All posts tagged "georgia"

Trump intel chief election meddling should 'freak everybody out,' top Dems shout

WASHINGTON — On Capitol Hill, questions keep mounting about Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s 2020 election investigation and whether she’s using foreign surveillance officers and resources on U.S. soil.

Democrats demanding answers about why DNI Gabbard was present for the hugely controversial FBI raid on an election office in Fulton County, Georgia last month are eager to grill her when she publicly testifies before the Senate intelligence Committee in March.

“It raises serious questions, because it would be a violation, in some cases, of laws if our foreign intelligence service was operating in the United States,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) told Raw Story on Capitol Hill.

As the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Reed’s an ex-officio member of the Intelligence Committee.

“The CIA clearly can't do anything [on U.S. soil], but no, it's just there's no explanation for” Gabbard’s actions, he said.

“The Department of Justice issues a warrant, etc, and you have an intelligence official down there? I don't know what's happened.”

Reed’s far from alone, as questions swirl and the administration remains mostly mum.

‘The plan all along’

As President Donald Trump fixates on his defeat by former President Joe Biden in 2020 and repeats disproved claims about election fraud in that contest, reports that Gabbard’s office last year took control of and tested voting machines in Puerto Rico only raised fears of interference in this year’s midterm elections.

“I've heard people indicate that she's trying to regain favor [with President Trump], so she might be given another mission like make sure 2026 goes our way,” Reed said.

“Are you nervous?” Raw Story asked.

“I am,” Reed said. “Everyone should be.

“Because if you look at the cumulative steps from the first day — taking apart the cybersecurity infrastructure approach, taking out the agency, the FBI, that handles election security — you know, it’s as if the plan all along is we won't have those protections we need for the election.”

President Trump’s recent call to “nationalize” those midterms isn’t helping.

“Nationalizing … is unconstitutional,” Reed said.

As Fulton County officials fight in court to reclaim control of election materials, critics say the conspiracy-fueled underpinningings of the Trump administration investigation are becoming clear.

On Tuesday, Fulton County officials wrote in a court filing that, “instead of alleging probable cause to believe a crime has been committed,” the FBI search warrant application did “nothing more than describe the types of human errors that its own sources confirm occur in almost every election — without any intentional wrongdoing whatsoever.”

The filing also noted the warrant relied on debunked conspiracies propagated by Kurt Olsen, an election denier sanctioned by a number of courts for unfounded claims that 2020 results were invalid.

‘No legitimate legal role’

For congressional critics, watching Gabbard claim new domestic investigative powers based on debunked conspiracies is especially alarming.

“She has no legitimate legal role to be at the Fulton County voter election bureau,” Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) told Raw Story, on the House side of the Capitol.

“It feels like a desperate ploy to get back in Donald Trump's good graces, but the fact that they're doing this by trying to elevate years-old, multiple-discredited, crazy conspiracy theories should be really concerning to everyone.”

The DNI’s role is “supposed to be about foreign threats,” Scanlon added.

Conspiracies beget conspiracies, it seems: Scanlon and others wonder if Trump’s fixation with Venezuela — and the dramatic January raid to capture its then-leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores — wasn’t tied to wild claims that the South American country controls voting machines across the globe and had a hand in Trump’s 2020 defeat.

“Certainly the fear that I've heard expressed is that now that they have the president, former president, purported president of Venezuela in custody and they have this crazy theory from 2020 that Venezuela somehow took over voting machines, can they get him to cop to doing this as a ‘get out of jail free’ card?” Scanlon said.

“I mean, it's a wild thing to even be thinking about, but we have seen that this is an administration that doesn't care what depths it descends to.”

Which is why Scanlon and others say the DNI investigating local American elections is so worrisome.

“We do need to look at what kind of domestic surveillance is going on or has been going on and the misuse of taxpayer funds to do political work,” Scanlon said.

Reports that Gabbard called President Trump after the Fulton County FBI raid are also concerning to Democrats.

“Let’s be clear: It is inappropriate for a sitting president to personally involve himself in a criminal investigation tied to an election he lost,” Senate Intelligence Vice-chair Mark Warner (D-VA) told congressional reporters.

‘Destroying democratic norms’

Nonetheless, the Trump administration seems set on testing the bounds of what’s politically appropriate — and the Constitution itself.

DNI Tulsi Gabbard, at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage

“Obviously, they are destroying our national security infrastructure, destroying democratic norms every single day,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) told Raw Story.

“Yes, it should freak everybody out that the director of national intelligence is sitting outside of an election office in Georgia, but there's lots of things every day that should freak people out.

