A star witness for the Trump campaign was unable to back up claims that fraudulent ballots were "injected" into the vote count in Georgia when questioned during a hearing on Thursday.
Retired Army Col. Phil Waldron, who was called to testify at the Georgia state Senate hearing by President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, could not confirm allegations that a video showing bags being "pulled from a table" by election workers contained fraudulent ballots when questioned by Democratic Senator Jen Jordan.
"Are you trying to say that, in the video, what you saw were ballots that were somehow not lawful, that weren't real, that weren't actually cast by registered voters in the state of Georgia?" Jordan asked Waldron during the hearing.
"We do have affidavits of people who trucked in ballots from out of state into other states," Waldron replied.
Jordan then asked Waldron to clarify if he was claiming that truckloads of ballots had been moved into Georgia.
"Not into Georgia," Waldron admitted.
Waldron agreed when Jordan pointed out that election laws and vote counting processes differ from state to state. The senator then pressed Waldron on whether he was claiming that illegal ballots had been trucked into Georgia based on claims from other states.
"So, your opinion is based on the fact that there are affidavits of other people from other states who have alleged that they trucked in ballots to other states?" Jordan asked. "Your testimony is saying that, ergo, these ballots in this video must have been trucked in from other states and are unlawful?"
A star witness for the Trump campaign was unable to back up claims that fraudulent ballots were "injected" into the vote count in Georgia when questioned during a hearing on Thursday.
Retired Army Col. Phil Waldron, who was called to testify at the Georgia state Senate hearing by President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, could not confirm allegations that a video showing bags being "pulled from a table" by election workers contained fraudulent ballots when questioned by Democratic Senator Jen Jordan.
"Are you trying to say that, in the video, what you saw were ballots that were somehow not lawful, that weren't real, that weren't actually cast by registered voters in the state of Georgia?" Jordan asked Waldron during the hearing.
"We do have affidavits of people who trucked in ballots from out of state into other states," Waldron replied.
Jordan then asked Waldron to clarify if he was claiming that truckloads of ballots had been moved into Georgia.
"Not into Georgia," Waldron admitted.
Waldron agreed when Jordan pointed out that election laws and vote counting processes differ from state to state. The senator then pressed Waldron on whether he was claiming that illegal ballots had been trucked into Georgia based on claims from other states.
"So, your opinion is based on the fact that there are affidavits of other people from other states who have alleged that they trucked in ballots to other states?" Jordan asked. "Your testimony is saying that, ergo, these ballots in this video must have been trucked in from other states and are unlawful?"
Originally Posted by 1blackman1
Did you see the video? what else would be in those four suitcases? This shit is getting real. Anyone who was in that room at that time will be subpoenaed to testify under oath.
Fact Check: Video From Georgia Does NOT Show Suitcases Filled With Ballots Suspiciously Pulled From Under A Table; Poll Watchers Were NOT Told To Leave
Fact Check
Dec 3, 2020 by: Hallie Golden
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Fact Check: Video From Georgia Does NOT Show Suitcases Filled With Ballots Suspiciously Pulled From Under A Table; Poll Watchers Were NOT Told To LeaveNot Suspicious
By Alan Duke and Hallie Golden
Does security camera video show a Fulton County, Georgia, election supervisor suspiciously pulling suitcases filled with ballots from under a table after telling poll workers to leave the room? And did that election official continue to illegally count ballots without required monitors in a manner that calls into question Joe Biden's narrow win over Donald Trump in Georgia? No, those claim are not true: Two high-level officials with the Georgia secretary of state's office and a state elections board monitor each told Lead Stories that their investigations revealed nothing suspicious in the video. The officials said the ballots seen in the video were in regular ballot containers -- not suitcases -- and they had been removed from their envelopes and processed while news media and election observers for the Republican Party and Trump campaign were present. The media and party observers were never told to leave because counting was over for the night, but they apparently followed workers who left once their job of opening envelopes was completed, the chief investigator for the secretary of state told Lead Stories. The observers were free to return at anytime, she said. Georgia law allows observers, but does not require them to be there for ballots to be counted, she said.
