Trump Campaign Officials Started Pressuring Georgia's Secretary of State Long Before the Election

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
Diana B. Henriques
@dianabhenriques
What a story: Trump campaign guys crashing meetings, slamming doors, making threats, telling lies - while @GaSecofState and his team just keep doing their jobs. Trump Campaign Pressured Georgia’s Secretary of State Long Before the Election

Trump Campaign Officials Started Pressuring Georgia’s Secretary of State Long Before the Election
The Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, rejected repeated demands to endorse Trump. As the official overseeing the voting, he believed he should remain neutral.
propublica.org
9:55 AM · Nov 18, 2020

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-campaign-officials-started-pressuring-georgias-secretary-of-state-long-before-the-election


Long before Republican senators began publicly denouncing how Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger handled the voting there, he withstood pressure from the campaign of Donald Trump to endorse the president for reelection.

Raffensperger, a Republican, declined an offer in January to serve as an honorary co-chair of the Trump campaign in Georgia, according to emails reviewed by ProPublica. He later rejected GOP requests to support Trump publicly, he and his staff said in interviews. Raffensperger said he believed that, because he was overseeing the election, it would be a conflict of interest for him to take sides. Around the country, most secretaries of state remain officially neutral in elections.

The attacks on his job performance are “clear retaliation,” Raffensperger said. “They thought Georgia was a layup shot Republican win. It is not the job of the secretary of state’s office to deliver a win — it is the sole responsibility of the Georgia Republican Party to get out the vote and get its voters to the polls. That is not the job of the secretary of state’s office.”

Leading the push for Raffensperger’s endorsement was Billy Kirkland, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign who was a key manager of its Georgia operations. Kirkland burst uninvited into a meeting in Raffensperger’s office in the late spring that was supposed to be about election procedures and demanded that the secretary of state endorse Trump, according to Raffensperger and two of his staffers.

When reached by phone, Kirkland directed the request for comment to the Trump campaign, which did not respond. The White House and the Georgia Republican Party also did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Joe Biden has been projected as the winner of the presidential election in Georgia by a margin of roughly 14,000 votes. The state is now conducting a hand recount at the Trump campaign’s request. Raffensperger’s office has said that the recount won’t swing enough votes to tip the state into Trump’s column.

*snip*

[onetexan]

1. Election tampering -the whole damn GOP party

[WA-03 Democrat]

2. its always projection with them

[MerryBlooms]

3. R&K Thank you.

[marlakay]

4. If we had real justice

Most of the republican leaders would go to jail, you would think both sides would want a fair election. What this tells me is republicans know they can't win without cheating most of the time or keeping democrats from voting. So they go along with it to win, just like they justified everything Trump did to get what they wanted.

Sold their souls.

[gopiscrap]

5. exactly

[malaise]

6. The ever suspicious malaise is now even more worried

about the two Senate races - now that this SoS is a publicly acknowledged Saint.

[CatWoman]

10. I'm quite sure Stacey Abrams is closely watching this

[malaise]

11. She watched them rob her too

[crickets]

7. Gee, they sound nice. nt

[Rice4VP]

8. Good for him for putting them in blast. Those spineless

republicans in congress clued learn something from this man. Don’t let the bully win

[KewlKat]

9. Kick