Last Thursday, FBI agents carried out one of the largest raids on a voting rights organization in recent years. Across the state, agents visited members of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative at their homes and seized an untold number of computers from offices.
The FBI has thus far declined to divulge the details and scope of investigation of the organization, a left-leaning group that has led voter registration efforts in major Ohio cities and lent its energy to pushing assorted statewide ballot issues.
Assorted leaders gathered on Wednesday to express anger and frustration at the move, as many see the investigation as a politically motivated pressure campaign to curtail voting turnout by the Trump administration.
“When was the last time federal law enforcement used so much manpower on a single investigation?” District 11 Congresswoman Shontel Brown asked a room full of politicians, pastors and press at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections on Wednesday.
“This wasn’t a terrorist attack; this wasn’t a threat to public safety,” she said. “This isn’t just about an investigation into one organization. It was an attempt to send a message to a specific community.”
In other words, many said on Wednesday, a top-down attempt to try and intimidate Black Ohioans five months before the November election.
No member of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative has been charged with a crime. A letter addressed to Patel on Wednesday, signed by Brown and four other members of Congress, demanded answers by the end of June: Were there actual warrants? Were local cops used? What legal basis did the FBI have to justify those raids in the first place?
Those raids and interrogations come amid Trump efforts elsewhere focused on voting conspiracies. FBI agents confiscated ballots or questioned election workers recently in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin, the Associated Press reported. All raids seem to be linked to the 2020 and 2024 elections.
The case seems to be the same for OOC and its affiliate, Black Fork Strategies, founded by Kirk Noden in Kent, Ohio, in 2018, state records show. Black Fork “conducts field work,” those filings read, “including voter registration and circulation of petitions.”
Records show Black Fork was flagged by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in 2023 and 2024 for registering a handful of voters that were actually dead, and, in 2024, for handing in thousands of duplicated registration cards.
Tony Kaloger, the deputy director of the Board of Elections, chalked those irregularities up to a few “bad apples” in an interview with Signal Cleveland.
“They attributed it to someone who was probably lazy and came up with ways to not go around and register people,” Kaloger told Signal. In other words, not actual voter fraud.
On Wednesday, Brown and fellow leaders emphasized what OOC and its affiliates represent statewide rather than scrutinize its referrals to the Board of Elections. Many were quick to point out that OOC, while being nonpartisan on paper, tended to help register to vote Black Democrats. In 2024, it registered 160,000 Ohio voters in total.
It was a fact that many read as a political chess piece—the Trump administration’s attempt to rattle Black voters away from the polls.
“Cleveland is not going to just be rolled over,” Ward 8 Councilwoman Stephanie Howse-Jones said, flanked by six other members of Cleveland City Council.
“We are not going to allow this president and this federal government to come into our communities to cause harm, to intimidate and to bully our people,” she said.
The FBI has not released any official statement or press releases confirming the raids as of Wednesday afternoon.
November’s election is a big one for Cuyahoga County voters and Ohio voters in general. Forty-eight separate seats are up for election, including for governor, attorney general, the county executive, 11 in the Statehouse, seven in County Council and 16 in the county courts.
Last week’s raids, “along with other rhetoric, should not deter anyone from voting,” County Executive Chris Ronayne said. “Every resident deserves to cast a ballot without fear.”
Larry Harris, a pastor with the Mt. Olive Baptist Church in Mount Pleasant, stood in front of about a dozen other pastors to frame the FBI’s raids as one in a long line of federal attempts to prevent Black Americans from participating in democracy.
But we shouldn’t be deterred, Harris said in sermon-like tones. We should show up to the polls regardless.
“God has not given us the spirit of fear,” he said. “He’s given us the right to vote.”
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