A former lawyer for President Donald Trump’s campaign and some supporters filed a lawsuit against the state of Georgia, citing massive election fraud, multiple violations of Georgia laws and multiple constitutional violations, and asking elections officials to overturn the results in the state.
The 104-page civil suit was filed on Wednesday, specifically naming Gov. Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and several other state election officials.
[SPECIAL SECTION: Election 2020]
In the lawsuit, which was obtained by Channel 2 Action News on Friday, former campaign lawyer Sidney Powell claimed there was widespread voter and ballot fraud, that voting machines were rigged to change votes from Trump to Biden and that ballots were mishandled, among other things.
The suit seeks an emergency order instructing the state to decertify the results of the general election and declare Trump the winner in Georgia.
Alternatively, the suit asks that electors from Georgia be disqualified from counting toward the 2020 election, or that electors should be directed to vote for Trump.
[RELATED: State audit reaffirms Biden wins Georgia, finds ‘not a thimble full of difference’ in vote count]
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A significant portion of the suit addresses claims that the Dominion Voting Systems software and voting machines used in Georgia and 16 other states were “created and run by domestic and foreign actors” to render ballot stuffing practices invisible.
“Smartmatic and Dominion were founded by foreign oligarchs and dictators to ensure computerized ballot-stuffing and vote manipulation to whatever level was needed to make certain Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez never lost another election,” the lawsuit claims. “Notably, Chavez ‘won’ every election thereafter.”
“This scheme and artifice to defraud affected tens of thousands of votes in Georgia alone and ‘rigged’ the election in Georgia for Joe Biden.”
Dominion released a statement Friday night, saying, in part,:
“Sidney Powell released what appears to be a very rough draft of a lawsuit against the Republican governor and secretary of state of Georgia alleging a bizarre election fraud conspiracy that—were it possible—would necessarily require the collaboration of thousands of participants, including state officeholders, bipartisan local elections officials, thousands of volunteer Election Day poll watchers in thousands of locations across the state of Georgia, federal and state government technology testing agencies, private elections service companies, and independent third-party auditors. This quite simply did not occur.”
“Every vote from a Dominion device in Georgia is documented on an auditable paper trail and creates a verifiable paper ballot available for hand-counting. In fact, the Georgia handcounts, independent audits, and machine tests have all repeatedly affirmed that the machine counts were accurate.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has repeatedly denied Trump’s claims of voter fraud, despite the fact that he is a Republican and said he voted for Trump.
Raffensperger issued a scathing op-ed earlier this week, blasting the president over trying to invalidate the election results in Georgia.
[RELATED: Secretary of State says random audit of voting machines found no evidence of tampering or hacking]
A previous lawsuit filed in Georgia last Thursday to try to delay the vote certification was thrown out by a federal judge.
On Friday, a Pennsylvania appeals court rejected yet another challenge to try to overturn election results there, saying that the “campaign’s claims have no merit.”
Georgia started an official Trump-requested recount of ballots this week. It’s the third time that votes will have been tabulated in the state.
Trump is legally able to ask for a recount under Georgia law. President-elect Joe Biden beat Trump by just 0.25% in the state’s certified results — well under the 0.5% threshold that allows a recount.
Trump is set to visit Georgia next week to stump for Republican Senate candidates Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
