Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who supported Donald Trump in the 2020 election cycle, is continuing his public opposition to Trump’s false claims of election fraud. Recently, Trump sent Raffensperger a letter asking the top Georgia official to examine de-certifying the 2020 presidential election outcome in his state due to a particular instance of supposed election fraud, and Raffensperger, while acknowledging that an investigation into that particular matter was apparently ongoing, shut down Trump’s arguments. On MSNBC this week, Raffensperger re-iterated how there has already been a comprehensive examination of Georgia’s presidential election results, with no systematic fraud uncovered.
Trump’s new allegation involves a supposed violation of the chain of custody rules for a certain trove of mail-in ballots. Raffensperger commented as follows:
‘We’ve had multiple investigations. In fact, prior to his letter, we already had begun an investigation into this, and we will finish that up and then send our findings over to the state election board. But at the end of the day, we’ve been rebutting and fighting all this misinformation, disinformation for over ten months now, and it’s not healthy for American democracy. What we’ve seen is people [who] lose an election, as low as the PTA level all the way up to the president, not accepting the will of the people. And that’s not healthy for America. I’m a lifelong conservative. I’m a Reagan Republican, and I know that at the end of the day, I have to always choose the country over the party. My job as a Constitutional officer is to make sure we have honest and fair elections in the state of Georgia.’
Raffensperger also referenced a couple of other conspiracy theories about the presidential election in Georgia, explaining the following:
‘Every time that an allegation was made, we ran that down. We wanted to make sure: did we miss anything? And at the end of the day, the results were what they were, that President Trump did not carry the state of Georgia.’
Asked about the potential dangers of people in power continuing to push lies about election integrity, Raffensperger — who is facing a Trump-backed challenge in the Republican primary race for his position — commented as follows:
‘It really de-stabilizes our American democracy at the end of the day. We have to really have people that are going to stand in the line [and] have the moral courage to just say: this is how the results came out, and not waver — not look left, not look right, but look straight down the line, and have that personal integrity.’
Check out Raffensperger’s Tuesday appearance on MSNBC below:
