Gabriel Sterling, Voting System Implementation Manager for the Georgia Secretary of State office, speaks at a press conference at the State Capitol in Atlanta, Georgia on Jan. 4, 2021.
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President Donald Trump made a series of “demonstrably false” claims during his controversial phone call to pressure the Georgia secretary of state to reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s victory there, a senior election official said Monday.
Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system implementation manager, rebutted Trump’s allegations point by point at a press conference that came two days after Trump relied on Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on an unprecedented hour-long phone call to “ find. ” the president votes enough to defeat Biden.
During that call, which officials included in Raffensperger’s office, Trump made a series of allegations about alleged voting irregularities in Georgia’s presidential election that he said led to an unfair victory for Biden.
The president and his allies elsewhere have made similar allegations, regarding criminals, underage teenagers and dead people supposedly voting.
“The reason I have to stand here today is because there are people with authority and respect who have said their votes didn’t count, and that’s not true,” Sterling said.
“And I’m going to do it again, and I’m going to go through all of this, ‘anti-disinformation Monday’.”
Standing next to a chart labeled “Claim vs. Fact,” with two rows of each below those words, Sterling said, “This is all easy, arguably false.”
“Still, the president is persisting, undermining Georgians’ confidence in the electoral system, especially Republican Georgians in this case,” he said.
Sterling also said Trump campaign attorneys “deliberately misled the public” with allegations that a videotape showed that fraudulent votes were awarded to Biden during a ballot count.
Sterling suggested Trump’s allegations could hurt Republican incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler’s chances in their second election Tuesday for Georgia’s seats in the U.S. Senate, where they face tough challenges from Democrats Jon Ossoff, respectively. and Raphael Warnock.
There are concerns among GOP leaders that Trump’s allegations of widespread vote fraud in Georgia, and Perdue and Loeffler’s support for the president’s rhetoric, could dampen turnout among Republican voters.
Sterling urged voters to come to the polls before Tuesday’s races, even if they were concerned about the integrity of the election.
“I don’t recognize that there was massive voter fraud because there wasn’t. But if you believe with your heart there was, the best thing you can do is come out and vote and make it harder for them to steal,” he said.
Sterling seemed exasperated as he quickly reviewed the claims of Trump and his allies.
“I’ll admit when I listened to the audio from [Trump’s] phone call … I wanted to scream – well, I was screaming at the computer, and I was screaming in my car, to the radio, talking about this, because this has been debunked, “said Sterling.
Referring to the nearby map, and to Trump’s allegations, Sterling said, “Nobody changes parts or pieces from Dominion voting machines.”
‘That is to say, that’s – I don’t even know what that means. That’s not real, ”Sterling added.
‘No ballots are shredded. That is not real.’
Trump’s phone call to Raffensperger sparked speculation that the president could be prosecuted for trying to influence a state official to change the results of an election.
Asked if the secretary of state, who had not appeared at the press conference, was considering asking the Georgia attorney general or a local prosecutor to investigate Trump for the call, Sterling said, “I don’t know.”
“I let other people make the decision,” said Sterling, when asked if the call was an attack on democracy. “I personally thought it was something that was not normal, out of place, and no one I know who was going to be president would do something like that to a Secretary of State.”
Trump probably had eight to 10 points [during the call], all his numbers were wrong, “Raffensperger said later on Monday during a controversial Fox News interview.” Our figures will be supported by a court. Their number will not be. “
Congress will meet on Wednesday to certify Biden’s victory in the Electoral College. A planned attempt by some GOP senators and House members to challenge the results of several battlefield states that Biden won is expected to fail.