ATLANTA – President Donald Trump argued Saturday night why he should be declared the winner of last month’s presidential election while urging his Georgia supporters to re-elect the state’s two Republican senators in next month’s runoffs.
In Valdosta for his first public rally since losing to President-elect Joe Biden, Trump repeated the allegations of voter fraud he has leveled since President-elect Joe Biden was certified the winner four days after the Nov. 3 election.
“This election was rigged,” Trump said. “They found a lot of ballots and they got rid of some, too.”
Trump’s charges that Democrats cheated in Georgia – which Biden carried by a razor-thin margin – have stirred fears among Republican leaders that some GOP loyalists might stay home on Jan. 5 rather than support Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
But Trump said the stakes in the runoff are too high for Georgia Republicans to ignore. Victories by Perdue and Loeffler would keep the Senate in Republican hands, while victories by Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock would turn over the chamber to the Democrats.
“You will decide whether your children will grow up in a socialist country or a free country,” the president said.
Trump went on to paint a dire picture of what would happen if Democrats are allowed to control the White House and both houses of Congress.
America would become a land of open borders for illegal immigration where armed gangs roam free and law-abiding firearms have lost their Second Amendment right to bear arms, he said.
Trump gave Loeffler and Perdue strong endorsements. He said he didn’t know Loeffler before the Atlanta businesswoman was appointed to the Senate late last year to succeed retiring Sen. Johnny Isakson, but has come to admire her.
“There is nobody who fought harder for me,” Trump said.
Perdue, a longtime CEO, was elected to the Senate in 2014 and has been a key Trump ally.
“David’s been my friend for a long time,” the president said. “Nobody in Washington is more respected.”
Trump also reiterated his criticism of Gov. Brian Kemp for not backing his efforts to stop Democrats from stealing the election.
The president called Kemp earlier Saturday and reportedly asked the governor to call a special session of the General Assembly to address his concerns about how the election played out in Georgia. The president also asked for an audit of absentee ballot signatures.
“Your governor could stop it very easily if he knew what the hell he was doing,” Trump said during the Valdosta rally.
While Kemp has asked the secretary of state’s office for an audit, he pointed out the governor does not have the legal authority to interfere in an election.
Loeffler and Perdue briefly joined Trump on the podium Saturday night.
“We want you to vote on Jan. 5,” Loeffler told the crowd. “If you’re our voice on Jan. 5, we’ll be your voice for years.”
“We’re going to fight and win those two [Senate] seats and make sure you get a fair and square deal in the state of Georgia,” Perdue added, addressing the president[DW1] .
Their Democratic opponents, Ossoff and Warnock, pointed in a news release Saturday following a joint rally in Conyers that Trump’s refusal to concede the election to Biden has touched off a damaging divide within Georgia’s Republican Party.
On the other hand, the Democrats are focused on issues that matter to Georgians, Ossoff and Warnock said in the release.
“He and I are going to fight the good fight on behalf of health, jobs, and justice in the great state of Georgia and in the United States,” Warnock said.
Former President Barack Obama urges Georgians to vote blue in the U.S. Senate runoff elections at a virtual rally on Dec. 4, 2020. (Democratic Party of Georgia video)
Former President Barack Obama rallied online Friday to turn out the vote for Georgia’s two Democratic U.S. Senate candidates in the Jan. 5 runoff elections.
At the same time, Vice President Mike Pence stopped in Savannah to galvanize support for the state’s Republican senators amid divisive doubt among conservatives over the presidential election and lingering fraud claims.
Friday’s virtual rally was the first Georgia stop for Obama since the state swung its votes to President-elect Joe Biden, who is poised to be the first Democratic candidate to win Georgia since 1992. A second recount completed on Friday showed Biden carried the state over President Donald Trump by 11,773 votes.
The former president highlighted Georgia’s importance for the upcoming Biden administration’s effectiveness, as victories for both Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock would give Democrats control of Congress and the White House.
“The problem with doing such a good job is folks come back and ask you to do so more,” Obama said.
“You are once again the center of our civic universe because the [runoff] election in Georgia is going to determine, ultimately, the course of the Biden presidency and whether Joe Biden and [Vice President-elect] Kamala Harris can deliver legislatively all the commitments they’ve made.”
Pence made similar pleas to batten down the GOP hatches in Savannah, where he rallied conservatives to resist growing calls to skip out on voting for Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler as fraud claims stemming from the Nov. 3 election continue sowing distrust.