“None of this is normal, and nobody should act like it's normal.”

Back when he sat in the House, Murphy served alongside Gabbard, then a first-term Democrat from Hawaii. While the two teamed up on some foreign policy measures, Murphy says he barely recognizes her now.

“She's just desperately searching for relevance in the MAGA world and to get back on Trump's calendar,” Murphy told Raw Story.

“I've sort of stopped long ago trying to decipher the internal dynamics of the MAGA ecosystem.”

Gabbard’s scheduled to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on March 18.

This unscrupulous Trumper's involvement in the Georgia elections raid should worry us all

When the FBI carried out its controversial raid last month at the election headquarters of Fulton County, Georgia, it was already guaranteed to inflame partisan tensions.

What made the episode more striking was the presence of Andrew Bailey.

The former Missouri attorney general is now co-deputy director of the FBI. He traveled to Georgia to oversee an operation tied to claims about the 2020 election that have been repeatedly debunked and exhaustively litigated.

It’s worth pausing for a moment to say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. He lost Georgia. The state conducted three statewide counts, including a hand recount, and still certified Joe Biden’s victory. Some Trump allies who made sweeping fraud claims about Georgia have since recanted, often under oath or under legal pressure. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani lost a defamation lawsuit for spreading those false claims.

For Missourians, Bailey’s involvement in Georgia is its own warning sign.

His political rise hasn’t been built on careful management or restrained lawyering. It has been driven by media visibility, aggressive rhetoric and a willingness to validate Trump’s preferred narrative — regardless of the record.

During his short tenure as Missouri attorney general, Bailey made election denial rhetoric a central feature of his political identity. After winning a full term in 2024, he hoped his loyalty would land him a new job in Washington as FBI director or U.S. attorney general.

According to multiple media reports, Trump was not impressed. Bailey did not receive either post.

He ultimately left Missouri last year after being tapped as co-deputy director of the FBI, a role that has historically been held by one person and involves managing the bureau’s day-to-day operations.

His fellow co-deputy director, Dan Bongino, later stepped down to return to podcasting. Instead of elevating Bailey into the traditional singular role, the Trump administration hired the former head of the FBI’s New York Field Office to replace Bongino.

Those who watched Bailey run the attorney general’s office weren’t surprised by the decision not to elevate him.

Bailey’s tenure in Missouri drew criticism over missed deadlines, bungled appeals and settlements that reflected disorganization rather than strategy. Under his watch, Missouri paid out record-breaking sums in settlements and judgments, including one settlement that committed taxpayers to annual payments stretching into the year 2098.

He also narrowly avoided being questioned under oath over an alleged ethics breach in his own lawsuit against Jackson County. A judge ordered his deposition, but Bailey moved to dismiss the lawsuit before it could take place. One of his deputies lost his law license in the ordeal.

Controversies accumulated. Bailey’s office missed an appeal deadline in a high-profile COVID mask mandate case. He falsely blamed a school district’s DEI program for an off-campus assault. He recused himself from a gambling lawsuit after political committees tied to gambling lobbyists donated to a PAC supporting his campaign. He accepted $50,000 from a company accused of poisoning a Peruvian town and later asked a court to move the case out of Missouri.

Which brings us back to Georgia.

Bailey’s presence at the Fulton County raid was not just a management detail. It was a signal about the kind of leadership now shaping the FBI and about how quickly the bureau’s credibility can be subordinated to political priorities.

Missouri has already seen what Bailey does when he’s in charge. The FBI is now taking its turn.

Jason Hancock has spent two decades covering politics and policy for news organizations across the Midwest, with most of that time focused on the Missouri statehouse as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. A three-time National Headliner Award winner, he helped launch the Missouri Independent in October 2020. Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

These Trump fools and grifters are outright ludicrous — but extremely dangerous too

The moment that FBI agents showed up with a search warrant at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center, one of two things had to be true.

The first was that federal investigators must have made an important breakthrough, uncovering previously unknown evidence that fraud had been committed in Georgia’s 2020 election. After all, you can’t get a search warrant without probable cause of a crime, right? Given the presence at the scene of Tulsi Gabbard, our director of national intelligence, that evidence might even include foreign interference!

The second, more likely possibility was that federal investigators had no new evidence of election fraud, and no old evidence of election fraud. Instead, they had merely repackaged discredited, long-ago-disproved allegations in an effort to please President Donald Trump and hornswoggle a gullible federal magistrate into issuing a search warrant.

With release of the FBI affidavit this week, we know the hornswoggle scenario to be the correct one. There is nothing new in those documents, no evidence of crime or even of criminal intent. It is an embarrassment to the FBI and to the magistrate judge who approved the search.

