Secy. of State Raffensperger backs aide as Trump refuses to back down

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    ATLANTA, GA (WGCL) — Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he backs Gabriel Sterling’s comments about a need for President Donald Trump to back off his rhetoric on Georgia and his general election loss.

“I did know what Gabriel Sterling was going to say and he had our full support. He spoke it with passion and spoke it with truth. It’s about time more people out there started speaking the truth,” Secretary Raffensperger said. “Perhaps wasn’t the exact wording I would have used, but you caught the essence of it and he has my full support.”

President Trump refused to tell his followers to back down from threats of violence, violent rhetoric, and more in a series of late night tweets aimed at Raffensperger. The tweets came after a powerful press conference from Gabriel Sterling of the Secretary of State’s office imploring the president to stop or “someone is going to get killed.”

The president first fired back at Sterling’s comments saying things have gone too far with the post-election rhetoric by again saying there was massive voter fraud and a rigged election in Georgia.

“Rigged Election. Show signatures and envelopes. Expose the massive voter fraud in Georgia. What is Secretary of State and @BrianKempGA afraid of. They know what we’ll find,” Trump tweeted at 10:27 p.m. Tuesday in a reply to video of Sterling’s speech.

While Trump continues making baseless claims of conspiracy theories and voter fraud against Georgia, Secretary Raffensperger pointed out there is no proof.

“Attorney General Barr said he and the Justice Department, this is President Trump’s Justice Department, has seen no widespread fraud. They have had multiple investigations like us. And our investigators have seen no widespread fraud either,” Raffensperger said. “Even after this office request that President Trump try and quell the violent rhetoric being born out of his continuous claim of winning the states where he obviously lost, he tweeted out, ‘Expose the massive voter fraud in Georgia.’ This is exactly the kind of language that is at the base of the growing threat environment for election workers who are simply doing their jobs.”

At the same time, the two Republican Senators in Georgia, both running for re-election in runoff elections on January 5, sought to try to find a middle road between condemning violence, while also slamming the Georgia election.

Senator Kelly Loeffler’s campaign issued a statement that said Senator Loeffler condemns violence, but they also “condemn inaction and lack of accountability in our election system process – and won’t apologize for calling it out.” Senator David Perdue’s campaign issued a separate statement saying the senator condemns violence, but “won’t apologize for addressing the obvious issues with the way our state conducts its elections.”

For their part, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh told CNN, “no on should engage in threats or violence, and if that has happened, we condemn that fully.”

Threats of violence and death threats have been raining down on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, his family, Sterling, and even election workers and his aides have pushed conspiracy theories trying to explain Trump’s loss to President-elect Joe Biden in the 2020 election, both in Georgia and across the country.

Trump lost the popular vote as President-elect Biden received more than 80 million votes to Trump’s more than 74 million. In Georgia, Biden beat Trump by a little more than 12,000 votes. A razor-thin majority with five million votes cast, but a majority for Biden nonetheless. The vote in Georgia has been counted, hand tallied, and is going through another recount and will be one of the most scrutinized in recent Georgia history by the time the third count is complete.

The back and forth started Tuesday afternoon when Sterling implored Trump to tell his followers to back off. He told the story of a young worker being threatened with a noose because they were doing their job. Sterling repeatedly said things have to stop and that the rhetoric has gone too far.

Trump said he plans to visit Georgia on Saturday, but no official plans have been released. It’s not known if Governor Brian Kemp will attend any potential Trump visit this weekend. Thus far, Governor Kemp has not publicly pushed back on the president’s criticism of the state’s elections.

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