FACT CHECK
Trump Repeats Debunked Election Claims in Call
With Georgia Official
The president recited a number of viral online
falsehoods involving dead voters, Dominion voting machines, shredded ballots
and a water leak, among other baseless claims of fraud.
President Trump has made a litany of false claims
about election results in Georgia.
Linda Qiu
By Linda Qiu
Jan. 3, 2021
Updated
10:14 p.m. ET
President
Trump, in an hourlong telephone call with Georgia’s Republican secretary of
state, repeated a number of false and misleading claims about election results
in the state that have been circulating on social media. Here’s a fact check.
WHAT MR.
TRUMP SAID
“Then it
was stuffed with votes. They weren’t in an official voter box, they were in
what looked to be suitcases or trunks, suitcases but they weren’t in voter
boxes. The minimum number it could be because we watched it and they watched it
certified in slow motion instant replay if you can believe it, but it had slow
motion and it was magnified many times over, and the minimum it was 18,000
ballots, all for Biden.”
False. Mr.
Trump was most likely referring to debunked claims that a water leak at a vote
counting location in Fulton County forced an evacuation and made it possible
for trunks full of ballots to be rolled in. Election officials have said and
surveillance videos show that this did not happen.
A water
leak caused a delay for about two hours in vote counting at the State Farm
Arena, but no ballots or equipment were damaged. Georgia’s chief election
investigator, Frances Watson, testified that a “review of the entire security
footage revealed that there were no mystery ballots that were brought in from
an unknown location and hidden under tables.”
Throughout
the phone call, Mr. Trump also repeatedly suggested that an election worker
seen in the surveillance videos “stuffed the boxes” and “they thought she’d be
in jail” — referring to a baseless conspiracy theory promoted on social media.
WHAT MR.
TRUMP SAID
“There were
no poll watchers there. There were no Democrats or Republicans. There was no
security there.”
This is
misleading. Election observers and journalists were present at State Farm Arena
when the water leak occurred. They were not asked to leave, Ms. Watson said,
but simply “left on their own” when they saw one group of workers, who had
completed their task, leave.
WHAT MR.
TRUMP SAID
“So dead
people voted. And I think the number is close to 5,000 people.”
False. The
actual number was two, Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, told
the president in the call.
“You had
out-of-state voters — they voted in Georgia but they were from out of state —
of 4,925.”
This is
misleading. Ryan Germany, the chief counsel for Mr. Raffensperger’s office,
refuted this description in the call.
WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID
“Everyone
we’ve been through are people that lived in Georgia, moved to a different
state, but then moved back to Georgia legitimately,” he said. “They moved back
in years ago. This was not like something just before the election. So there’s
something about that data that, it’s just not accurate.”
“In Fulton
County and other areas — and this may or may not be true, because this just
came up this morning — that they are burning their ballots, that they are
shredding ballots, shredding ballots and removing equipment. They are changing
the equipment on the Dominion machines, and you know that’s not legal.”
False. Mr.
Trump was likely referring to images of Fulton County ballots that circulated
on social media and posted by a supporter, Patrick Byrne, the former chief
executive of Overstock.
The photos
showed piles of ballots that were visibly not filled out and wrapped in
plastic. Mr. Byrne characterized the ballots as “counterfeit” and said they
were later shredded.
But those
images were simply of emergency backup ballots, said Gabriel Sterling, a
Republican official who is the voting system implementation manager in Georgia.
State law requires counties to prepare additional paper ballots in case voting
machines cannot be used.
Dominion
Voting Systems, which has been the subject of countless conspiracy theories and
false rumors, did not remove any machinery from Fulton County, Mr. Germany told
the president.
WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID
“In
Detroit, we had 139 percent of the people voted. That’s not too good. In
Pennsylvania, they had well over 200,000 more votes than they had people
voting.”
False.
About 51 percent of registered voters and 38 percent of the entire population
cast a ballot in Detroit.
The figure
for Pennsylvania was a reference to faulty analysis conducted by state
Republican lawmakers. The analysis relied on a voter registration database that
Pennsylvania's Department of State said was incomplete as a few counties —
including Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties, the two largest in the state —
had yet to fully upload their data. The department called the analysis “obvious
misinformation.”
“She got
you to sign a totally unconstitutional agreement, which is a disastrous
agreement. You can’t check signatures. I can’t imagine you’re allowed to do
harvesting, I guess, in that agreement.”
False. This
was an inaccurate reference to a settlement between Georgia and the Democratic
Party. Under the March settlement, officials must notify voters whose signatures
were rejected within three business days and give them the chance to correct
issues. It does not bar officials from verifying signatures and does not allow
“harvesting,” or collecting and dropping off ballots in bulk.
“Harvesting
is still illegal in the state of Georgia. And that settlement agreement did not
change that one iota,” Mr. Raffensperger said in the call.
Linda Qiu
is a fact-check reporter, based in Washington. She came to The Times in 2017
from the fact-checking service PolitiFact. @ylindaqiu
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