In that FBI affidavit, for example, the agency claims that Republican auditors during one of three recounts of the 2020 ballots claimed to have found many “pristine,” unfolded ballots that may have been smuggled into the vote count on behalf of Joe Biden.

That much is true. Such claims were indeed made. What the affidavit does not tell us — and did not tell the magistrate judge — is that those claims were already fully investigated and proved to be false.

One GOP recount auditor told state investigators they would find these suspiciously “pristine” ballots in Box 5, Batches 28-36. So investigators looked in Box 5, Batches 28-36.

Hmmm. No such ballots existed.

The auditor then claimed to have been mistaken, suggesting that she had instead found the fake ballots in Box 135, Batches 28-36. Again, investigators looked. Again, the ballots did not exist, nor did the batches in which they were supposedly held.

So why did federal prosecutors and FBI agents include previously disproved allegations in a search warrant? Again, one of two things must be true:

The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI did not know that the allegations had been disproved, in which case they are grossly incompetent.
The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI did know that the allegations had been disproved but included them anyway, in which case they deceived the magistrate.

The FBI affidavit is full of similar examples of alleged “discrepancies” presented as fact or at least as open questions, when in reality they had long ago been investigated and fully explained. The affidavit also relies heavily on allegations by well-known election conspiracy theorists with reputations that are questionable at best, yet its narrative gives the unwary reader no hint of that.

One section, for example, features allegations by a man named Clay Parikh, whom the FBI portrays as some kind of election security expert. He is not. To the contrary, he’s part of the bizarre “stolen election” subculture that travels the country making false and extraordinary claims that time and again are proved to have no basis in fact.

In the past, Parikh has worked with election conspiracy nut Mike Lindell, of MyPillow fame, who himself faces millions of dollars in damages for false election-related statements. In 2023, Parikh was also a star witness in an Arizona lawsuit filed by Kari Lake, who alleged that fraud had caused her defeat in a race for governor.

In the suit, Lake demanded that the outcome be overturned and that she be named as governor. Her case was dismissed for lack of evidence.

Today, Parikh is a “special government employee” in the Trump administration, hired for “election integrity” work. Another prominent witness in Lake’s failed Arizona case, Heather Honey, was involved in Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election and is infamous in part for her absurd claim that in Pennsylvania, more people had voted than were registered to vote.

Today, Honey is “deputy assistant secretary for election integrity” in the Department of Homeland Security.

Lake’s lead attorney in that Arizona case, Kurt Olsen, was also heavily involved in Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. The Arizona Supreme Court later sanctioned Olsen for making false statements to the court in that Lake case.

Today, Olsen is also a “special government employee” in the Trump administration, with the title of “Director of Election Security and Integrity.” In fact, the FBI affidavit credits Olsen for making the criminal referral that began its Fulton County investigation.

It’s just fools and grifters from top to bottom.

Jay Bookman covered Georgia and national politics for nearly 30 years for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, earning numerous national, regional and state journalism awards. He has been awarded the National Headliner Award and the Walker Stone Award for outstanding editorial writing, and is the only two-time winner of the Pulliam Fellowship granted by the Society of Professional Journalists. He is also the author of "Caught in the Current," published by St. Martin's Press. Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

The FBI elections raid was political theater — but something far more sinister too

If you thought that President Donald Trump and Georgia Republican candidates for higher office have left the 2020 election in the rearview mirror, think again.

Federal agents on Wednesday were seen seizing records from Fulton County’s election center warehouse as the president continues echoing false claims surrounding his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department have not provided a reason for the raid, but a U.S. magistrate judge signed off on a warrant allowing agents to access a trove of information from ballots to voter rolls.

It doesn’t appear that county or state officials had advanced notice of Wednesday’s raid at the 600,000-square-foot facility in Union City, which is used as a polling place, a site for county election board meetings and a storage facility for ballots and information about Fulton voters.

Concerns about election security are not new in Georgia’s most populous county, which includes Atlanta and routinely gives overwhelming support to Democratic presidential and statewide candidates. But this week’s raid is a major escalation in a years-long battle over election integrity — one that appears to be emerging as more of a political litmus test.

“This is a blatant attempt to distract from the Trump-authorized state violence that killed multiple Americans in Minnesota,” said Democrat Dana Barrett, a Fulton County commissioner who is also running for Secretary of State.

“Sending 25 FBI agents to raid our Fulton County elections office is political theater and part of a concerted effort to take over elections in swing districts across the country.”

