It’s no secret that Donald Trump lied about Georgia’s 2020 elections, but as the NBC affiliate in Atlanta reported overnight, state officials have now officially closed the book on one of the most notorious Republican claims.
Officials said Tuesday that the State Election Board had dismissed the case related to the “suitcases full of ballots” allegations at State Farm Arena on Election Night 2020. The State Farm Arena episode was central to former President Donald Trump’s claims that Georgia had fraudulent election results in favor of President Joe Biden. Instead, the long-running investigation by the state determined the claims related to that night were “false and unsubstantiated.”
To be sure, these are not exactly new revelations. Nevertheless, officials on Georgia’s state board of elections yesterday took the formal step of closing the case altogether.
“We are glad the state election board finally put this issue to rest,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said. “False claims and knowingly false allegations made against these election workers have done tremendous harm. Election workers deserve our praise for being on the front lines.”
In a press statement, Raffensperger said the conspiracy theories were scrutinized by investigators from his office, as well as special agents with the FBI and GBI, who collectively concluded that there was “no evidence of any type of fraud as alleged.” They similarly found that allegations of wrongdoing against election workers were “unsubstantiated and found to have no merit.”
In case anyone needs a refresher, let’s revisit our earlier coverage and review how we arrived at this point.
In the immediate aftermath of his election defeat, Trump said election workers in Atlanta corrupted the vote tallies by taking improper ballots from suitcases. The claims were immediately discredited, not just by independent journalists, but also by his own Justice Department. As Rachel noted on the show several months ago, former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue told the outgoing president directly that the matter had been reviewed by federal law enforcement and the accusations were baseless.
After one conversation in which the then-president referenced an imagined suitcase filled with fraudulent ballots, Donoghue told Trump, “No, sir, there is no suitcase. You can watch that video over and over. There is no suitcase. There is a wheeled bin where they carried the ballots. And that’s just how they moved ballots around that facility. There’s nothing suspicious about that at all.”
Trump, in other words, was told the truth, which he rejected. Worse, the Republican turned his lies into attacks that put innocent election workers in danger: Trump and some of his rabid followers decided that Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who had taken a temp job helping count ballots, were directly and personally responsible for including fake ballots in Georgia’s election tally.
He kept the smear campaign going — for roughly two years.
In fact, Trump claimed to have evidence against them in the form of a video in which Moss and Freeman could be seen doing their jobs. What conspiracy theorists said were “suitcases” of bogus ballots were really just standard boxes used locally to transport actual ballots.
The video — which showed nothing nefarious or untoward — nevertheless made the rounds in conservative media and in far-right circles, with Republicans insisting that the images showed election fraud, reality be damned. Trump even put it on screen during one of his post-defeat political rallies. It was around this time when radical activists threatened the women’s lives and showed up at their homes. Freeman, a retiree who started a small boutique business selling fashion accessories, was forced to flee her house, close her business, and move to an undisclosed location on the advice of the FBI for her own safety. These women, who’d done nothing wrong, were terrorized because of a ridiculous lie. On Tuesday, a member of Georgia’s state board of elections requested that Moss and Freeman receive a formal letter “affirmatively telling them that the matter has been dismissed.” This post revises our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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