Georgia AG Refuses to Investigate Allegations Against Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger

A spokesman for Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr announced Wednesday that the Attorney General’s office will not investigate allegations of election irregularities in the 2020 presidential election by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, as former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) requested in a letter dated earlier that same day.

Late Wednesday, the Hill reported, “Carr’s office declined Loeffler’s request on Wednesday, saying that, as the lawyer for Georgia’s executive branch, the attorney general cannot investigate its own client.”:

“Under the Georgia Constitution, the Department of Law is the lawyer [for the] Executive Branch of government – which includes the Secretary of State’s Office,” a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office said in a statement. “As such, we cannot investigate our own client on these particular matters. We’ve forwarded the letter to our client for their review and appropriate response.”

Loeffler outlined the details of seven specific allegations against Raffensperger in her letter to Attorney General Carr:

• Georgia’s primary election on June 9, 2020 was administered so poorly the Georgia House Governmental Affairs Committee was tasked with investigating the election. The investigation identified the following: (i) multiple issues related to absentee ballots; (ii) inadequate training for the new voting machines; and (iii) procedural issues regarding COVID-19. Secretary Raffensperger glossed over these issues and failed to take sufficient corrective or legal actions prior to either the general election or run-off election.
• Secretary Raffensperger announced on September 8, 2020 approximately 1,000 individuals faced investigation for double voting in the primary election by casting both an absentee ballot and voting in person. Eight months and two elections later, Secretary Raffensperger has not fully resolved the double voting issues.
• Secretary Raffensperger entered into a Compromise Settlement Agreement and Release (“Consent Decree”) on March 6, 2020 that materially altered the signature verification process for absentee ballot review—without informing the Georgia General Assembly or the general public—just weeks prior to mailing out mass, unsolicited absentee ballot requests statewide. He later claimed in media interviews the settlement did not materially change the absentee ballot signature review process, yet the administrative process for rejecting ballots was increased.
• According to a March 26, 2021 report, Secretary Raffensperger’s office accepted unregulated, outside funds totaling $5.59 million from the Center for Election Innovation &Research (“CEIR”), an organization linked to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. According to CEIR, Secretary Raffensperger’s office used the funds in both the general and runoff elections to conduct messaging, including to “counteract disinformation” by issuing “public service” announcements. (emphasis added)
• In his role as Chair of the State Board of Elections, Secretary Raffensperger made sweeping, poorly communicated, and inconsistently applied changes to critical elections procedures including, but not limited to: (i) permitting unsecure drop boxes whose number varied across the state, with some counties having dozens and others having none, and (ii) mass unsolicited absentee ballot request mailings, which unlocked the potential for fraud.
•  Secretary Raffensperger’s office orchestrated the recording of a call with the President of the United States and subsequently released the recording to the Washington Post just days before the January runoff, interfering with an election that was already underway by reducing faith in the process and eroding trust in our election officials. (emphasis added)
• Six months after the general election, the status of hundreds of primary and general elections investigations allegedly opened by the Secretary of State’s office remains unknown. Additionally, no investigations relating the runoff elections have been announced by his office.

Breitbart News has reported on a number of stories that document Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger’s conduct in office before, during, and after the November 2020 general election.

On November 10, Breitbart News reported, “Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) is rejecting high profile calls for his resignation over his handling of the presidential election in his state, emphasizing in a statement released on Monday that he will not step down.” Both then-Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and then-Senator David Perdue (R-GA) had called for Raffensperger’s resignation earlier that day.

In December, f0r instance, Breitbart News reported that, “Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has no idea how many of the 1.3 million absentee ballots counted in the state in the November 3 general election were delivered by mail and how many were collected and delivered from the 300 absentee ballot drop boxes he and the Georgia State Election Board approved for use in the election.”

“We don’t know how many absentee ballots arrived by mail versus drop box. The counties can tell you,” a spokesperson for Raffensperger told Breitbart News at the time.

Also in December, Breitbart News reported:

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, and the Georgia State Election Board authorized the use of 300 absentee ballot drop boxes for the November 3, 2020, general election, beginning 49 days before the election, in a July 2020 election code rule.

Phill Kline, director of the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society, said that a number of election security concerns were not addressed in Georgia’s election code rule regarding the use of absentee ballot drop boxes in Georgia and elsewhere.

“Who were the vendors that collected the ballots from the drop boxes? Where are the logs of their receipt by the vendor at the drop box and subsequent delivery to the election board? How do we know that these ballots were not tampered with, or that a number of them were not discarded along the way from the drop box to the election board?” Kline said to Breitbart News in an exclusive interview. . .

Breitbart News contacted the Georgia Secretary of State’s office for a response to Kline’s criticisms. Specifically, Breitbart News asked if the secretary of state’s office keeps copies of the ballot transfer forms required under the election code rule any time absentee ballots are transferred from the ballot drop box to the election offices and if those forms have been reviewed and monitored for time of delivery and chain of custody. A spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office said each county kept those forms. . .

Many of these absentee ballot drop boxes were paid for by a private party — the Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), which made the placement of these drop boxes a requirement for local counties that received grants and also funded additional election workers who transported ballots from the drop boxes to local election offices.

On January 4, Breitbart News reported, “A lawyer for President Donald Trump has slammed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) for ‘secretly’ recording a telephone call with the president, describing their conversation as a ‘confidential settlement discussion’ regarding the Peach State’s presidential election outcome.”

That same day, Breitbart News reported, “Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger would not answer when asked directly by Martha MacCallum of Fox News on Monday afternoon whether he was behind the release of an audio recording of his phone call with President Donald Trump on Saturday.”

Raffensperger responded to Loeffler’s allegations by ignoring the substance of the allegations and attacking her personally.

“Everyone needs to understand that she is a fake Trumper,” Raffensperger said on Fox News’s Your World with Neil Cavuto on Thursday when asked by Cavuto about Loeffler’s allegations.

“Because she lost the race, now she’s trying to somehow sound like she’s a Trumper, but she’s a fake Trumper. She went ahead and she actually gave money to Hillary Clinton in 20o7, and then her WNBA team did a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood,” Raffensperger said.

According to a report released by OpenRecords.org of federal campaign contributions made by Loeffler and her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, Raffensperger’s claim that Loeffler “gave money to Hillary Clinton in 2007” is factually incorrect.

The documentation in the OpenRecords.org report indicates that Loeffler’s husband, Jeff Sprecher, donated $2,000 to Hillary Clinton in 2007, but that Loeffler herself did not make a contribution to Hillary Clinton.

Raffensperger concluded by saying:

The problem that she lost is that she was a weak candidate. She never set forward her vision of where she wanted to move Georgia to, so she never really engaged with voters. She said that she supported President Trump, but she’s a fake Trumper on that, and then meanwhile she’s giving to liberal causes, and so people realize that she wasn’t what she said she was. So what she’s doing right now is very destructive to 2024 and 2022 races. We need to unify as Republicans, and when you continue to look backwards, it’s not helpful to move forward.