The raid comes as the 2026 Republican primary for governor, which features many of the same Republicans who sparred over that year’s election results, is starting to heat up. Both Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Attorney General Chris Carr have repeatedly vouched for Georgia’s 2020 tally and refused to join any attempts to subvert it, putting them on a collision course with MAGA world over their loyalty to President Donald Trump as they campaign for the state’s top job.

Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who is running with the president’s endorsement, praised Wednesday’s raid and offered us a preview of what we will likely soon see in his doom-and-gloom campaign commercials.

“Fulton County Elections couldn’t run a bake sale,” Jones said on social media Wednesday. “And unfortunately, our Secretary of State hasn’t fixed the corruption and our Attorney General hasn’t prosecuted it.”

In the months and weeks leading up to the November 2020 vote, Trump’s repeated warnings of potential nefarious activity in that year’s election became part of his rhetoric. Georgia would emerge as the epicenter of the president’s claims of election fraud, even after multiple hand recounts and lawsuits confirmed Biden’s ultimate victory.

His allies in the state Legislature urged leaders to call a special session to reallocate Georgia’s 16 electoral votes. Some Republicans, including Jones, signed a certificate designating themselves as the “electors” who officially vote for president and vice president. And Trump’s January 2021 phone call to Raffensperger, where he urged the secretary to “find” enough votes to erase his defeat, was at the heart of Fulton County’s election racketeering case against Trump and his allies.

The case was dismissed late last year.

Nevertheless, Trump’s claims of fraud have become a key pillar in his party’s political identity: More than half of Republicans in Congress still objected to the certification of Trump’s defeat in the hours following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. A 2024 national poll from the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that roughly three in ten voters still had questions about the validity of Biden’s win three years prior, a glaring sign of just how mainstream that belief has become among the general public.

Six years later, Trump’s return to the White House hasn’t helped him move on. He continues to say in remarks and at campaign events that he carried the Peach State “three times.” His now-infamous Fulton County mugshot hangs right outside the Oval Office. And he warned of prosecutions against election officials during a speech in Davos this month.

“[Russia’s war with Ukraine] should have never started and it wouldn’t have started if the 2020 U.S. presidential election weren’t rigged. It was a rigged election,” Trump said. “Everybody now knows that. They found out. People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. That’s probably breaking news.”

It’s clear that the past is still very much shaping the present in Georgia Republican politics. This week’s federal raid on the Fulton elections center just adds more fuel to old grudge matches, and a politician’s role in the 2020 election could ultimately determine their political standing.

For candidates like Carr and Raffensperger, the primary could be a test of whether or not there is a political price to pay for defending Georgia’s election results against the barrage of attacks and conspiracy theories. And for Jones, it’s a test of whether election denialism is still an effective political attack for MAGA-aligned candidates to use.

Niles Francis recently graduated from Georgia Southern University with a degree in political science and journalism. He has spent the last few years observing and writing about the political maneuvering at Georgia’s state Capitol and regularly publishes updates in a Substack newsletter called Peach State Politics. He is currently studying to earn a graduate degree and is eager to cover another exciting political year in the battleground state where he was born and raised.

Defiant Georgia official vows to fight Trump admin in court: 'We will not give one inch'

A defiant Georgia official vowed to fight back against the Trump administration on Thursday after the FBI raided an elections center in Fulton County.

President Donald Trump has continued to claim that election fraud in Fulton County cost him the 2020 presidential election. Fulton County Chair Rob Pitts spoke during a press conference in Atlanta and pushed back on the unfounded claim.

"Fulton County elections are fair and lawful. And the outcome of the 2020 election will not change. Period," Pitts said. "Let me talk about voter protections. Now, we do not know where our election records have been taken or what will happen to them now that they are out of our control. While they were here, they were safe and they secure. Once they left Fulton County, our election center, I don't know where they are. I don't know who has them. I don't know what they're doing with them. We can no longer be held responsible for those ballots and other data that was seized yesterday. But what I'm hoping that we will stand together to ensure that no data is ever weaponized."

Pitts also talked about protections for poll workers and described how it was difficult to find people willing to be poll workers in elections based on the treatment of those workers in the 2020 elections.

"After the 2020 elections, Fulton County poll workers endured brutal and targeted harassment, and it is imperative that data from the 2020 election not be used to further harass our poll workers, who have already endured so much," Pitts added.

Pitts called out the Trump administration for its attacks on poll workers in the county — and even challenged the attacks on him.

"Fast forward this year, 2026 elections," he said. "This week's activities show that Fulton County is still much a target, and I'm told that I am personally a target. I'm a big boy now. While we've grown accustomed to name calling and rhetoric, we will not give one inch to those who seek to take control of our elections. Now, hear what I just said. We will not give one inch to those who seek to take control of elections in Fulton County. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever."

