Peach Tree Times

A former spokeswoman for President Donald Trump has accused general counsel for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of “holding evidence hostage from the State Election Board.”

“[Brad] Raffensperger’s general counsel is holding evidence hostage from the State Election Board. They can only see the ballot images if they agree to drop the investigation into why there were over 20,000 unsubstantiated votes in both the original and machine recount in 2020,” Liz Harrington said in a Thursday post on X.

Harrington referred to an email exchange which took in place in May, between Georgia Secretary of State’s Office General Counsel Charlene S. McGowan and Janice Johnston, a member of Georgia’s State Election Board.

The conversation was in regards to an exhibit of 2020 Presidential Election recount data from December of that year, titled “Exhibit 11” – specifically, electronic images of nearly 519,000 ballots submitted in Fulton County, which Johnston had asked to be made available.

Screenshots of the email exchange between McGowan and Johnston were attached to Harrington’s post.

“I have discussed with the Chairman your request that the electronic ballot images provided by Fulton County in response to a subpoena in the referenced case be provided to you on a flash drive," McGowan wrote in a May 14 email. "The Chairman and I agreed that the request can be treated as an Open Records Request. As we would respond to any ORR for these files, there are both chain of custody issues and security concerns with allowing electronic copies of election data files to be distributed among the public. Until I am sure that the files do not have any other data associated with them other than the ballot images, they cannot be released."

“However, we can make the files available for inspection, so long as the Board is in agreement that this case is fully resolved and closed," she continued. "As I’ve said, this office keeps SEB investigative file materials confidential until the case is fully resolved and closed. If 2023-025 is a closed case, we can make them available to you to review at our office. You can schedule this inspection with Investigations, I would just ask that you limit the time involved to a few hours a week, so that it does not disrupt their regular job duties.”

McGowan’s message did not satisfy Johnston.

“Charlene’s email states that my request would be treated as an Open Records Request, but I did not receive a response," Johnston wrote back on May 29. "I called [Georgia Secretary of State Office’s Chief Investigator] Sara Koth yesterday, and she had Investigator Gil Humes give me a call. Mr. Humes said that the images will available for me to review next week. I still do not understand how Exhibit 11 was listed in the Case Summary, which should have been available for all of the Board to review well before the meeting.” 

“Now I find that Exhibit 11 still not available. This Exhibit was repeatedly referenced during the Investigator’s and Ms. McGowan’s presentation," Johnston continued. "Please help me understand how an Exhibit can be listed, referred to and questioned about, yet I am still unable to see Exhibit 11. The viewing of Exhibit 11 ballot images does not fully resolve or close the case.”

The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office reported that Dominion Voting Systems lent Fulton County four scanners for the December 2020 recount. The county acknowledged that “technical issues” occurred during the recount, including failure to properly follow protocols for backing up data to servers.”

Subsequently, while the Office may not have all the ballot images, they do have all the physical ballots – currently preserved under seal, due to pending litigation.

Harrington further posted on X on Thursday that “SEB-2023-025 shows Fulton County was 17,234 votes short during the machine recount, and its final results were missing 17,852 ballot images and included over 3,125 duplicates.”

“The state wants to sweep it under the rug without ever showing the evidence,” Harrington said.