Temporal Contradiction Between “No Fraud” Media Narrative and Simultaneous Active Investigations (GA)

On December 22, 2020, the Georgia Secretary of State’s office issued a press release announcing that Secretary Raffensperger was “coordinating a whole of government effort to combat illegal voting in Georgia” in conjunction with the Governor’s office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and that the office had “already launched over 250 investigations into credible elections concerns this year.” Fifteen days later, on January 6, 2021 — as Congress was convening to certify Georgia’s electoral votes — Raffensperger transmitted a ten-page letter to Georgia’s congressional delegation and Vice President Pence concluding that “there is nowhere close to sufficient evidence to put in doubt the results of the presidential contest in Georgia.” The letter itself acknowledged that ongoing investigations continued and that “there will end up being a small amount of illegal votes,” but characterized them as insufficient to affect the outcome. Raffensperger’s letter did not reference the findings of the Georgia Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, which had transmitted a report to his office on December 17, 2020 — five days before the December 22 press release — finding that the election “was so compromised by systemic irregularities and voter fraud that it should not be certified”; when Senator Ligon, the subcommittee chair, was asked what Raffensperger did with those findings, he stated: “He did nothing.”