The vice president’s visit came days after a Trump-allied attorney suing to overturn Georgia’s election results urged hundreds of conservatives in metro Atlanta to boycott the runoffs unless state election officials order an audit of absentee-ballot signatures, which they are unlikely to do.
“I know we’ve all got our doubts about the last election,” Pence said Friday. “And I actually hear some people say, ‘Just don’t vote.’”
“My fellow Americans, if you don’t vote, they win. … For all we’ve done, for all we have yet to do, for our president and our future, for Georgia and America, cast another vote for all that President Trump has accomplished.”
Trump is scheduled to hold a rally Saturday in Valdosta where he is expected to amplify claims of Georgia election fraud that his personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, aired Thursday before a panel of mostly Republican state lawmakers.
Many Georgia Republicans are hoping to cut through the fraud noise by positioning Perdue and Loeffler as the last bulwark against a Democrat-dominated Washington, D.C. Their strategy has been to paint Ossoff and Warnock as too far left on the political spectrum for the state’s large conservative voting bloc.
“What they’re talking about is so far left that we may never get it back again if we lose this race right now,” Perdue said at Friday’s rally in Savannah. “We’re going to win Georgia and we’re going to save America, right?”
Democratic leaders are banking on momentum from flipping Georgia in the presidential election to carry voters back to the polls next month for the January runoffs. They have homed in on controversial stock trades by Perdue and Loeffler as evidence the wealthy senators are out of touch with average Georgians.
“We’re running against like the Bonnie and Clyde of political corruption in America who represent politicians who put themselves over people,” Ossoff said Friday. “Let’s make history and win these races and write the next chapter in American history together.”
Early voting for the Senate runoff elections starts Dec. 14. The deadline for Georgia voters to register for the runoffs is Dec. 7.
ATLANTA – A group of Georgia House Democrats called on state Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler Friday to open a call center to help process unemployment claims.
Members of the House Democratic Caucus Subcommittee on COVID-19 said they have received complaints from jobless Georgians of long wait times to receive benefits or resolve appeals.
“The holidays are upon us,” said Rep. Sandra Scott, D-Rex. “We need for our constituents and the citizens of Georgia to receive their unemployment benefits.”
Reacting to the surge of Georgians thrown out of work during the coronavirus pandemic, the labor department launched a pilot project last month allowing claimants to schedule an online appointment with an agency representative to ask questions about their claim.
But Scott said the two-hour window the program sets aside for representatives to call claimants to schedule an appointment is inadequate.
“This is not a call center. It’s an appointment scheduler,” she said. “Open up a real call center.”
Butler said the labor department is working on opening a call center soon in Dalton, with two more expected to follow during the first quarter of next year.
Members of the subcommittee said they also are getting complaints from constituents who have not received unemployment benefits despite getting a notice that their claim is valid.
In other cases, payments are made for one to three weeks and suddenly stop without notice or explanation.
Some whose claims are denied are waiting three to four months for a hearing,
“The lack of communications from the Georgia Department of Labor is unacceptable,” Scott said. “[The agency] must find a way to help people get paid.”
The subcommittee is also asking Butler to hire and train additional staff to investigate and resolve claims and issue a report evaluating the timeliness of benefits payments.
Butler said the agency is adding 20 appeals hearing officers, 15 claims examiners, and 10 additional fraud investigators. Another 50 were added last month to assist with fact finding for eligibility reviews, he said.
Also, the department is working with Georgia State University to offer students part-time positions helping to process appeals, the commissioner said.
From mid-March through the end of last week, the labor department paid out more than $16 billion in unemployment benefits to almost 4.1 million Georgia claimants, more than the last nine years combined.
Cathy Driggers (center, in blue) works with volunteers and Georgia National Guard members to distribute food in June outside the Rincon Library in Rincon, Ga. (Photo from by Cathy Driggers)
It was a special day when donors dropped off string cheese at the Rincon Library outside Savannah. Luxury items like that weren’t always on the menu at the COVID-19 pandemic’s peak this past summer, when the library-turned-food bank was often serving 90 meals a day to Rincon’s neediest children.
“They were super excited,” said Cathy Driggers, the library’s branch manager. “It was just a little treat that they normally didn’t get.”
