Gabriel Sterling, manager of implementation of the voting system in the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, speaks at a press conference at the State Capitol in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 4, 2021.
Mike Segar | Reuters
President Donald Trump made a series of “proven false” statements during his controversial phone call to pressure Georgia’s Secretary of State to reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, a senior election official said on Monday.
Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system implementation manager, refuted Trump’s claims point-to-point at a news conference, which came two days after Trump leaned on Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during an unprecedented hour-long phone call to “find” the president enough votes to beat Biden.
During the conference call, recorded by officials from Raffensperger’s office, Trump made a series of allegations about alleged irregularities in Georgia’s presidential election that, he said, led to Biden’s unfair victory.
The president and his allies elsewhere have made similar allegations related to criminals, underage teenagers and the dead allegedly voting.
“The reason I’m having to be here today is because there are people in positions of authority and respect who said their votes didn’t count, and that’s not true,” said Sterling.
“And I’m going to do it again, and I’m going to go through all this, ‘anti-misinformation Monday.’ “
Next to a chart called “Claim vs. Fact”, with two lines of each below those words, Sterling said, “All of this is easily, probably false.”
“Still, the president persists and, in doing so, undermines the faith of Georgians in the electoral system, especially the Georgian Republicans in this case,” he said.
Sterling also said that Trump’s campaign lawyers “intentionally deceived” the public with allegations that a videotape showed fraudulent votes being given to Biden during a vote count.
Sterling suggested that Trump’s allegations could hurt the chances of Republican candidates David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in their runoff elections on Tuesday for Georgia’s seats in the U.S. Senate, where they face tough challenges from Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock , respectively.
There are concerns among Republican Party leaders that Trump’s allegations of widespread electoral fraud in Georgia and Perdue and Loeffler’s support for the president’s rhetoric could hamper voter turnout for Republican voters.
Sterling asked voters to go to the polls at Tuesday’s races, even if they were concerned about electoral integrity.
“I am not recognizing that there was a major electoral fraud, because there was not. But if you believe in your heart that there was, the best thing to do is to vote and make it harder to steal,” he said.
Sterling looked exasperated when he quickly went through the claims made by Trump and his allies.
“I admit, when I heard the audio from [Trump’s] phone call … I wanted to scream, well, I screamed on the computer, and I screamed in my car, on the radio, talking about it, because it was unmasked, “said Sterling.
Referring to the graph nearby, and to Trump’s allegations, Sterling said, “Nobody is exchanging pieces or pieces from the Dominion ballot boxes.”
“I mean, this – I don’t even know what it means. This is not a real thing,” added Sterling.
“There is no shredding of the banknotes. This is not real.”
Trump’s call to Raffensperger led to speculation that the president could be prosecuted for trying to influence a state official to change the results of an election.
Asked whether the secretary of state, who did not appear at the news conference, was considering whether to ask the Georgia attorney general or a local district attorney to investigate Trump for the call, Sterling said, “I don’t know that.”
“I’m going to let other people make the decision about it,” said Sterling, when asked if the call was an attack on democracy. “I personally thought it was something that was not normal, out of place, and no one I know who would be president would do something like that to a secretary of state.”
“Trump probably had eight to 10 points [during the call], all of their numbers were wrong, “said Raffensperger later on Monday, during a controversial interview with Fox News.” Our numbers will be confirmed in a court of law. Your numbers will not be. “
Congress is due to meet on Wednesday to certify Biden’s victory at the Electoral College. An effort planned by several Republican senators and members of the House to challenge the results of several battlefield states won by Biden must fail.