"Evidence" of what, exactly? What specific crime did they expect to find evidence of on his phone?

They were pretty obviously hoping to find a specific crime to accuse him of (because he is a protester against the Atlanta "Cop City" thing).

But no respectable judge would ever have issued a search warrant on the basis of "we want to rifle through his messages/contacts so we can hopefully accuse him of something".

Protesters against this exact same thing were mis-prosecuted under "domestic terrorism" and "racketeering" charges before (got dismissed in 2025).