Trump's answer for 'inexplicable' presence at raid 'doesn't pass the laugh test': expert

The Trump administration Thursday gave an explanation over why Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was at the FBI raid at an election office in Georgia, but it is laughable, according to one expert.

The FBI Wednesday raided an elections center in Fulton County, Georgia. President Donald Trump has continued to insist that election fraud cost him the 2020 election, despite no clear evidence that this happened.

A Trump administration official, whose name was not released, Thursday released a statement to MS NOW about why Gabbard was involved in the raid.

"Director Gabbard has a pivotal role in election security and protecting the integrity of our elections against interference, including operations targeting voting systems, databases and election infrastructure. She has and will continue to take action on President Trump's directive to secure our elections and work with our interagency partners to do so," the Trump administration official said.

Former FBI special agent Michael Feinberg reacted to the Trump administration's statement and cast doubt on why Gabbard should have been at the location.

"It doesn't pass the laugh test for anybody who's actually worked in this world. And there's a couple reasons for that," Feinberg said.

"First of all, this was collection of evidence," Feinberg explained. "There is nothing there that cannot be reported to Tulsi Gabbard once they have processed it, analyzed it, and made and finished doing whatever they were doing on site. Again, it is unheard of for non-law enforcement personnel to take place in the execution of a search warrant. Secondly, this is a criminal investigation. It is looking at past conduct. Even if we believed that Tulsi Gabbard should be involved in law enforcement actions relating to the security of our elections, that is only something that she would be doing if there was something happening presently or in the future. It is inexplicable that there was why she was there. There is literally no legitimate reason that she should have been on site."

Here's the real story of the FBI raid on Fulton County, Atlanta

For god’s sake, let’s get to the REAL agenda behind Wednesday's FBI raid on the Fulton County elections office. IT’S NOT ABOUT THE 2020 ELECTION. The warrant says the FBI wants the envelopes from the 2020 election to hunt for crimes. But that’s just the legal excuse for the storm trooping.

This is NOT, as the media seems to think, about Trump’s attempt to prove he won the 2020 race, as if he’s some political Captain Ahab trying to chase the Moby Dick of 2020 revenge.

This is all about 2026 and 2028. Look at a map. Fulton County is the heart of “Blacklanta.” And Atlanta is the electoral heart of Georgia. And Georgia is the swingiest of swing states. If Republicans don’t cut down the Black vote in Atlanta, they lose the crucial seat now held by Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff. And in 2028, the GOP, if they don’t suppress the vote in Fulton, they lose the White House. Fulton was the fulcrum of Trump’s loss in 2020 and could spell doomsday for Republicans in 2028.

So, how exactly do you stop Fulton County Black folk (and the LGBTQ community and the hipsters who left rural Georgia because they hate their parents) from voting? The answer is: DROP-BOX.

Surveillance footage of a drop box in Atlanta, used in the film 2000 Mules as evidence of a "mule" whom filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza claimed was paid to stuff this and 26 other ballot boxes. According to D'Souza, this was "the smoking gun! O.J. Simpson ... leaving the scene of a crime!" But it doesn't show anything more than a Black man voting.

Follow me on this.

First, let me explain to my white readers a fact about African Americans: In the majority, they vote early, having suffered the cruel absurdity of six-hour lines on Election Day. (And remember, it’s a FELONY crime in Georgia to give an elderly voter standing in line, thirsty, a bottle of water). From long, sad experience, Black voters have learned to use early voting opportunities, especially mail-in ballots that can be placed in a drop-box.

For example, in the election run-off following the 2020 vote, which put two Georgia Democrats into the US Senate, over a million mail-in ballots (1,084,021) were cast, mainly in drop-boxes, mostly in Fulton/Atlanta.

Republicans took note. So, in a bill signed by GOP Governor Brian Kemp, the infamous SB202, the state declared all-out war on early voting, especially early votes placed in secure drop-boxes.

First, the state slashed the number of drop-boxes allowed in Atlanta and Savannah the two big cities with the urban Black population, by 77 percent.

Early voting days, when you can use the drop box, were cut from 60 to just seven. (!) And drop boxes — meant to serve voters who can only vote when they get off work at night — were sealed up at night in state office buildings.

The result, not reported by a single US outlet (except, God bless him, Thom Hartmann) was that the number of mail-in ballots cast dropped by 83 percent — 83 percent! — from over a million to 0.2 million (191,286) by the run-off of 2022.

