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      Newsmax and Smartmatic settle 2020 US election defamation lawsuit

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      The voting machine company Smartmatic and the conservative outlet Newsmax have settled a closely watched defamation lawsuit days before it was set to go to trial in Delaware.A spokesman for the Delaware courts said the case had been settled on Thursday. He did not offer additional details. The trial was set to begin in Wilmington on Monday.The terms of the settlement are not public.“Newsmax is pleased to announce it has resolved the litigation brought by Smartmatic through a confidential settlement,” Bill Daddi, a spokesman for the network, said in a statement.After the 2020 election, Newsmax aired several false claims about the company, whose voting machines were only used in Los Angeles county in 2020. The network repeatedly aired false claims from Trump allies that the software was widely used across the country and that it had been hacked to change votes.Smartmatic sued Newsmax, Fox, One America News Network (OANN) and others for broadcasting their false claims. It settled the case with OANN earlier this year and the Fox case is still pending in New York.Smartmatic said in a statement: “We are very pleased to have secured the completion of the case against Newsmax. We are now looking forward to our court day against Fox Corp and Fox News for their disinformation campaign. Lying to the American people has consequences. Smartmatic will not stop until the perpetrators are held accountable.”First amendment scholars were closely watching the case and several others like it to see whether libel law can be used as an effective tool to police misinformation.The case was set to be a kind of sequel to the defamation litigation between Dominion, another voting machine company, and Fox over 2020 election lies. That case was settled just before the trial was set to begin, with Fox agreeing to pay Dominion $787.5m. Eric Davis, the judge who oversaw the Fox case, was also overseeing the Newsmax case.A settlement was not surprising in the case as trial neared. Davis ruled that Smartmatic could not seek punitive damages, a decision that significantly limited any possible financial payout for Smartmatic.Davis had also ruled that Newsmax could use the “neutral report privilege” as a defense in the case – a legal shield that allows media outlets to broadcast allegations if they are reporting on a newsworthy event and do so in a disinterested and neutral way. Davis had not let Fox used that defense in its litigation.Smartmatic executives were indicted by the justice department earlier this year on bribery charges in the Philippines. Even though the charges were completely unrelated to the 2020 election, it offered an opportunity for Newsmax lawyers to argue that the company’s poor reputation could not be attributed to what was said on its air.But Newsmax also had reasons to settle. In a pre-trial conference, a lawyer for the company had called it a “bet-your-company” case for the outlet. Newsmax, which is projecting $180.5m in revenue this year, saw a surge in audience under the Trump administration and a bump that caught Fox’s attention after the 2020 election as it broadcast false claims about voting.“The Newsmax surge is a bit troubling – truly is an alternative universe when you watch, but it can’t be ignored,” Jay Wallace, a Fox executive, wrote in an email to a colleague after the 2020 election.Unlike in the Fox and Dominion litigation, only a few details emerged in the case revealing internal discussions at Newsmax as they broadcast false claims about the election. One of the messages was an internal letter from Christopher Ruddy, the network’s CEO from November 2020, conceding the network did not have evidence of voter fraud.“Newsmax does not have evidence of widespread voter fraud. We have no evidence of a voter fraud conspiracy nor do we make such claims on Newsmax,” he wrote on 12 November 2020. “We have reported on significant evidence of widespread election irregularities and vote fraud. We will continue to report on that. We believe we should not censor allegations made by the President or his lawyers or surrogates. Our job is not to filter the news but report information and allow Americans to decide.”Another exchange included Bob Sellers, a Newsmax host, and a producer, wondering how long they would have to air false claims about the election. “How long are we going to have to play along with election fraud?” Sellers wrote on 9 November 2020. “Trump’s MO is always to play victim [] And answer this question. Is there anything at all that could result in another election? The answer is no. and are there enough votes that could be switched or thrown out from fraud or irregularities? No.”The lack of a trial may rob the public of the chance to hear about the state of mind of people who were behind broadcasting election lies, said RonNell Andersen Jones, a first amendment scholar at the University of Utah who has closely followed the defamation cases filed by those harmed by 2020 election lies.Still, she noted that Davis had already ruled that the statements at issue in the case were false, and cautioned against expecting defamation cases to be a cure for misinformation.“Defamation law can declare something a lie, but the question of whether a lie was told is only one of many questions that have to be asked and answered,” she said in an interview earlier this week. “It is a notoriously complex area of law, which means cases can be won or lost on a lot of grounds that have nothing to do with the truth or falsity of the statement. And I am not sure that translates well to public discussion.”Lyrissa Lidsky, a media law professor at the University of Florida, also cautioned against expecting libel law to be a cure-all for disinformation.“Defamation law is not a panacea for election misinformation. There’s just no two ways about it,” she said. “It’s just a small piece.” More