The claims made at a Georgia state senate hearing by a Trump lawyer appeared in a video posted on YouTube on December 3, 2020, BY Trump's campaign titled "Video from GA shows suitcases filled with ballots pulled from under a table AFTER poll workers left" (archived here).
The Epoch Times reported the false claims in an article titled Georgia State Farm Arena Footage Shows Poll Workers Staying Behind, Pulling Out Suitcases With Ballots published on December 3, 2020. It opened:
President Donald Trump's legal team on Thursday presented surveillance footage to a Georgia State Legislature hearing that appears to show election ballot-counting workers kicking out poll observers late at night on Election Day before pulling out suitcases allegedly filled with ballots.
A woman who identified herself as Jackie Pick, a lawyer who is assisting with their legal case, said the team received video footage from State Farm Arena's vote-tabulation center in Fulton County, Georgia. The team said that GOP poll watchers were not allowed to watch the counting process in the poll center.
But, according to Pick, an unusual occurrence took place later in the evening at around 10 p.m. ET. A woman--described as a blonde woman with braids--told workers to stop counting and told everyone to go home.
"Everyone clears out, including the Republican observers and the press, but four people stay behind and continue counting and tabulating well into the night," Pick said. They counted unobserved until about 1 a.m.
Gabriel Sterling, a Republican and Georgia's voting system implementation manager, told Lead Stories during a phone call on December 3, 2020 that what can be seen on the video is normal procedure and nothing looks "bizarre or odd."
Election workers known as "cutters" because their job was to open absentee ballot envelopes and verify ballots for eventual scanning and counting were dismissed for the night sometime after 10 p.m. on November 3, 2020, because their work for the evening had been completed, he explained. Those workers who remained were responsible for conducting the scanning portion of the process, since ballots could not be left without being scanned overnight. He said:
If you look at the video tape, the work you see is the work you would expect, which is you take the sealed suitcase looking things in, you place the ballots on the scanner in manageable batches and you scan them.
Frances Watson, chief investigator for the Georgia secretary of state, told Lead Stories during a phone call on December 3, 2020, that the ballots were in standard containers, and the work during the time in question had nothing to do with pulling ballots from under a table. She said:
There wasn't a bin that had ballots in it under that table. It was an empty bin and the ballots from it were actually out on the table when the media were still there, and then it was placed back into the box when the media were still there and placed next to the table.
There was never an announcement made to the media and other observers about the counting being over for the night and them needing to leave, according to Watson, who was provided information by the media liaison, who was present. She said they just followed the "cutters" as they left.
She said:
Nobody told them to stay. Nobody told them to leave. Nobody gave them any advice on what they should do. And It was still open for them or the public to come back in to view at whatever time they wanted to, as long as they were still working.
In addition, she explained that the only ballots that were scanned after the media and other observers had left were those that had already been opened in front of these observers.
Contrary to the claim, the ballots were not in suitcases, she said. The black boxes and bins seen in the video are the standard container used for the ballot counting process.
A state election board monitor, who asked for his name not to be used due to safety concerns, told Lead Stories on the phone on December 3, 2020, that he was present at the vote counting location beginning at 11:52 p.m., after leaving briefly at earlier in the evening. He then stayed until about 12:45 a.m., when the work that night was completed.
The deputy chief investigator for the secretary of state's office was present beginning at 12:15 a.m. November 4, he said.
The election monitor also told Lead Stories that between 8 p.m. on November 3, 2020, and 12:43 a.m. on November 4, 2020, the scanners had scanned about 10,000 ballots.
According to the Georgia Secretary of State's office, Biden received 2,474,507 votes, while Trump received 2,461,837 -- a winning margin of 12,670 votes for Biden. In other words, the votes counted during this period would not have changed the results of this election even if they all were switched from Trump to Biden.