Why? It goes back to what Donald Trump calls, correctly, one of the most influential documentaries of all time: 2000 Mules. The film, premiered by Trump at Mar-a-Lago, accused 2000 Black men of taking $10 from George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg and Stacey Abrams to stuff drop-boxes with tens of thousands of fraudulent ballots, especially in Fulton County. It was the perfect Sturm for the right, a stimulating concoction of racism and antisemitism.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

There wasn’t a bit of evidence, of course, but it looked convincing to MAGA-nauts. Every single drop-box in Georgia has a video camera over it to prevent fraud, and the videos are public. So, the Trump front called True the Vote, showed videos of Black men “stuffing” the drop boxes with extra ballots.

Except it wasn’t true. The “star” criminal was a Black man accused of “running from the scene of crime like OJ Simpson.” In fact, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which is Republican controlled, ran all over the state to arrest each Black alleged ballot stuffer (a felony crime) — but found that every one, EVERY ONE, was a legal voter. The man accused of thievery was Mark Andrews, who is a Verizon executive who legally dropped his family’s ballots in the drop box. But, as LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter says, “He was seen guilty of a crime because he was Black.” That, literally, was the only “evidence” of the crime.

Early voting, mail-in voting and casting an early vote in a drop were the keys to Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, key to a huge surge in minority and student votes nationwide.

And massive suppression of early, mail-in and drop-box votes were key to Trump’s triumphant return. (Did anyone note that, seen from the Oval, the demolition of the East Wing only leaves the Right Wing.)

Drop Box w GP in Mask.png

Reporter Greg Palast at Fulton County elections office drop-box in 2020. Photo by Zach D. Roberts for the Palast Investigative Fund. Used by Permission

Following the 2020 election, over 20 red states passed laws eliminating or restricting drop-boxes. And in every single case, legislators cited the bull---t “evidence” of 2000 Mules. Fact check: The state of Georgia recounted and reviewed every single Fulton County drop-box and mail in ballot and didn’t find one single forged ballot. Every vote had an identified, verified vote. Not ONE ballot.

White Democrats don’t seem to understand how important early drop-off votes mean to Black and student communities. But the Republicans understand it completely. In fact, GOP Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said that, had he not gone to court and stopped Houston from mailing out absentee ballots to all voter, “Donald Trump would have lost Texas.” Texas! (Note: Houston has the largest number of Black voters of any city in America.)

By seeking every envelope from drop-box and absentee voters, Attorney General Pam Bondi is saving her job by saving the GOP from the voters’ wrath. The game is to force a state (i.e. Republican) takeover of Fulton County voting (possible under SB202). And you can’t separate the invasion of Atlanta voting offices from the Purge’n General Blondi’s demand that Minnesota hand over its voter rolls.

The underlying purpose of Blondi’s seizure of Minnesota’s voter files is the restoration of two other racially poisonous vote suppression tricks. One is the return of the “Interstate Crosscheck” purge program and its sister, the purge of “aliens” from the rolls. Interstate Crosscheck cost nearly one million voters their registrations in 2016, key to Trump’s first election. Crosscheck was ruled illegal through a grassroots campaign led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sen. Bernie Sanders and litigation brought by PUSH, the NAACP and the ACLU based, I’m proud to say, on the evidence presented to the courts by the Palast Investigative Fund. But. now, Crosscheck is BAAAACK! Want to know about Crosscheck. Read my investigation for Rolling Stone.

And there’s the canard of allegedly MILLIONS of alien voters swimming the Rio Grande just to vote for Democrats. When Florida used the ICE lists to purge 187,000 (!) voters from the rolls, mostly Hispanics, it turns out only ONE was an illegal alien: A Republican from Austria.

But that’s a story for another day — and for our film, Vigilantes Inc. Grab some popcorn and save America.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Investigative reporter Greg Palast is the author of several bestsellers including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. His latest film is Vigilantes Inc, America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen, produced by Martin Sheen and narrated by Rosario Dawson. Sign up for more reports at https://gregpalastinvestigates.substack.com/

This Trump nightmare becomes more realistic with each passing day

I have a recurring nightmare, a nightmare that becomes more realistic with each passing day. It goes like this:

It is November 2026. Here in Georgia and elsewhere, the midterm polls have been looking bad for Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans, but the ballots have finally been cast and are being counted. Tensions are high.

That’s when President Trump sends the National Guard or ICE agents to Fulton County, DeKalb County and other blue-trending areas, claiming massive fraud, seizing voting machines and voiding the election.

If it sounds too crazy to be plausible, I’d like to think so too.

