Video footage from Fulton County, Georgia on Election night, shows suitcases filled with ballots being pulled out from under a table after supervisors had told poll workers to go home for the night. According to the video, four women stayed behind to keep counting votes.
The blockbuster surveillance video was presented during a hearing before the Georgia State Senate committee, where Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, presented his case to Georgia lawmakers.
Jacki Pick, an attorney assisting Trump’s legal team, said the highly suspicious activity took place at State Farm Arena, where absentee ballots and Military ballots were tabulated.
“We have the tape from first thing in the morning all the way to the close of the polls,” she said, adding that two Republican field organizers had been sent here to be observers.
“At no time,” she noted, “were they permitted to observe in any meaningful way.” Pick explained that the GOP observers were roped off all day with the media.
According to their affidavits, a poll worker—a woman with blond braids—announced at about 10:00 p.m. that they were done for the night and everyone needed to leave. The GOP observers said in their affidavits that they were told counting would resume at 8:30 in the morning.
Pick said that after the press and poll watchers cleared out, four remaining election workers remained behind and continued counting and tabulating “well into the night.”
“They will continue counting, unobserved, unsupervised, not in public view—as your statute requires—until about 1:00 in the morning,” Pick said.
She explained that the reason they know the counting went on until 1:00 a.m. is because the GOP observers went to the tabulation center after they were forced to leave, and were told by a news crew that the counting had actually continued.
“This shocked them, so they returned back to State Farm Arena at about 1:00 in the morning where they confirmed that people had in fact just left,” Pick explained.
After the press and poll watchers were told to go home, it took until close to 10:30 for the room to clear, Pick noted. Then, at around 11:00 p.m., one of the women pulled a suitcase full of ballots out from under a table covered with a tablecloth.
This is a total game changer! Sure looks like ballot stuffing in GA! All caught on camera. Busted! @realDonaldTrump @JennaEllisEsq @RudyGiuliani #stopthesteal pic.twitter.com/FQM6eQvMfq
— Grant Stinchfield (@stinchfield1776) December 3, 2020
Pick said when Trump’s legal team first saw the video, they weren’t sure if it was normal to store suitcases full of ballots under tables, so they viewed surveillance video from earlier in the day to see if that was routine procedure. Indeed, it was not.
She said that what they saw happening earlier in the day were ballots coming from boxes stored in an open area, or coming in through a door—not from suitcases hidden under the tables.
Pick questioned the chain-of-custody of the hidden ballots.
“Where did they come from? Who put them there? When did they put them there?” she asked.
She said that the surveillance video shows that at about 8:22 that morning, the woman with the blond braids had put the table with the hidden ballets in place.
She pointed out that the culprit was the same operative who had kicked everyone out at 10:00 p.m.
“So the same person who stayed behind, the same person who cleared the place out under the pretense that ‘we’re going to stop counting,’ is the person who put the table there,” Pick declared.
She told the lawmakers that she saw four suitcases full of ballets in all pulled out from under the table.
“What are these ballots doing there separated from all the other ballots?” Pick asked. “And why are they only bringing them when the place is cleared out with no witnesses?”
Pick, noted that the machines can tabulate about 3,000 votes an hour, and there were multiple machines in the room.
“And they were there for two hours. You do the math,” she said.
“How many ballots went through those machines when there was no one there supervise, to be present consistent with your statute and rules?” Pick asked the lawmakers.
She estimated that the number could easily be beyond the margin of victory in Georgia.
When Team Trump posted the surveillance video onto Twitter, the platform slapped a warning label on the Tweet, saying “this claim about election fraud is disputed,” even though it was a breaking story, and no one had had time to dispute it yet.
Why did @Twitter label this as disputed?
This is the first time anyone has seen this video. https://t.co/PUHZnVo43E
— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) December 3, 2020
Update:
Lead Stories, a “fact-checking” website reported that high-level officials with the Georgia secretary of state’s office said there was nothing “suspicious” going on in the video
The officials said the ballots seen in the video were in regular ballot containers — not suitcases — and they had been removed from their envelopes and processed while news media and election observers for the Republican Party and Trump campaign were present. The media and party observers were never told to leave because counting was over for the night, but they apparently followed workers who left once their job of opening envelopes was completed, the chief investigator for the secretary of state told Lead Stories. The observers were free to return at anytime, she said. Georgia law allows observers, but does not require them to be there for ballots to be counted, she said.
An ABC News report from Election night directly contradicts Lead Stories’ sources from the Georgia Sec. of State’s office.
NEW: The election department sent the ballot counters at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta home at 10:30 p.m., Regina Waller, the Fulton County public affairs manager for elections, tells ABC News. https://t.co/HgCtcXEka3
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) November 4, 2020