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      Rudy Giuliani disbarred in Washington DC over role in Trump election plot

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      Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who built a career as an uncompromising crime-fighter, has been permanently disbarred from practising law in Washington DC in a ruling stemming from his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Donald Trump’s favour.The decision came in the form of a one-page order issued by the US capital’s court of appeal and followed a similar order issued in July in New York, Giuliani’s home state.Unlike that ruling, the decision in Washington was not directly related to his actions in Trump’s election-denying effort but was instead based on his failure to respond to a request that he explain why he should not be subject to the same penalty as meted out in New York.“ORDERED that Rudolph W Giuliani is hereby disbarred from the practice of law in the District of Columbia, nunc pro tunc [a Latin term used in legal parlance to mean retroactive] to August 9, 2021,” Thursday’s appeal court order said.In 2021, the appeals court had suspended Giuliani’s law licence in Washington after being notified of a similar decision in New York.The DC bar’s board of responsibility recommended in 2022 that Giuliani’s law licence be indefinitely revoked after its investigators found him guilty of unethical conduct over inaccurate and unsupported claims he made in testimony to a federal court in Pennsylvania while disputing the 2020 election results.The DC court of appeals order did not hinge on those findings. By contrast, the New York appeals court made similar judgments in issuing its ruling, asserting that Giuliani “repeatedly and intentionally made false statements, some of which were perjurious, to the federal court, state lawmakers, the public … and this Court concerning the 2020 Presidential election”.Ted Goodman, a spokesman for Giuliani called the order “an absolute travesty and a total miscarriage of justice”.“Members of the legal community who want to protect the integrity of our justice system should immediately speak out against this partisan, politically motivated decision,” he said.The order is the latest blow to the standing of a man who was dubbed “America’s mayor” for the leadership role he played in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in New York in 2001, which happened when he was the city’s mayor.Last year, two election workers in Georgia won $148m in damages after he defamed them by accusing them of fraud. A week later he filed for bankruptcy. More

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      Special counsel can file oversized motion on Trump election interference case

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      Special counsel Jack Smith can file an oversized, 180-page motion on presidential immunity in Donald Trump’s Washington DC federal court election interference case, a judge ruled Tuesday.Judge Tanya S Chutkan’s decision stems from prosecutors’ 21 September request to exceed the typical 45-page limit for opening motions and oppositions. Smith’s motion must be filed by Thursday and will include both legal arguments and evidence and could provide additional insight into Trump’s efforts to throw out election results, though it is unclear when the public might be able to see that material given that it’ll initially be filed under seal.Trump faces four felony counts over his effort to subvert the 2020 election, though a July US supreme court ruling on presidential immunity threw the case into near disarray.The supreme court held that Trump and other presidents enjoyed immunity for official acts, but not unofficial ones, undermining charges related to his alleged pressure campaign on Justice Department officials.The supreme court remanded the case back to Chutkan, who must decide which claims in Smith’s case are official acts, and which are not official. Smith filed a new indictment against Trump in August, which does not dramatically change this criminal case, but revamps some parts to stress that Trump was not acting in an official capacity in his attempt to overturn election results.Prosecutors proposed in a 5 September hearing that they should file a brief on the immunity issue with “a comprehensive discussion and description of both pled and unpled facts … so that all parties and the Court know the issues that the Court needs to consider in order to make its fact-bound determinations that the Supreme Court has required.”In green-lighting prosecutors’ request to file an unusually sizeable motion, Chutkan noted the supreme ourt’s direction that she need to engage in a “close” and “fact specific” examination of this indictment and related accusations.“The length and breadth of the Government’s proposed brief reflects the uniquely ‘challenging’ and factbound nature of those determinations,” the judge said in her ruling. “The briefs’ atypical sequence and size thus both serve the efficient resolution of immunity issues in this case ‘at the earliest possible stage.’”Trump’s legal team had fought prosecutors’ request to file a lengthier brief, complaining that it would “quadruple the standard page limits” in the district. They also unsuccessfully opposed Smith’s filing of this brief now, and argued that immunity arguments shouldn’t take place until Trump files a motion to dismiss the case.Prosecutors said in court filings that they are poised to file their briefing under seal, given the “substantial amount of sensitive material” and later, file a public version that has redactions. More

