A top Republican official in Georgia today denounced Donald Trump’s attacks on the legitimacy of the vote – and warns it could hamper Republicans in their effort to maintain control of the Senate.
‘I worry that this continues, you know, fanning of the flames around misinformation puts us in a negative position with regards to the Jan. 5 runoff,’ said Georgia’s Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan. ‘The mountains of misinformation are not helping the process – they’re only hurting it.’
His comments came after Trump’s relentless attacks on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.
Trump called Kemp on Saturday urging him to have the state legislature meet to cast aside the election and send electors for Trump, in a state Joe Biden by 12,000 votes.
Asked about Trump’s attacks on state officials, Duncan responded: ‘Absolutely it disgusts me.’
‘We’re certainly not going to move the goalposts at this point in the election. We are going to continue to follow the letter of the law, which gives us a very clear-cut direction as to how to execute an election,’ he said.
Despite his criticism of ‘misinformation’ at the Trump rally, Duncan allowed that the ‘first part’ of the rally was ‘very encouraging, to listen to the president champion the conservative strategies of Senator Loeffler and Perdue,’ a reference to Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
Another Georgia election official, Gabriel Sterling – also a Republican – blasted Loeffler and Perdue’s decision to call for the election of Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger amid Trump’s unsupported charges of fraud.
‘They just want to keep the Trump supporters whipped up because they think that’s the best path to win the Senate races,’ said Sterling, who appeared on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ after his call to stop false election claims went viral.
He said he voted for Trump, and even planned to vote for Loeffler and Perdue as a Republican.
‘At this point it’s a game of whack a mole, as we’ve been saying. The president’s statements are false. They’re disinformation. They are stoking anger and fear among his supporters and, hell, I voted for him,’ said Sterling. ‘It’s undermining democracy, and we’ve got to get to a point where responsible people act responsibly,’ said Sterling.
He said what motivated him to speak out were threats against Raffensberger and his family, and alluded to threats against himself – as well as threats he said he learned came in against a young worker for a voting technology company that is at the heart of a conspiracy theory pushed by Trump’s legal team.
‘It wasn’t happening to me. Obviously, I have a police car outside my house right now, I can see it out the right side of my peripheral vision. There has been police protection for the secretary. His wife received sexual and violent threats on her personal cell phone,’ he said.
‘But what, for lack of a better word, set me off on Tuesday, was about an hour before — hour and a half before a previously scheduled news conference, I got a call from the project manager from Dominion Voting Systems for — out of Colorado, who was telling me in a very audibly shaken voice, that one of their contractors had received some threats in Gwinnett County, and this is just a young tech’ he said.
‘He took a job a few weeks ago, he’s one of their better ones, and one – I was going through the Twitter feed on it and I saw it basically had the young man’s name, it was a very unique name so they tracked down his family and started harassing them. And it said “his name, you have committed treason. May God have mercy on your soul, with a slowly swinging noose,” and at that point, I just said “I’m done.”’
Trump’s legal team has lost every major court challenge since the election, but the president refuses to concede.