Trump made a weird and worrying boast at his latest campaign rally
Donald Trump made a very worrying claim during a weekend campaign rally in Georgia that saw the former president seemingly boast about his supporters taking over the State Election Board according to a report from Rolling Stone.
While speaking to a crowd of supporters at a rally in Atlanta rally, Trump stated: “I don’t know if you’ve heard but the Georgia State Election Board is in a very positive way… They’re on fire, they’re doing a great job.” Rolling Stone reported.
Trump praised three MAGA Republicans of the five-member board—which included Dr. Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares, and Janelle King—calling the trio of board members “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory.”
Rolling Stone’s Peter Wade pointed out the Georgia State Election Board’s mission isn’t to fight for Trump, but rather its website notes it is meant to be “entrusted with a variety of responsibilities and authority to protect all Georgians’ right to cast a ballot.”
The independent investigative outlet American Doom called attention to Trump’s use of the word victory during his campaign speech as well as the inclusion of the word on the State Election Board’s website and made a much bolder claim.
“Fighting for victory. That’s not the job of the Georgia State Election Board…But that’s exactly what the three members Trump name-checked Saturday night — and possibly the board’s fourth Republican — are doing," American Doom’s Justin Glawe explained.
The trio of State Election Board members, along with the possible fourth member, are allegedly "working on behalf of the Trump campaign" in the state according to Glawe, who wrote one advocate said: “They have become a MAGA government body.”
The State Election Board was set to hold a meeting to consider rule changes that have been pushed by what Glawne said were “pro-Trump election deniers. One of these changes includes a rule shift that could hand more power to county election board members to deny certifying election results.
"The last time the board met, it passed a rule that increased the number of poll watchers during elections—a rule pushed by a pro-Trump election official in Fulton County,” Glawe wrote. It was a move that Trump praised during his Atlanta rally.
“They just passed a rule for Georgia elections requiring that three people at each precinct independently count the total number of ballots before certification,” Trump told the crowd of his supporters.
Glawe noted that the former president’s name check of the three board members was “jarring” and the American Doom journalist noted all three individuals called out by the former president were in attendance at his Atlanta rally.
The charge that Trump supporters on the State Election Board are working to help the former president is concerning, but it would be less so if what some claim is allegedly happening wasn’t something that could be cloned and used in other states if successful in Georgia.
Rolling Stone’s Peter Wade previously reported with Asawain Suebsaeng in a June 8th article for the magazine that the former president’s team has been working to undermine voter integrity in Georgia.
Trump also allegedly pushed lawmakers in the state to remove one Republican from the State Election Board because they were not MAGA enough for Trump, which led to the official's resignation and Janelle King's appointment to the role.
The former president’s allies in Georgia have already been working to purge the state’s voter rolls to make challenging future election results easier according to Rolling Stone.
One official close to Trump told the Rolling Stone journalists: “Georgia is our laboratory… If you can get this up and running in Georgia, you get a road map for other states, maybe the country as a whole.”