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      Texas jury clears ‘Trump Train’ for surrounding 2020 Biden-Harris bus

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      A federal jury in Texas on Monday cleared a group of Donald Trump’s supporters and found one driver liable in a civil trial over a so-called “Trump Train” that surrounded a Biden-Harris campaign bus on a busy highway days before the 2020 election.The two-week trial in a federal courthouse in Austin centered on whether the actions of the “Trump Train” participants amounted to political intimidation. Among those onboard the bus was Wendy Davis, the former Democratic lawmaker, who testified she feared for her life while a convoy of Trump supporters boxed in the bus along Interstate 35.The jury awarded $10,000 to the bus driver.Plaintiffs in the lawsuit had alleged they were terrorised and intimidated for more than 90 minutes on 20 October 2020, as they took a bus tour canvassing for the Democratic ticket in the final days of the election in Texas as they travelled from San Antonio to Austin.About 40 vehicles flying Make America Great Again flags encircled the bus, trying to run it off the road and playing what the suit claims was a “madcap game of highway ‘chicken’”.No criminal charges were filed against the six Trump supporters who were sued by Davis and two others onboard the bus. Civil rights advocates hoped a guilty verdict would send a clear message about what constitutes political violence and intimidation.Video that Davis recorded from the bus shows pickup trucks with large Trump flags slowing down to box in the bus as it tried to move away from the group of Trump supporters. One of the defendants hit a campaign volunteer’s car while the trucks occupied all lanes of traffic, forcing the bus and everyone around it to a 15mph crawl.The event was canceled after Davis and others on the bus – a campaign staffer and the driver – made repeated calls to 911 asking for a police escort through San Marcos and no help arrived.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDavis, who is best known for the 11-hour speech she made in the Texas senate in 2013 to filibuster an anti-abortion bill, said she suffered “substantial emotional distress” form the experience.Associated press contributed to this report More

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      Labelling Trump’s lies as ‘disputed’ on X makes supporters believe them more, study finds