Sterling said when he looked at the results, "there was nothing abnormal in the distribution of votes."
Section § 21-2-408 of the Code Of Georgia, which addresses poll watchers, explains that political bodies and parties are "entitled" to have official poll watchers. The secretary of state's chief counsel told Lead Stories it was not a requirement that observers be present for counting to continue -- only that it is their right to be there is they choose.
You can’t convince the flat earthers (fraud believers) that planes can circle the globe (Trump simply got really out voted). They just won’t accept the truth. It makes more sense for them that ships just fall off the edge into the abyss (a grand interstate conspiracy which no one can find evidence of exists to create and plant without getting caught millions Of illegal and fraudulent ballots in multiple states, even ones run by Trump supporters).
The whole idea of this mass voter fraud has reached truly stupid levels. Only a real idiot would buy it at this point. I mean one has to be retarded to still be on that train at this point. .
No, The Georgia Vote-Counting Video Was Not ‘Debunked.’ Not Even Close
A Big Tech-backed 'fact' 'checking' outfit claimed to debunk explosive evidence for Republicans' claims of significant election problems in Georgia. It didn't.
By Mollie Hemingway
December 7, 2020
A Big Tech-backed “fact” “checking” outfit claimed to debunk explosive evidence in support of Republicans’ claims of significant election problems at a Thursday Georgia Senate hearing. It didn’t. Not even close.
Newly discovered security footage from Georgia’s State Farm Arena showed dozens of ballot counters, media, and Republican observers leaving en masse at the same time from the ballot-counting area for Fulton County. After they left, a small remnant of about four workers began pulling trunks containing thousands of ballots from underneath a table with a long tablecloth and running them through machines.
The footage supported claims from Republicans that they were told counting had stopped for the night, only to find out hours later that it had kept going on. You can and should watch the 12-minute portion of the testimony from Jacki Pick here.
On Friday morning, a group called Lead Stories published a “hoax alert” falsely claiming to have debunked the security video. The Washington Post, Newsweek, and other outlets followed along, criticizing non-leftist journalists for giving the video traction. In fact, none of the claims made by the Republicans were debunked.
Lead Stories’ “fact” “check” says government officials told them everything was fine with the counting, that the ballots were in “containers — not suitcases,” and that “party observers were never told to leave because counting was over for the night.”
Leaving aside whether relying solely and uncritically on government officials’ claims constitutes anything close to a “fact” “check,” let’s look at the claim that party observers were never told that counting was over for the night. In Lead Stories’ regurgitation of the government officials’ claims, only the people who cut open the absentee ballot envelopes were sent home, while ballot counters and scanners were retained and kept working — and no one told the press or other observers they were done counting.
Were Republican Poll Watchers and the Media Told Counting Had Stopped For The Night?
Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer has consistently said that’s what happened at State Farm Arena, beginning hours after the election:
That claim, which he has repeated consistently, is backed by sworn affidavits from two Republican observers, who further allege they were kept an unreasonable distance from the ballots even while they were at State Farm Arena, making it completely impossible to meaningfully do their jobs. (The video, which shows the room from four different angles, fully supports the claim that poll watchers were kept away from meaningful observation of ballot handling.)
The observers say that they arrived for their observation jobs around 8 p.m. They say in the first half of the 10 o’clock hour, a woman with blonde braids who appeared to be a supervisor “yelled out” to those present in the room that they would stop working for the night and would resume in the morning. The Republican poll watchers said they asked Fulton County Elections Spokesperson Regina Waller questions about the status of the ballot count multiple times but that she refused to answer.
Lead Stories, however, says, “There was never an announcement made to the media and other observers about the counting being over for the night and them needing to leave, according to [Frances Watson, chief investigator for the Georgia Secretary of State], who was provided information by the media liaison, who was present.” While Lead Stories doesn’t name the media liaison, the media liaison who was present that night, according to the affidavits, was Regina Waller, the Fulton County public affairs manager for elections.
