Gabriel Sterling, implementation manager of the voting system in the office of the Secretary of State of Georgia, speaks at a press conference at the State Capitol in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 4, 2021.
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President Donald Trump made a series of “demonstrably false” claims during his controversial phone call to pressure Georgia’s secretary of state to revoke President-elect Joe Biden’s victory there, a senior election official said Monday.
Gabriel Sterling, implementation manager for Georgia’s voting system, refuted Trump’s accusations point by point at a news conference, which came two days after Trump relied on Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during a call an unprecedented hourly phone call to “find”. the president has enough votes to beat Biden.
During that call, which Raffensperger’s office officials had recorded, Trump made a series of claims about alleged voting irregularities in Georgia’s presidential election that he said made Biden win unfairly.
The president and his allies elsewhere have filed similar allegations related to criminals, underage teens and dead people who allegedly voted.
“The reason I have to be here today is that there are people with positions of authority and respect who have said their votes don’t count, and it’s not true,” Sterling said.
“And I’ll do it again, and I’ll go through all of that, ‘anti-disinformation Monday.'”
Standing next to a graphic labeled “Claim Against Fact,” with two rows of each under those words, Sterling said, “All of this is easily, probably false.”
“Still, the president persists and in doing so undermines the faith of Georgians in the electoral system, especially Republican Georgians,” he said.
Sterling also said lawyers for the Trump campaign “intentionally deceived” the public with claims that a videotape showed that fraudulent votes were granted to Biden during a vote count.
Sterling suggested Trump’s accusations could hurt Republican incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in their Tuesday election for Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat, facing tough challenges from Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, respectively.
There is concern among Republican Party leaders that Trump’s allegations of widespread fraud at the polls in Georgia, and Perdue and Loeffler’s support for the president’s rhetoric, could diminish turnout among Republican voters.
Sterling urged voters to go to the polls for Tuesday’s race, even if they have concerns about electoral integrity.
“I don’t recognize that there have been massive election frauds, because there haven’t been. But if you believe in your heart that there was, the best thing to do is go out and vote and make it harder for them to be robbed.” , he said.
Sterling looked exasperated when he quickly examined the claims of Trump and his allies.
“I will admit, when I heard the audio from [Trump’s] phone call … I wanted to yell, so I yelled at the computer and yelled at my car, on the radio, talking about it, because it’s been discredited, ”Sterling said.
Referring to the close chart and Trump’s accusations, Sterling said, “No one changes parts or parts of Dominion voting machines.”
“I mean, I don’t even know what that means. That’s not real,” Sterling added.
“There’s no ballot shredding. That’s not real.”
Trump’s phone call to Raffensperger led to speculation that the president could be prosecuted for trying to influence a state official to change election results.
Asked if the secretary of state, who did not appear at the press conference, was considering whether to ask the Georgia attorney general or a local district attorney to investigate Trump over the call, Sterling said, “I don’t know.” .
“I will let other people make the decision about it,” Sterling said, when asked if the call was an attack on democracy. “Personally, I found that it was something that was not normal, out of place, and no one I know who would be president would do such a thing to a Secretary of State.”
“Trump probably had eight to ten points [during the call], all his numbers were wrong, “Raffensperger said later Monday during a controversial Fox News interview.” Our numbers will be backed in a court of law. Your numbers will not be “.
Congress will meet Wednesday to certify Biden’s victory in the Electoral College. A planned effort by several GOP senators and members of the House to challenge the results of various battlefield states that Biden won is expected to fail.