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      Labelling tweets featuring false claims about election fraud as “disputed” does little to nothing to change Trump voters’ pre-existing beliefs, and it may make them more likely to believe the lies, according to a new study.The study, authored by John Blanchard, an assistant professor from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and Catherine Norris, an associate professor from Swarthmore College, looked at data from a sampling of 1,072 Americans surveyed in December of 2020. The researchers published a peer-reviewed paper on their findings this month in the Harvard Kennedy School’s Misinformation Review.“These ‘disputed’ tags are meant to alert a reader to false/misinformation, so it’s shocking to find that they may have the opposite effect,” Norris said.Participants were shown four tweets from Donald Trump that made false claims about election fraud and told to rank them from one to seven based on their truthfulness. A control group saw the tweets without “disputed” tags; the experimental group viewed them with the label. Before and after seeing the tweets, the subjects were also asked to rank their views on election fraud overall.The study found that Trump voters who were initially skeptical about claims of widespread fraud were more likely to rate lies as true when a “disputed” label appeared next to Trump’s tweets. The findings meanwhile showed Biden voters’ beliefs were largely unaffected by the “disputed” tags. Third-party voters or non-voters were slightly less likely to believe the false claims after reading the four tweets with the tags.Blanchard and Norris had expected in their study that the disputed tags would produce little change in Trump voters with high levels of political knowledge, given that previous research had shown politically engaged people can dismiss corrective efforts in favor of their own counterarguments. The researchers did not predict the opposite possibility: corrective as confirmation. The knowledgeable Trump voters surveyed were so resistant to corrections that the fact-checking labels actually reinforced their belief in misinformation.“Surprisingly, those Trump voters with higher political knowledge actually strengthened their belief in election misinformation when exposed to disputed tags, compared to a control condition without tags,” Blanchard said. “Instead of having no impact, the tags seemed counterproductive, reinforcing misinformation among this group.”Previous studies and research from disinformation experts have argued that directly challenging conspiracy theorists’ beliefs can be counterproductive, leading them to withdraw or double down on their convictions. While Blanchard and Norris state in the study that their findings don’t necessarily prove this backfire effect is universal – since the sample size of Trump voters in the study was relatively low – they’re more confident that disputed tags are less effective the more politically knowledgeable Trump voters become.Social media platforms have tried for years to create various kinds of labeling systems that signal to users when content contains false, misleading or unverified claims. Twitter/X formerly labeled some tweets with false information as “disputed”, a practice it has in recent years replaced with its “community notes” peer review feature and a more lax attitude toward content moderation overall.A larger question that misinformation researchers have sought to answer is whether labels and fact-checks attempting to debunk falsehoods are actually effective, in some studies finding the potential for these warnings to actually backfire. The field of research has implications for social media platforms, news outlets and initiatives aimed at preventing misinformation, especially at a time when political polarization is high and false claims of election fraud are pervasive.The authors assessed political knowledge by asking participants 10 questions to test general understanding of US politics, such as: “What political office is now held by John Roberts?”One limitation of the study is the unique time frame when it was conducted – the height of the 2020 election, when conservatives had more antagonistic views toward Twitter. Since the study was conducted, Twitter has not only gotten rid of the “disputed” tags but undergone a broader change in ownership, content moderation policy and user attitudes. After Tesla CEO Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44bn in 2022 and renamed it X, the platform has brought far-right voices back onto the platform, including Trump himself, and taken a rightward turn that has led conservatives to see it in more positive terms.“We can’t pinpoint why disputed tags backfired among Trump voters, but distrust of the platform may have played a role,” Blanchard said. “Given the conservative distrust of Twitter at the time, it’s possible Trump supporters saw the tags as a clear attempt to restrict their autonomy, prompting them to double down on misinformation.” More

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      ‘His ego will not accept defeat’: the story behind Trump’s attempt to steal an election