OK, so on the one hand you have sworn affidavits from observers saying that supervisors told ballot counters to go home for the evening shortly after 10 p.m. and a video showing everyone leaving en masse at that time. And on the other hand, you have two government officials promising that no one was told that counting was over. Is there any other evidence to consider?
Well, on election night, ABC News reported that ballot counters were sent home at the time that the Republican observers said everyone was told counting had stopped. Their source? Regina Waller:
The Republican poll watchers’ story matches this election night reporting perfectly. And it wasn’t just ABC that reported counting was being delayed. Many media outlets reported on counting delays. See, for example, “Fulton County stopped counting absentee ballots for the night.”
Local NBC journalists on site that night independently confirmed “they were told counting was done for the night” and given no indication it would continue before the next morning. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution even reported of a “plan” to stop scanning ballots at the same time the poll watchers said things were shut down:
They planned to stop scanning absentee ballots at 10:30 p.m. and pick it up back in the morning. No official could explain before press time why Fulton was stopping its count of absentee ballots at that time, only saying that was the procedure.
‘As planned, Fulton County will continue to tabulate the remainder of absentee ballots over the next two days. Absentee ballot processing requires that each ballot is opened, signatures verified, and ballots scanned. This is a labor-intensive process that takes longer to tabulate than other forms of voting. Fulton County did not anticipate having all absentee ballots processed on Election Day,’ the county spokeswoman wrote in a statement.
Some debunking there, guys. The video supports the claim from the affiants.
Incidentally, most of the linked stories include mention of a major election day story of a burst pipe delaying vote counting. Some even said it was reportedly a water main.
In a new affidavit, the aforementioned Watson swore, “Our investigation revealed that the incident initially reported as a water leak late in the evening on November 3rd was actually a urinal that had overflowed early in the morning of November 3rd.”
She also said that her investigation shows that the press and observers “simply left on their own,” although she later said workers put ballots underneath the table because they thought that counting was stopping for the evening. “This was done because employees thought that they were done for the night and were closing up and ready to leave,” she claimed.
Was a State Election Board Monitor Present While Partisan Observers Were Gone?
A Newsweek story quoted someone saying that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office claimed that a designated election observer was “at that spot all night, the entire time.” Lead Stories emphasizes that while partisan observers may not have been present, an “unnamed state election board monitor” was present:
A state election board monitor, who asked for his name not to be used due to safety concerns, told Lead Stories on the phone on December 3, 2020, that he was present at the vote counting location beginning at 11:52 p.m., after leaving briefly at earlier in the evening. He then stayed until about 12:45 a.m., when the work that night was completed.
The deputy chief investigator for the secretary of state’s office was present beginning at 12:15 a.m. November 4, he said.
The monitor only claims to have been present in the processing room from 11:52 p.m. on election night to 12:45 a.m., the following morning, or less than an hour. That means there were neither partisan monitors nor the state election board monitor for more than an hour after ballots began being scanned at 10:35 p.m.
What the “fact” “check” shows, then, is the monitor admitting he wasn’t present for much of the time in question, contrary to claims made by the Secretary of State’s office. For whatever it’s worth, the same monitor is the subject of an affidavit from another witness, devoted exclusively to concerns about the monitor’s conduct prior to the late hours on election day, according to a member of the Trump team. The claims include that he was sleeping on the job and staring at his phone.
Incidentally, Fulton County had such massive problems managing elections earlier this year that they were fined and forced into a settlement agreement that included a requirement that they be independently monitored, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
To avoid the fine, Fulton must maintain verifiable levels of operational competence by properly processing absentee ballots; keeping a force of 2,200 properly trained poll workers; providing at least 24 early voting sites; striving to process 100 voters per hour at any site; having a technical support staff member at every site; and creating a post-election audit.
The consent order also requires Fulton to regularly update the Board on its pool of poll workers.
The issue in the consent order requiring the most negotiation was over an independent elections monitor.
