The collective memory of Donald Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen has, for most Americans, been buried if not entirely forgotten.
Donald Trump, however, is not the sort of man who moves on from such matters. In his mind, Crooked Joe Biden stole the election from him through widespread voter fraud, at the heart of which was Fulton County, Georgia. And now a succession of court battles that started with him in the dock is ending with Team Trump doing the prosecuting.
The FBI and his Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, have raided a warehouse in Fulton stuffed with 2020 votes and taken them away in trucks.
Will they find voter irregularity? Perhaps. Recent admissions by Fulton officials have cast doubt on the processing of 335,000 votes. A clerical error, they assure us. The feds will now kick the tires on that claim.
What Trump really wants, though, is evidence of a much bigger conspiracy, which is why Tulsi Gabbard was dispatched – America’s spy chief is leading the administration’s effort to re-examine the election. After the raid, Trump reposted claims that Italian military satellites had been used to hack into US voting machines to flip votes from him to Biden. “China reportedly coordinated the whole operation,” the post reads. “The CIA oversaw it, the FBI covered it up, all to install Biden as a puppet.”
Whether or not these fantastical claims can be proven, they will reopen old wounds the country thought had healed. Already, as a result of the raid, swivel-eyed warnings that Trump intends to steal the midterms are sweeping the internet. Such rumors will only gather momentum, especially if no evidence of fraud is found.
Fulton County is the epicenter. In his famous phone call Trump asked Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.” During the call, Trump claimed ballots had been shredded, Dominion voting machines were compromised and there had been thousands of “dead voters.”
District Attorney Fani Willis hit Trump with racketeering charges over the phone call and his bid to overturn the result. Those charges were tossed out by a judge last November who criticized Willis for not leaving the case to federal authorities to prosecute. The only true finding of impropriety to date has been against Willis herself, who was removed from the case for having a romantic relationship with the lead prosecutor.
Finally last December, Fulton officials did admit to wrongdoing. They disclosed that more than 130 tabulator tapes – covering roughly 315,000 early in-person votes – were not signed as required. Ten additional tapes – representing more than 20,000 votes – were reported missing. Tabulator tapes are receipts printed from ballot tabulation machines that help to verify that the number of voters is the same as the number of votes.
Raffensperger brushed off the “clerical error,” which he said would not have altered the overall result. But Garland Favorito, with election pressure group VoterGA, said the mistakes amounted to “catastrophic breaks in the chain of custody.”
Shortly after the FBI raid, Monica Crowley, Trump’s chief of protocol, tweeted “President Trump won 2020 in a landslide. You’re going to learn.”
Meanwhile, Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts told reporters gathered at the warehouse: “We can no longer, and I can no longer as chair of this board, satisfy not only the citizens of Atlanta but the citizens of the world that those ballots are still secure.”
Will the FBI find enough “clerical errors” to void the 2020 result in Fulton County and potentially more such “errors” across Georgia? And will they find evidence of an international conspiracy orchestrated by China and the deep state? It seems unlikely. That said, what Team Trump has dug up may prove interesting, given that the state of Georgia has to date been largely marking its own homework.
The other question to ask is: does America really want the 2020 election re-litigated? That moment in American history was crystallized by Rudy Giuliani’s disastrous appearance at a hastily called press conference in a parking lot next to an adult bookstore and crematorium, hair dye streaming down his face, claiming that dozens of whistleblowers were going to come forward. A prediction that turned out to be incorrect. The farce culminated in the terrible events of January 6.
Rather than bearing a historical grudge, Trump ought to focus shift his focus forwards to the midterms. His message of a greater share for all in America’s growing prosperity has a good chance of finding a receptive audience. $1,000 baby savings accounts and an average $1,000 boost for Americans in their tax refunds this year thanks to his steady stewardship of the economy are just the start. Tentatively he is getting back onto the front foot on immigration by sending Tom Homan to calm the situation in Minneapolis.
While sending the feds into Fulton is red meat for the MAGA faithful, it risks reminding the rest of America why they were nervous to vote for Trump in 2024. Rather than agree with his assessment of virulent fraud in the 2020 election, many voters in 2024 held their noises and tried their best to forget about the wild unproven claims. But then, grudges are the rocket fuel that Trump burns to eclipse his rivals.
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