But let me ask:

Is that scenario more crazy than what happened five years ago, when Trump summoned thousands of supporters to charge the Capitol, also in an effort to overturn an election? Is it more crazy than trying to seize Greenland by force? Is it more crazy than what is happening in Minnesota? Are we moving away from chaos, or hurtling at it?

And it’s clearly on Trump’s mind as well.

Last month, in a meeting with House Republicans, he expressed disbelief that Democrats might triumph in the midterms, suggesting it’s only because of fraud.

“How do we have to even run against these people?” he said. “I won’t say ‘cancel the election, they should cancel the election,’ because the fake news would say, ‘He wants the elections canceled. He’s a dictator.’ They always call me a dictator.”

And in a recent interview with the New York Times, Trump was reminded that in 2020 he had explored using the National Guard to seize ballot boxes in states where he had alleged fraud.

“Well, I should have,” Trump said.

Trump went on to tell the Times that he balked at using the National Guard in 2020 not because he lacked the authority, but because he didn’t think the Guard was “sophisticated enough” to pull it off. He had already tried to pressure the Department of Justice to seize state voting machines, but Attorney General William Barr had refused. Through Rudy Giuliani, Trump then reached out to the Department of Homeland Security to seize machines, but DHS officials also told him that they had no authority to do so.

Somehow, I think Trump’s request would get a very different response this time from the likes of Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem.

Indeed, when asked by Times reporters whether he would consider such a step in 2026, Trump changed the subject.

In those previous requests to seize election equipment, Trump had reportedly focused his attention on a specific but unknown state, a state “that had used machines built by Dominion Voting Systems, where his lawyers believed there had been fraud.”

Georgia uses Dominion voting machines. Dominion was acquired by Missouri-based Liberty Vote in 2025.

In recent social media posts, Trump has continued to rail against voting machines, voting by mail, counting votes beyond midnight of Election Day and the use of QR codes, all of which are standard features of Georgia elections. He has even issued executive orders that claim to abolish such standard features of election operation. In his mind, apparently, that makes it illegal.

According to the Constitution, of course, states are empowered to run their own elections, but the Constitution as it is written on paper is often not the Constitution as recognized by Trump.

“Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,” Trump wrote recently on his social media platform. “They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”

And what does the president of the United States tell them, “for the good of our country?”

He tells them:

“THE MAIL-IN BALLOT HOAX, USING VOTING MACHINES THAT ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER, MUST END, NOW!!! REMEMBER, WITHOUT FAIR AND HONEST ELECTIONS, AND STRONG AND POWERFUL BORDERS, YOU DON’T HAVE EVEN A SEMBLANCE OF A COUNTRY. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!!!”

So no, while I do not think it likely, I also do not believe it unthinkable that Trump might claim fraud and dispatch heavily armed, armored, masked federal agents to interrupt vote-counting here in Georgia, and in other swing states as well. Unthinkable things are happening every day.

Jay Bookman covered Georgia and national politics for nearly 30 years for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, earning numerous national, regional and state journalism awards. He has been awarded the National Headliner Award and the Walker Stone Award for outstanding editorial writing, and is the only two-time winner of the Pulliam Fellowship granted by the Society of Professional Journalists. He is also the author of "Caught in the Current," published by St. Martin's Press.
Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

It's not hard to see why this MAGA firebrand turned against Trump

Writing in the “Never Trump” outlet The Bulwark, columnist Jonathan V. Last says the transformation of Georgia’s own Marjorie Taylor Greene represents “the best hope for liberalism in America.”

That’s probably not something you ever thought you would read.

By “liberalism,” Last makes clear, “we do not mean Democratic policy preferences. I do not expect MTG to change her views on the Second Amendment, climate change, abortion, the costs/benefits of immigration, the role of America in geopolitics, or any other issue.”

While those issues are all important, they are disagreements that we can and should resolve through the democratic process, just as we have done for more than two centuries. By “liberalism,” Last means something more fundamental. He means a renewed commitment to that democratic process of dispute resolution, and with it a rejection of authoritarian government that defies our Constitution and national legacy.

Last is hardly alone in the national media in his embrace of Greene’s transformation as a deep-winter sign of a coming political spring. Writing in a lengthy profile in the New York Times, reporter Robert Draper tells us that Greene’s disenchantment has grown so deep that she no longer watches Fox News, “because she found it factually unreliable.” Draper proposes that in her newest incarnation, Greene “may yet again prove to be a harbinger of a sea change in the movement she once helped lead.”

Then there’s George Conway, the former high-level GOP attorney, former husband of Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, and a man now running for Congress as a Democrat.