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      By now, 6 January 2021 has so thoroughly saturated the American political consciousness – a single date conjuring up images of the once unthinkable, mentioned every day in news about criminal court cases, the future of democracy and Donald Trump’s ongoing presidential campaign – that you could argue we are used to it. Election denialism has become a feature, not a bug, of a major political party for nearly four years. The fact that Trump, when given the opportunity by ABC moderators to distance himself from efforts to discredit the 2020 election during this month’s presidential debate, still refused to acknowledge Joe Biden’s legitimate victory is no longer surprising, though we are also inured to shock.But a new HBO documentary argues, through forensic chronological detail and, perhaps ironically, the testimony of Republican election officials and former members of Trump’s administration, for remembering just how beyond the pale attempts to subvert the 2020 election were. As recounted in Stopping the Steal, a new film from the Leaving Neverland director, Dan Reed, the period between election night 2020 and 6 January 2021 was a series of genuinely shocking, potentially devastating opportunities for democratic disaster that often came down to clashes between obscure, local Republican officials and the president of the United States. January 6, in fact, “isn’t the scary bit”, Reed said. “The really scary bit is all the machinations that happened before. Because had they succeeded, the knock-on effect would have been to just gum up the system.“Step by step, you can see that enough uncertainty was being injected into the system, and enough small gains were being made, to result in potentially a cataclysmic outcome.”Though Trump may deny any responsibility for January 6, his efforts to undermine the American electoral process and discredit the result in 2020 began the night of the election, before any network had even called it for Biden. At 2.30am, after news networks projected a Biden win in the crucial swing state of Arizona, Trump held an impromptu press conference in which he falsely claimed: “Frankly, we did win this election.” What happened next is a matter of real-time journalistic record, playing out over several weeks and relived in Stopping the Steal by the people who were there: administration pressure on election officials in Arizona and Georgia to support evidence-free claims of fraud or, in one infamous Trump phone call, to find him “11,780 votes”; activation of misinformation channels and true believers, who latched on to claims of fraud, harassed election officials and showed up outside county offices armed with AR-15s; a media campaign by Trump’s lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and others bringing fringe legal “theories” into the mainstream; and finally the legitimization of crackpot legal theories to hijack the arcane electoral college, culminating in Trump’s January 6 rally.Stopping the Steal synthesizes these many episodes, through the perspectives of the officials – the then attorney general, Bill Barr; the Maricopa county supervisor, Clint Hickman; the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger; the Georgia election operations manager, Gabriel Sterling – who worked to prevent the steal by simply doing their jobs. The framing offers “a story told by people who love Trump, but who love democracy more, who love the institution more”, said Reed – mostly, Republicans who “held the line and who came under extraordinary pressure”.By their own admission in Stopping the Steal, these officials would have entertained evidence of voter fraud, even celebrated it, had there been any. “I had every motivation,” says Rusty Bowers, Arizona’s former speaker of the house, in the film. But there wasn’t – and Trump knew it. “He knows he lost,” says Stephanie Grisham, a Trump campaign and White House official for six years. “But he’s a narcissist and his ego will not accept defeat. And when you have people who will so willingly come around you and tell you you didn’t lose and the things you want to hear … that enables him to double down and triple down.”So he tripled down, with the help of (seemingly) true believers, some of whom also appear in the film – Jacob Chansley, also known as the QAnon Shaman, and Marko Trickovic, who spread numerous conspiracy theories about votes being stolen or discounted. “The guys on the grassroots level, I think they really believe,” said Reed. “I don’t think they have any doubt that the election was stolen, because they inhabit a universe in which that is a given.”Reed, who also recently performed a similar forensic analysis on January 6 called Four Hours at the Capitol, maintains that including the perspective of the so-called “Stop the Steal” movement does not platform its beliefs; if anything, it puts the alternate universe of the “stolen” 2020 election in starker relief to the facts. “Whether you think they’re sincere or insincere, they’re protagonists in this drama,” he said. “It’s always good and fair to hear from them, and give them a chance to express what they have to say in a coherent way.View image in fullscreen“I presume my audience is intelligent,” he added. “I presume that they’re smart enough to know the difference between someone who’s indulging wish fulfillment or embracing a fantasy, and other people who are doing it for more cynical reasons.”Stopping the Steal ends with January 6, and makes no presumptions about what will happen in November if Trump wins or, perhaps just as distressingly, if he refuses to lose again, which some Republicans are already preparing for. “I’m not a political pundit,” said Reed. “I made the film because I want it to be a timeless film, because it marks a turning point in the way that we do elections. Now we have an option of: the Republicans won, the Democrats won, or someone stole it. We never had that option. That narrative didn’t exist before.“The blueprint is there, the playbook is there – why would it be different this time, if Kamala Harris wins?”The day-by-day recounting of how the votes in 2020 were counted, and then protected – in nondescript county buildings, secretary of state offices, board meetings and eventually the US Congress – only underscores that a democracy is only as strong as its most obscure, smallest offices, whose character can make the difference between business as usual and a steal. “The functioning of democracy depends on people who buy into the idea that it should be fair,” said Reed. “If the system isn’t populated with people who embrace the basic idea of it, that it should be fair and everyone gets their fair shot, then the system no longer works.”Stopping the Steal, in revisiting the timeline largely through Republicans’ first-person narratives – it was not Democratic officials that Trump personally called – acts as a “non-partisan” review of the facts, “the look back that we can all share”, said Reed. The election in November will come down to how many people vote, where they vote, and for whom. But it will also be determined by “the remote gearboxes and the little bits of democracy you can’t see”, he said. “And that’s what we need to look out for. That’s what we need to shine a light on this time.”

