I had a bizarre conversation with a Republican lawmaker last week. We were talking about the state’s new abortion restrictions, which he supports, but he wanted to talk about something else – the 2020 election.
“Why do you guys always just call it ‘baseless claims of election fraud?'” he asked, referring to the AJC’s description of former President Trump’s claims about his 2020 loss in Georgia. “You’ve never gone point-by-point to prove it was baseless.”
I was shocked at what he said because the AJC’s Mark Niesse and David Wickert spent more than a year cataloging and reporting on every state investigation that did, indeed, show that Trump’s claims of election fraud in Georgia were baseless.
They detailed the lengthy investigation by Attorney General Chris Carr’s office debunking Trump’s false claim in his call with Brad Raffensperger that “close to 5,000 dead people voted” in Georgia.
Investigators found that most of the so-called “dead people” were alive and well. A total of four absentee ballots were cast for people who had died – all of them cast by relatives trying to vote as they thought their loved ones would have wanted.