Greene “is no angel, but this isn’t an act,” Conway writes in a social media post. “It isn’t some ploy for power.”

As Conway sees it, “The heavy burden of cognitive dissonance and denial” required to remain a Trump supporter “finally became unbearable for her. And she’s done with it. To the point that she’s just letting it all out, consequences be damned. She’s liberated, and there’s no better feeling.”

Me, I’m still not buying any of it.

Call me cynical — after a decade of watching Trump, I certainly qualify — but if Trump had agreed last spring to support Greene’s Senate candidacy against Jon Ossoff, she would still be Trump’s loyal follower today. She left the cult and resigned her House seat not out of some sudden road-to-Damascus conversion, and not because of some realization about Trump’s character, but because she understood that he would not be the pathway to her ambitions. It was a decision made largely out of self-interest.

On a human level, I can accept that’s not how Greene experiences it or explains it to others. Like all of us, she wants to think the best of herself, and if that means explaining her dramatic breach with Trump in terms of finally seeing the light, or coming back into line with her Christian beliefs, I’m OK with that. Good for her.

However, that’s not how the phenomenon is going to play out in the future. I say that because by this point, most of those who might abandon Trump based on principle or patriotism have already done so, often at considerable professional and personal loss.

Brad Raffensperger, for example, is never going to be governor of Georgia. Liz Cheney is never going to be speaker of the House. Mike Pence is never going to be president. They sacrificed those ambitions to preserve the republic as well as their own integrity, and we should always be grateful that they did so. I disagree with them on almost every political issue, but I also admire them. They are heroes, and what they did should not be confused with what Greene is doing.

If Trump’s support continues to erode, it will be because more and more people begin to understand what Greene understands, that it’s no longer in their own personal interest to stick with him. They will abandon him because they realize that Trump cannot give them what they want or need, because in many cases he never had any intention of doing so.

That won’t be true of some people. Certainly, those who want cruelty to immigrants, white Christian nationalism and a government that squelches dissent will continue to be made happy by Trump. Those who have achieved positions of power through abject loyalty to Trump that they could never have earned by their own merit will continue to support him because they have no alternative. In poker terms, they are pot-committed.

But for others, it may be dawning on them that Trump is not going to lead a revolution against the elite. He is not going to defend the interests of the little guy against the billionaire class any more than he is going to release the Epstein files or defend Ukraine against Vladimir Putin, because he always sees the world through the eyes of the predator not the prey.

And if Marjorie Taylor Greene can eventually see that, maybe others can as well.

Jay Bookman covered Georgia and national politics for nearly 30 years for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, earning numerous national, regional and state journalism awards. He has been awarded the National Headliner Award and the Walker Stone Award for outstanding editorial writing, and is the only two-time winner of the Pulliam Fellowship granted by the Society of Professional Journalists. He is also the author of "Caught in the Current," published by St. Martin's Press.
Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

New audio emerges of Trump directing Republicans on how to overturn election results

Audio clips obtained by the New York Times show President Donald Trump giving explicit instructions to Republicans in Georgia on how to flip the result of the 2020 election, in which Trump lost Georgia to then-President-elect Joe Biden.

On Wednesday, the Times reported it had obtained the clips as part of a collection of documents pertaining to the recently dismissed Fulton County, Georgia criminal case against Trump and more than a dozen of his advisors and associates. In one 12- minute phone call, Trump is heard talking to the late former Georgia House Speaker David Ralston (R) — who died in 2023 — about calling a special legislative session to address supposed "fraud" in the 2020 election.

"Who’s gonna stop you for that?" Trump is heard saying.

"A federal judge, possibly," Ralston replied with a laugh.

Later in the call, Trump is heard giving direction on how Ralston would conduct the special session, and baselessly alleged that he had won Georgia by hundreds of thousands of votes (he in fact lost by roughly 12,000 votes statewide). Trump repeated debunked conspiracy theories about ballot boxes being stuffed at Atlanta's State Farm arena, as former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani frequently argued.

"If we had a special session, we will present, and you will say, ‘Here, it’s been massive fraud. We’re going to turn over the state,'" Trump said.

Ralston never committed to holding the special session, though the call was used as evidence in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) prosecution of Trump and his associates. Willis alleged that Trump illegally solicited Ralston to violate his oath of office by calling a special session "for the purpose of unlawfully appointing presidential electors from the State of Georgia." Judge Scott McAfee ultimately quashed those initial charges, saying Willis was not specific enough in naming what specific statutes had been violated.

"I march to my own drummer, and my own drummer says I want Donald Trump to remain the president," Ralston said on the call.

Click here to read the Times' full report (subscription required).