After Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s announcement that a ballot signature correspondence audit found no evidence of absentee voter fraud in Cobb County, Georgia, Trump tweeted a conspiracy theory linking Raffensperger to the Chinese government.
Trump
tweeted that Raffensperger has a brother who “works for China”, hinting at some nefarious pro-China conspiracy for Trump to miss the race in Georgia.
“Now we find out that Brad R’s brother works for China and they definitely don’t want ‘Trump’. So disgusting!” the president tweeted after attacking Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp.
Facts first: This is fake. A spokesman for Raffensperger told CNN that the st secretaryhe doesn’t even have siblings who work for China, as Trump claimed baselessly.
“There are no relatives who work for China or are affiliated with China,” said Georgia’s deputy secretary of state, Jordan Fuchs.
While it is unclear exactly where Trump is getting the idea that Raffensperger’s brother works for China, it is possible that he is picking up on a false conspiracy theory spread by former political consultant Dick Morris, who made the claim during an interview on Newsmax Tuesday night and on the personal website.
In the interview, Morris raised several false or misleading charges against Raffensberger, including that Raffensperger is a relative of Ron Raffensperger, the chief technology officer at Chinese company Huawei Enterprise Storage Solutions. Fuchs said the secretary of state does not have a brother named Ron.
Georgia Public Broadcasting reported on Wednesday “public documents and records [show] that Raffensperger has four brothers, including one brother, but none of them are named Ron, none work for Chinese technology companies. “
Morris also falsely accused Raffensperger of preventing recounts and of refusing to verify signatures. Georgia conducted an audit across the state, manually counting about 5 million ballots, and Raffensperger oversaw an additional recount. And in addition to the state’s signature verification process that occurs twice in the case of absentee ballots requested by mail, Raffensberger announced that his office would help conduct a signature correspondence audit across the state to further verify signatures on absentee ballots.
In a statement, Newsmax told CNN:
“Newsmax never made any allegation of impropriety by Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger or any member of his family. On Tuesday night, while commenting on the network, commentator Dick Morris said he was reporting on Dickmorris.com a claim of that Raffensperger had a brother who worked at a Chinese company. This statement was apparently inaccurate. During the segment, the Newsmax presenter was highly skeptical of Mr. Morris’ statements and suggested that there was no evidence behind Mr. Morris, and specifically asked Mr. Morris to provide evidence of his claim. “
CNN tried to contact Morris for comment, but has not yet received a response.
CNN’s Jason Morris contributed to this article.
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