      Stopping the Steal is now available on Max in the US. In the UK, Trump’s Heist: The President Who Wouldn’t Lose is on Channel 4 on 17 September and 18 September at 9pm. More

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      Judge dismisses two criminal counts against Trump in Georgia election case

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      Donald Trump had two counts tossed from his criminal case in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, after the presiding judge decided on Thursday they fell under the supremacy clause in the US constitution that bars state prosecutors from charging federal crimes.“The Supremacy Clause declares that state law must yield to federal law when the two conflict,” the Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee wrote in his order.The judge decided that two charges against Trump and an additional count against several Trump allies, who were charged as co-defendants, should be struck. But he decided the remainder of the indictment – including the Rico racketeering charge – could remain.Trump now faces eight charges, down from 13 charges. Trump pleaded not guilty to the sprawling 2020 election interference case in Fulton county last year along with 18 other co-defendants. Four have since taken plea deals and agreed to testify against the other defendants.The charges that were dismissed against Trump – the filing of false documents and conspiring to file false documents – related to the Trump campaign’s gambit to submit fake elector certificates declaring Trump as the winner even though he had lost.The fake elector certificates were then sent to the National Archives ahead of the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win on 6 January 2021, which the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis charged as criminal forgery counts.“President Trump and his legal team in Georgia have prevailed once again. The trial court has decided that counts 15 and 27 in the indictment must be quashed/dismissed,” Trump’s lead lawyer, Steve Sadow, said in a statement.The 22-page order issued by McAfee comes as the fate of the case hangs in the balance ahead of the Georgia appeals court deciding whether Willis can continue with the case, following her alleged relationship with her deputy, Nathan Wade.McAfee declined to remove Willis from the case as long as Wade resigned to resolve the conflict of interest allegation, a decision that Trump’s lawyers have appealed.Trump’s attorneys continue to argue that Willis has a conflict of interest, but also argued that she should have been disqualified for comments she made about the case at a speech at Big Bethel AME church in downtown Atlanta. In the wake of revelations about her relationship with Wade, Willis attributed the legal attack to racist motivations.Separately on Thursday, McAfee rejected a motion from the former Trump lawyer John Eastman and Trump fake elector Shawn Still to toss the entire indictment on grounds that it relied on an overly broad interpretation of the Georgia state racketeering statute. More

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      Georgia governor Brian Kemp weighs options on state election board problem

