said.
“So when the FBI contacts a voting rights organization that is registering people of color or low-income people to vote, it looks like an attempt to suppress the activities of that organization. It lets people know that they are at risk of retaliation for actions that all of us consider good citizenship.”
Founded in 2007, the Ohio Organizing Collaborative and its affiliated policy group Ohio Organizing Campaign raised more than $50 million between 2020 and 2024, the most recent year for which tax data was available.
It handles voter registration and ballot initiatives, and also makes donations to other social service organizations.
Analysis Signal Statewide discovered that it had received gigantic donations from the Gund Foundation, the Ford Foundation and two groups associated with progressive philanthropist George Soros.
While the Trump administration has remained hushed on why it targeted the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, other groups have offered their own explanations.
After years of Republican rule, Ohio appears to be facing close U.S. Senate and gubernatorial elections this year. Trump is afraid, said Katie Paris, executive director of Red Wine & Blue, a national women’s organization opposing extremism.
“Ohio will play a key role in the 2026 midterm elections.” Paris said in a written statement. “These races are so close together, it’s no surprise that the administration is now choosing to use political intimidation out of fear of what Ohioans might do at the ballot box.”
She added: “Regardless of political affiliation, an attack like this – attempting to create fear over the simple act of voting – matters to ALL of us because it affects ALL of us. Black, white, brown, urban, suburban, rural, we stand together and that’s what scares them. They’re trying state by state, we’re going to stand up to them.”