Food banks in Georgia have seen demand soar since the start of the pandemic in March, when the virus shuttered schools and work shutdowns drove people to joblessness. Among the state’s most vulnerable to going hungry are children from poor families who rely on free meals from school for their daily diet.
Even as in-person classes resume, many schools are still leaning on food deliveries and help from community groups like local food banks to keep kids fed – especially as coronavirus outbreaks in Georgia begin flaring up again this winter.
“We have done an amazing job of feeding kids, but knowing that we’re not getting to everybody is disheartening,” said Beth Moore, communications manager for the Clarke County School District. “We can only do what we can do, and we’re doing that to the best of our ability.”
The amount of food being served to the more-than 1 million Georgia school children eligible for federally funded free meals has declined 40% to 45% since March, said Linette Dodson, the state Department of Education’s school nutrition director.
With relaxed federal rules on meal deliveries, local schools like those in Savannah are still shipping out food with their buses and at pick-up locations to reach as many students attending virtual classes as possible, said Onetha Bonaparte, school nutrition director for the Savannah-Chatham County Public School System.
That district has dished out nearly 1.5 million meals mostly from school buses since March, said Bonaparte. But that is still much less than the roughly 36,000 meals served daily before the pandemic. And many of the district’s 38,000 students have opted to stick with online classes, creating challenges for a school population needing food both on campus and at home, she said.
“We know the ultimate goal is to get the students fed, and if we can do that, nothing else really matters in our department,” Bonaparte said. “We’re going to keep going until they tell us to stop.”
Georgia schools won’t technically have to stop until at least July 2021 when current U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) waivers allowing remote meal services end. That will be helpful for districts like the DeKalb County School District, where all roughly 100,000 students are still taking virtual classes.
DeKalb schools, where three-fourths of the student body qualifies for free meals, have set up 30 food-production sites to serve up hundreds of meals three times a week that ship out on 336 different bus routes for deliveries, said the district’s nutrition director, Connie Walker. The district also taps into a network of churches, county agencies and other groups to help reach more children.
Still, the district has only been able to serve about 19% of the students who normally receive free meals, even with tireless work from school staff and outside groups that have transformed DeKalb’s meal program since March, Walker said.
“We want to do more and I think we’re doing a great job,” Walker said. “But we still have not reached the total population.”
Some pressure on schools has been eased by a pandemic-specific federal program that gives families a one-time $256 payment to buy food for students eligible for free meals or already receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, according to several local district administrators.
The Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) program distributed more than $290 million in benefits to around 750,000 children before ending in mid-September, according to the state Division of Family and Children Services. It has since been extended for the 2020-21 school year, and state officials are hashing out how to continue dispersing funds.
With local schools facing limited resources, food banks in Georgia that stepped up to help plug the meals gap have seen a 50% increase in demand since the pandemic started, said Danah Craft, executive director of the nonprofit Georgia Food Bank Association.
Nearly half of Georgians seeking meals from food banks are doing so for the first time in their lives, highlighting how rates of food insecurity in the state have risen 26% for the entire population and 39% for children, Craft said. That increase comes as food banks worry the amount of food provided by the USDA could soon decrease by 50% without more federal emergency relief funding.
“We know there are kids who are continuing to fall through the cracks,” Craft said. “And our network has not experienced any easing in the demand. We’re still seeing an unrelenting need for food.”
That need has cropped up consistently for a host of food banks and other service organizations throughout the state such as the nonprofit Feeding the Valley Food Bank, which covers 18 counties in west-central and south Georgia including the hard-hit Albany area.
Frank Sheppard, the food bank’s president and CEO, said they’ve borrowed vans from the local YMCA and Salvation Army and boosted meal production with help from school districts and the local United Way chapter. Still, Sheppard said his staff are “stretched thin” in trying to feed 2,000 children daily.
“We’re going to continue as long as we have the food supply, as long as we have the resources to feed the kids and adults in our communities,” Sheppard said. “There is still a high need.”
Amid the challenges, many school officials and food-bank workers see a silver lining in the tightened collaboration that has formed between community groups to feed as many kids as possible during the pandemic. Driggers, the library manager in Rincon, certainly hopes those ties will continue long after vaccines render the virus less destructive.
“Doing this has really showed us what a substantial need this is right now,” Driggers said. “I’d hate to think that anyone’s child is walking in a grocery store and still walking out hungry.”