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      As Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp wrestles with what to do with a seemingly wayward state board of elections that is drawing national criticism for last-hour changes to the state’s election practices born of stop-the-steal election activism, the state attorney general declined to make his job any easier.Kemp asked Republican attorney general, Chris Carr, to render a legal opinion about the governor’s legal obligation to hold a hearing and potentially remove board members, in light of two ethics complaints filed against the board since a raucous hearing in July raised questions about the legality of the board’s actions. Three board members – Rick Jeffares, Janice Johnston and Janelle King – have attempted to reopen investigation into the 2020 election, citing a finding of error in Fulton county and the continuation of lawsuits by election denialists.Repeated audits and investigations have found no error in tabulation large enough to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Nonetheless, the three board members have approved new rules giving local elections officials wider authority to make a “reasonable inquiry” into elections discrepancies. By leaving the term “reasonable” undefined, the change is setting off alarm bells among critics, who believe local elections officials with partisan intentions will cast doubt on the results if their candidate loses.Carr’s office earlier this year swatted back the board’s demand to reinvestigate the 2020 election in Fulton county. But it also declined last week to advise Kemp to convene a hearing under the state’s ethics law, because no “formal charges” had been filed for allegedly holding an illegal meeting in August to adopt new election rules.If the law required Kemp to remove board members, he could do so while claiming to Donald Trump-aligned partisans that his hands were tied. That’s no longer an option. If he does so now, voices on the hard right will rise to say that Kemp is, once again, facilitating victory for Democrats at their expense.In a state controlled by Republicans, Georgia’s elections board has become a contentious friction point between conventional conservatives like Kemp and Trump allies who continue to press claims of a stolen 2020 election.Trump praised the board members by name at a rally in Atlanta in August, while trashing Kemp for refraining to stop the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, from pursuing the election interference case against him.The board’s behavior puts Kemp in a political pickle. Trump and Kemp have made overtures in the past few weeks to mend the rift. Kemp endorsed Trump in a conversation with the Fox News host Sean Hannity last month, which Trump accepted graciously in a Truth Social posting. But Trump partisans remain deeply resentful of Kemp’s apparent inaction on Trump’s behalf.For Republicans, the conflict between Trump and Kemp is particularly toxic in an election year. But the board’s actions convey a plain impression of partisan interest, which is also toxic in an election year, as Democrats use the publicity around the election board’s plays to drive turnout.Even though a majority of Georgians are confident that the 2024 election will be held fairly, the partisan split is enormous. Only 9% of Republicans have confidence in a fair election, according to a poll administered by the University of Georgia in June.That has primary election implications for Kemp, who is widely expected to run for the US Senate against the Democrat Jon Ossoff in 2026. Kemp is the most popular Republican in the state – more so than Trump – but would face withering criticism for taking unilateral action against a Trump-oriented board.In the wake of the 2020 election, state lawmakers stripped the secretary of state and his office of some of their power over the state board of elections. The appointment of King, a conservative radio talkshow host, to the swing seat on the board earlier this year has given Trump partisans a 3-2 majority of the board.At its August meeting, the three members outside of Kemp’s orbit – King, Johnston and Jeffares – voted to demand that the state attorney general reinvestigate claims of irregularities in Fulton county’s election tabulation of 2020, threatening to hire outside counsel to investigate instead.Carr’s office responded, denying their demand and notifying them that the only lawyers the state board of elections has, by law, are at the attorney general’s office.Critics such as the Democratic party, who are filing complaints about the board’s actions, suggest that board’s goal is to delay certification in the event of an apparent Trump loss in order to bolster future claims of another stolen election.The complaint filed by the Democratic party of Georgia and Cathy Woolard, a former chairperson of the local Fulton county board of registration and elections, argues that the board “knowingly and willfully violated state law” by holding the August meeting without proper notice, “and have repeatedly disregarded the advice of the attorney general’s office, turning instead to outside parties for both legal counsel and the substance of proposed rules”.By doing so, the board had created an appearance of impropriety, the complaint alleges, noting how board members had received a standing ovation at a Trump rally and how Jeffares, had reportedly discussed a position in the Trump administration in public.The complaint invokes Georgia’s ethics law, which states that the governor is compelled to remove board members who violate the ethics code.The word “shall” limits the governor’s discretion. But Kemp wanted to know if the letter of complaint constituted “formal charges”.Staff attorneys from Carr’s office responded on Friday, telling Kemp that it did not.“‘Upon formal charges being filed’ does not mean that a citizen can simply submit information to the Governor and trigger the hearing process contemplated by the Code Section,” the legal memo says. “Had the General Assembly intended to create an informal process in O.C.G.A. § 45-10-4 that could be initiated by any member of the public, it would have done so as it has in other areas of the law discussed herein. Instead, it provided for a structured process that is only commenced ‘upon formal charges being filed’.” More