Newly released emails from former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler reveal the immense pressure campaign in Georgia after the 2020 elections to help Donald Trump reverse his loss here.
Some went to battle for Trump. Others did not. And a year later, many of Donald Trump’s hand-picked candidates who had promised to do better the next time, were defeated in Georgia’s GOP primaries.
From former U.S. Sen. David Perdue running for governor to U.S. Rep. Jody Hice for secretary of state, to candidates for attorney general, U.S. House, and even insurance commissioner, the common denominator was their vocal, but wrong, insistence that the 2020 election had been stolen from Donald Trump.
Many are on the ballot again in November.
With Trump’s efforts to overturn the election still under grand jury investigation and the general election weeks away, it’s crucial to know what this year’s candidates said in the heat of Trump’s dishonest “Stop the Steal” efforts, and what they’re saying now. It’s not always the same thing.
The loudest and proudest Georgian pushing Trump’s election conspiracies was U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who remains one of Trump’s closest allies to this day.
As recently as 10 days ago, Greene was still insisting at a Trump rally in Arizona that Trump won the 2020 election.
After striding on stage to “Gladiator,” Greene called President Joe Biden “a loser” and Trump the greatest president this country has ever had.
“We elected him in 2016 and we reelected him in 2020, didn’t we?” she asked to the roar of the crowd. “I don’t care what they say.”
But asked by her Democratic opponent, Marcus Flowers, in their debate this week if Joe Biden won the election, Greene smiled and said, “Joe Biden is the president of the United States, Marcus.”
When he accused her of pushing the “Big Lie,” she insisted to Flowers that there was election fraud in 2020, “and my husband has the proof of it.”
She is expected to easily be reelected to her in her conservative 14th Congressional District seat in November and Greene will return to a likely GOP majority with committee assignments waiting for her. She’s asked for slots on the House Oversight Committee and the House Judiciary Committee, which both oversee elections.
Also on the November ballot, of course, is longtime Trump friend, Herschel Walker, the ascendant Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.
In his debate against U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock last week, Walker was asked if Joe Biden won the 2020 election. “President Biden won and Senator Warnock won, and that’s the reason I decided to run,” he said.
But that’s not what he was saying in the aftermath of the 2020 elections, including on Jan. 6.
On the day after the 2020 election, with Trump trailing in the tally, Walker tweeted, “Play by the rules.....the American people demand ONLY LEGAL BALLOTS be counted. Anyone manipulating this election should be prosecuted.”
Two days later, with more votes coming in for Biden, he wrote, “To be the man, you gotta beat the man, not CHEAT the man.” He then suggested that seven states, including Georgia, have a do-over. “We can have it done within a week, and maintain our democracy.”
By mid-November, he suggested jailing Dominion executives, and on Dec. 17, he called on Republican members of Congress to support Trump. “WHERE ARE YOU NOW? #stopthesteal” he wrote.
Later that month, he also called for jail time for anyone in state legislatures who “turned a blind eye” to fraud and certified votes for Joe Biden. After watching the Georgia Senate hearings with Rudy Giuliani, Walker wrote, “There is no doubt there is serious Election Fraud!”
By Jan. 6, as rioters filed out of the ransacked U.S. Capitol, Walker called the Trump supporters there, “Trojan horses…as they do not look like MAGA!”
And he suggested the attack was a Democratic effort to distract from “election fraud and election integrity.”
Herschel Walker isn’t the only Trump candidate who raised doubts about the election to win his GOP primary. Burt Jones, the wealthy state senator whom Trump endorsed last year, is also on the November ballot.
Jones was one of 16 fake electors for Trump who cast an “electoral vote” for Trump in December 2020, even though the president lost Georgia. Jones also traveled to Washington on Jan. 5 carrying a letter to Vice President Mike Pence, urging Pence to delay certifying the election for Biden the next day.
Jones said later that he never gave the letter to Pence, and told a debate audience last week that Democrats in Hawaii cast a similar slate of alternate electors in 1960 for President John Kennedy, so there’s nothing unusual about it.
But he told a Perry rally for Donald Trump last year, “I’m here today because Donald Trump knew who was fighting for him in the 2020 election,” before promising to get rid of all drop boxes in Georgia, along with the state’s new Dominion voting machines, if he’s elected in November.
Other Georgians worked directly to block Joe Biden’s certification as president on Jan. 6. Six members of Georgia’s congressional delegation voted to challenge Georgia’s election results – U.S. Reps. Hice, Rick Allen, Buddy Carter, Andrew Clyde, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Barry Loudermilk. All except Hice, who lost in May, are running for election again.
A federal judge ruled Wednesday that in the weeks and months after the 2020 election, Trump knew his allegations of fraud in Georgia were wrong, but he continued to make them anyway. In plain English, that’s called a lie.
And it was a part of an effort to stall the Jan. 6 certification of Joe Biden for president, perhaps indefinitely.
Had Trump and his lawyers been working alone, his attempts to overturn the 2020 election would never have gotten farther than the courthouse steps. But Trump’s influence was exponentially expanded by an army of supporters, including elected officials in Georgia, who amplified his false claims and gave them the veneer of legitimacy.
Some held state Senate “hearings.” Others lent their good reputations and large followings on social media. Others stood on the floor of the U.S. House to block the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to Biden, even after the American people made their choice for Biden clear.
And it has to be said that in 2018, Stacey Abrams refused to concede her election, too. Abrams never tried to overturn the election results, as Trump did, possibly even outside the bounds of the law. Instead, she’s running again and maintaining the voter suppression in Georgia continues.
Many of the Georgians who worked so hard to help overturn the last election are singing a different tune with the general election around the corner. But Georgia voters should know the truth.
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