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Trumpers are *still* scheming to overturn the 2020 election
In Georgia, the Big Lie has become the new Lost Cause.
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In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has once again become focused on elections. Not next year’s midterms, necessarily. Instead, he’s begun touting new “evidence” of fraud in the 2020 election.
“It was a rigged election,” Trump said on December 9. “It’s gonna come out over the next couple months too, loud and clear. Because we have all the information.”
On December 14, Trump again mentioned the supposedly forthcoming evidence.
“The election was rigged in 2020 — we have all the information, all the stuff and you’ll see it coming out,” Trump said. “It’s coming out in truckloads.”
Where will these “truckloads” of evidence come from? In one word: Georgia.
Trump has never strayed far from his lies about the 2020 election, mentioning them frequently over the years. But his recent statements — combined with developments in Georgia over the last several months — allude to something more concrete than his usual meandering rants.
Election deniers in Georgia and their allies at the Justice Department believe that ballots and other documents from the 2020 election, currently held in a Fulton County warehouse and the subject of several ongoing lawsuits, contain proof of a sprawling conspiracy of a stolen election. Earlier this month, the Justice Department sued to gain access to the materials, which would ostensibly have to be delivered to Washington DC for inspection by the truckload.
Fulton County — home to Atlanta and the state’s largest Black and Democratic voting bloc — has long been the focus of election deniers in Georgia and elsewhere, and became the focal point of Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election here when he asked Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the 11,781 votes Trump needed to win the Peach State.
Having lost dozens of court cases in other states in his attempt to overturn the election, Georgia is all that Trump has left in his desperate attempt to prove the impossible.
But Trump’s comments and accompanying lawsuits aren’t simply about proving non-existent fraud in 2020; they’re part of an actual sprawling plan to sow doubt in future elections — specifically, any important elections that Republicans lose.
Currently lying at the epicenter of these efforts is Fulton County, the most important county in Georgia, which will once again play a key role in deciding the balance of power in Washington as Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff runs for reelection.
Trump’s “truckloads” of evidence could help scare the Republican base here into showing up in large numbers next year. More to the point, comments from Trump and efforts like DOJ lawsuits will amplify the unending election fraud claims that Republicans use to try to destroy American democracy from within.
What’s old is new again
Why does it matter that Trump and election denial allies continue to chase the ghosts of 2020? Because finding the smoking gun of the “rigged election” will allow them to claim that places like Fulton County — largely Democratic and largely Black — are hotbeds of election crime.
Harmeet Dhillon, Trump’s head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which has jurisdiction over election law and voting rights cases, touted the Fulton County lawsuit in an interview earlier this month with far-right personality Benny Johnson.
“Georgia this week told me to go pound sand, and is not gonna give me their voter data,” Dhillon said. “So we will sue Georgia to get that information.”
Calling election results into question may be a necessary strategy next year if Trump’s approval ratings continue their downward trajectory, the economy continues to slow, and congressional Republicans continue to fail to pass meaningful legislation that will help their working class base.
“Swing states are the big problem,” Dhillon said during her interview with Johnson.
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