They agreed on Carter Jones, who spent time in Africa helping countries improve their elections…
The U.S. Department of Justice also sent an election monitor to Fulton County.
Contrary to the media impression that a state monitor is sufficient oversight, the press and partisan observers are just as if not more important. The false public claims about a pause in counting led to the departure of the press and Republican observers.
As for the deputy chief investigator who arrived at 12:15 on Nov. 4, when the ballot-scanning activities were nearly completed, the video shows the person entering the large room, glancing around, and talking on his phone. At no point have the “fact” “checkers” or other media figures asked what prompted an investigator to be dispatched to the State Farm Arena at that time.
The Trump legal team, for its part, said the Fulton County situation violated Georgia laws that require election tabulation to be open to public view. The witness affidavits say the denial of meaningful access to the counting process kept Republican observers from being able to actually observe what happened. The Republican observers, the press, and the public were kept to a roped-off area too far from the ballot activity to matter, which doesn’t comply with Georgia law, they say.
There Are Much Bigger Georgia Claims
While conspiracy theories about election fraud abound — ranging from The New York Times’ claim that there was no election fraud anywhere in the entire country to dramatic claims of a global conspiracy involving voting machines, the Trump campaign’s official claims are sober and serious. State Republican Chairman David Shafer and President Donald Trump filed a criminal complaint in state court on Friday regarding tens of thousands of votes that they say were fraudulent.
Trump and Shafer allege, for example, that votes came from:
2,560 felons,
66,247 underage registrants,
2,423 people who were not on the state’s voter rolls,
4,926 voters who had registered in another state after they registered in Georgia, making them ineligible,
395 people who cast votes in another state for the same election,
15,700 voters who had filed national change of address forms without re-registering,
40,279 people who had moved counties without re-registering,
1,043 people who claimed the physical impossibility of a P.O. Box as their address,
98 people who registered after the deadline, and, among others,
10,315 people who were deceased on election day (8,718 of whom had been registered as dead before their votes were accepted).
The lawsuit further alleges that mail-in ballots received nearly no scrutiny as standards for contesting questionable ballots were made unreasonably difficult.
A Note On Lead Stories
The “fact” “check” was originally written by Alan Duke and Hallie Golden, although Golden’s name was removed from later versions of the story. Golden is a freelance writer whose work regularly appears in The Guardian, a left-wing publication. Duke, a CNN entertainment reporter, retired from the left-wing outlet after 26 years.
Earlier versions of the story included a mathematical error about whether the votes that were counted after observers left State Farm Arena could have affected the outcome of the election. The authors falsely wrote that they couldn’t have, when they could have.
A later purported “fact” “check” said it wasn’t true that Republican poll watchers swore affidavits that they were told to leave the center. Lead Stories falsely stated that these claims were the “cornerstone” of Trump’s challenge of Georgia. In fact, the legal claim filed by the Trump team only mentions Fulton County telling the press and other election observers that they were going to stop counting ballots and resume counting in the morning once, on one page of the 64-page complaint.
Again, those claims have been corroborated, not debunked, by multiple press accounts from election night. As for the affidavits, they make the same claim — that Fulton County election officials falsely said they were stopping the count when in reality they were continuing to count through the night after observers left. The affidavits further state that they were unable to get answers to basic questions from officials.
Lead Stories claims it is funded by Facebook, Google, and ByteDance. The latter is the Beijing-based and China Communist Party-linked company known for TikTok. Facebook and Google have suppressed journalism deemed harmful to Trump’s 2020 election opponent Joe Biden. The Trump administration has said TikTok’s ties to the Chinese Communist government makes it a national security threat.
NOTE: In a Kafka-esque twist, Facebook is now using Lead Stories to censor this story critical of Lead Stories.
Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is a senior editor at The Federalist. She is Senior Journalism Fellow at Hillsdale College and a Fox News contributor. She is the co-author of Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court. Follow her on Twitter at @mzhemingway