True The Vote:
Our evidence of voter fraud in Georgia?
Uh. We’ve got nothing.
Sorry about that.
Over half of Republicans cling to the idea that the 2020 election was surely stolen from Trump, including the election in Georgia. True the Vote, a Texas organization, said they had evidence.
Trump and his allies said they believed it. Conservative media repeated it. A rumor became the justification for overturning an election. The allegation did not need to be true, and indeed it could be contradicted by audits and recounts. But someone said they had evidence of fraud. That was enough.
Trump made his "find 11,000 votes" phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and Trump allies arranged for partisans in Georgia to swear they were duly elected electors. Rudolph Giuliani told Steve Bannon's podcast "We got a big project working in Georgia right now." They did. On January 7, 2021, the day after the Capitol incursion, a group of Republicans breached the voting system in Coffee County, Georgia.
What evidence was there of misdeeds? Who saw ballot trafficking, vote switching, and fraud? True the Vote, took credit finding it. They filed formal complaints to the Georgia Election Board. True the Vote made a strategic mistake. It is one thing to lie to Fox News. But like the people who signed up to be fake electors, True the Vote made the error of asserting on government documents that they had evidence, in hand, of fraud. The Georgia Election Board sued to see it.
True the Vote responded in court with a series of admissions. As regards their allegation that they had the names of people with information on a coordinated effort to gather ballots from drop boxes, the allegation that served as the basis for the 2000 Mules movie:
TTV does not have in its possession, custody, or control such identity and contact information.
What about the “contracted team of researchers and investigators," the people with "personal knowledge" of ballot trafficking?"
TTV does not have in its possession, custody, or control such identity and contact information.
And so on.
No, they don't have any information on the "117 Georgia hotline complaints" they claimed that they had.
No, they have nothing to show about the "network of non-governmental organizations."
No, they don't have information about the supposed "bartender who came in from South Carolina" to help with a ballot harvesting scheme.
An odd irony of the legal ramifications of the effort to overthrow the 2020 election is that the guilty people may not be brought to justice for the profound assault they made on American democracy -- the big crime. Such justice that happens will be because of little crimes. People swore falsely on certifications of elections. People signed complaints alleging they had documents they did not have. People examined -- and therefore tampered with and made useless -- tabulating machines in Coffee County. Fox News did not pay a fine to the government for airing wildly untrue information on vote switching. Instead, they paid a civil judgement to Dominion. Rudolph Giuliani isn't in trouble for lying about the Georgia election. He loses a defamation lawsuit to the election workers he defamed.
Meanwhile, in New York, Trump is in trouble not for intentional cooperation between his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and the Russian government in the 2016 election. That is a criminal act that undermines our democracy. Instead, Trump is standing trial because of checks he mischaracterized so they could be deducted as expenses in his business records. He called them legal fees instead of hush money to keep Stormy Daniels from selling her story to the tabloids.
It is the little things that trip you up.
Paging Alphonse C.