Rudolph Giuliani urges Georgia Senate members to pick the state’s Electoral College electors at a hearing on Dec. 3, 2020. (Georgia Senate video)
Georgia lawmakers aired claims of 2020 election fraud Thursday afternoon at a hearing that featured President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani.
The former New York City mayor’s appearance came after state senators fielded testimony at a separate hearing Thursday morning from a top state election official who stressed no evidence has been found of widespread fraud in Georgia.
At the second hearing, members of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee heard from witnesses on alleged issues with the state’s voting machines and watched a video alleging ballot-counting irregularities that state election officials have dismissed as unfounded.
That evidence is expected to be included in a lawsuit Giuliani and his legal team said they plan to file in Fulton County Superior Court.
Giuliani’s team also pressed state lawmakers to appoint electors to the Electoral College who will cast Georgia’s 16 votes in Trump’s favor next month – despite the secretary of state’s website showing the Republican president lost to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden in Georgia by at least 10,422 votes, with around 3,000 votes left to be recounted Thursday night.
“This is your power, your obligation,” Giuliani said. “You are the final arbiter of who the electors should be and whether the election is fair or not.”
At the earlier hearing before the Senate Government Oversight Committee, the general counsel for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office, Ryan Germany, reiterated state officials “have not seen anything that would suggest widespread fraud or widespread problems with the voting system” after two recounts of the 5 million ballots cast in Georgia’s presidential election.
Germany and the state’s voting system manager, Gabriel Sterling, were present to answer questions but were not invited to the afternoon hearing in which Giuliani and his witnesses aired their claims.
Republican state senators convened the two committee hearings to address allegations of voting fraud and irregularities circulated by Trump and his supporters, who have flooded lawmakers in Georgia’s more conservative regions with complaints and angry reaction to the election.
Giuliani, who has floated fraud claims and conspiracies in other battleground states including Michigan and Pennsylvania, brought witnesses alleging Georgia’s voting machines potentially switched thousands of votes in favor of Biden. They have called for a forensic audit of both the machines and signatures on absentee-ballot envelopes.
One witness, who also provided an affidavit in a separate lawsuit filed by Trump ally Sidney Powell, presented statistical modeling purporting to show Biden received more votes than he should have. That witness’ affidavit claims the voting machines were “compromised by rogue actors” in Venezuela, China and Iran and feature software that “can be easily obtained on the dark web.”
Giuliani’s attorneys also unveiled surveillance video they alleged shows ballot-counting irregularities at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, though they acknowledged they obtained the video late Wednesday night and had not finished reviewing it yet – nor shown it to anyone else prior to Thursday’s hearing.
Other witnesses discussed issues with election workers handling paper print-out and absentee ballots during the initial counts and recounts, including one witness who said ballots were kept in “cardboard boxes” and kept “less secure than a urine sample.”
During the earlier hearing, Germany of Raffensperger’s office noted a third-party group did perform an audit of a “cross section” of the voting machines last month after the Nov. 3 election, which found “the machines were working exactly properly.”
He also described to lawmakers how signatures on absentee ballots are verified once when a voter requests a ballot, then again on signature-bearing envelopes sent to county election boards. Those envelopes are separated from the absentee ballots to protect voters’ ballot selections and preserve voter privacy, according to state law.
Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez, Fulton County’s external affairs director, said county officials followed all the rules and procedures for verifying and counting absentee ballots that have been set by state law and Raffensperger’s office.
“It is our intent to follow the law, to follow the process that is provided by the secretary of state,” Corbitt-Dominguez told lawmakers Thursday. “And to our knowledge, that is what happened.”
Democratic lawmakers at the hearings called them a farce, noting claims from Giuliani’s witnesses faced no scrutiny from election officials and that Republican lawmakers in the GOP-dominated General Assembly had the heaviest hand in selecting Georgia’s new voting machines last year.
“[Raffensperger’s] office just explained to senators and the public how the election was run and that Biden won,” said state Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta. “Now we are being forced to listen to bonkers conspiracy theories out of Rudy Giuliani’s team. What a disservice to the public!”
Republican lawmakers took the claims from Giuliani’s witnesses more seriously. Senate Majority Whip Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, said he has “never seen this level of mistrust” in the election system after fielding concerns from constituents in his heavily conservative North Georgia district.
“Maybe that’s not totally fair … [but] that’s how they feel,” Gooch said Thursday. “I have a duty to let you know that. This issue isn’t going to go away unless we make some changes.”
