In a Trump campaign ad that ran on Fox News, a narration states that research workers in Georgia removed bales of ballots from overwhelmingly Democratic venues after election observers returned home. The ad features images of election night election officials in Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold that includes Atlanta.
The ad further states that neighboring “DeKalb County cannot find the chain of custody documents”, citing an article in Georgia Star News, a digital newspaper, published on December 5.
After both allegations, the ad asks supporters to send a FRAUD message to a Team Trump phone number and demand that their lawmakers “listen to the evidence”
Facts first: These claims are misleading, at best.
Although the election boxes were removed from under a table at a vote-counting site in Fulton County at a time when observers were no longer present, after reviewing the footage, state and county officials determined that the events in the video they were part of the normal process, not fraud. This theory was also included as an example of fraud in a petition filed by the Texas Attorney General that the United States Supreme Court refused to consider.
When asked about the allegations in the announcement, DeKalb County provided CNN with the chain of custody documents in question. A communications consultant hired by DeKalb County told CNN that the ad’s claim “lacks merit” because it “produced the same in response to requests for open registrations”, including from Georgia Star. The Georgia Star article cited in the ad suggested that the county was unable to find the documents because, in response to the Open Records Request, they were told that “it has not yet been determined whether there are records responsive to their request”.
However, at the time, county officials preemptively explained that any delay in finding and providing responsive records was due to the fact that remote working conditions and the workload of the Voting, Registration and Election Department impacted their response time.