Tag: Stop the Steal

Exposed: The Perilous Playbook of Debunked Election Lies and Trump’s Weaponization of the FBI

Blue Press Journal – The recent FBI raid on Fulton County, Georgia, seizing nearly 700 boxes of 2020 election ballots and records, has unveiled a deeply disturbing pattern: the aggressive recycling of thoroughly debunked election lies. Far from uncovering new evidence, the court-ordered affidavit supporting the raid reads like a greatest hits compilation of conspiracy theories, long-ago disproven in countless courts and by exhaustive audits. This alarming development signals a dangerous escalation in the campaign to undermine American democracy, leveraging law enforcement agencies for overtly political ends.

The Return of Baseless Allegations

The FBI’s affidavit, intended to establish probable cause for a criminal offense, relies heavily on claims that have been exhaustively investigated and widely discredited. Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who famously resisted pressure to “find” votes in 2020, aptly dismissed these assertions as “baseless and repackaged.” [Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution] Even Fulton County Board of Commissioners Chair Robb Pitts described the affidavit as based on “recycled rumors, lies, untruths and unproven conspiracy theories.” [Source: CNN]

Consider the affidavit’s core arguments:

• Missing Scanned Images: The FBI highlighted that Fulton County “does not have scanned images of all the 528,777 ballots.” Yet, this was not a violation of Georgia law at the time of the 2020 election. The requirement was added by the GOP-led state legislature months later, in March 2021. To present this as evidence of wrongdoing is deliberately misleading.
• Multiple Ballot Scans: The affidavit also pointed to instances of ballots being scanned multiple times. Independent investigations into this issue, including those in Fulton County, found no evidence of fraud. Ballots can be rescanned due to tabulation errors, with initial erroneous scans deleted. Crucially, multiple audits—the initial count, a hand-counted audit, and a machine recount—consistently affirmed Joe Biden’s victory margin of 11,779 votes in Georgia. [Source: Associated Press] The affidavit offers no evidence to suggest these procedural issues were the result of intentional criminal action.

As Stanford Law professor Orin Kerr succinctly stated, “In drafting a search warrant affidavit, the Fourth Amendment requires the inclusion of facts that would negate probable cause, if they exist. The government can’t pick facts that, if true, could support a finding a probable cause, but omit the facts that cancel that.” [Source: X / @OrinKerr] The Fulton County affidavit appears to be a stark example of such crucial omissions, presenting a one-sided narrative divorced from established facts and legal precedents.

The Legal System’s Resounding Rejection of Election Lies

These recycled theories have not just been debunked by election officials and independent journalists; they have been definitively rejected by virtually every level of the American judiciary. Following the 2020 election, Donald Trump and his allies filed over 60 lawsuits alleging widespread fraud, from state courts to the Supreme Court.

• Pennsylvania: In Trump v. Boockvar, federal courts found no evidence of fraud sufficient to overturn the election, a decision upheld on appeal.
• Georgia: Cases like Pearson v. Kemp, which challenged the state’s election procedures, were dismissed for lack of standing or merit.
• Supreme Court: The most significant rebuke came when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Texas v. Pennsylvania, et al., unequivocally rejected a lawsuit seeking to overturn results in four key states, citing Texas’s lack of standing. This unanimous decision underscored the absence of credible evidence for systemic fraud.

These judicial pronouncements, delivered by judges across the ideological spectrum, consistently affirmed the integrity of the 2020 election. The attempt to resurrect these thoroughly discredited claims through an FBI investigation represents an appalling disregard for legal due process and factual accuracy.

The Insidious Role of Kurt Olsen and the Weaponization of the FBI

Perhaps the most alarming revelation from the affidavit is that the FBI’s “criminal investigation originated from a referral sent by Kurt Olsen,” a temporary White House employee and a figure central to the “Stop the Steal” movement. Olsen is a notorious election denier who lobbied the Department of Justice to intervene in 2020 and was intimately involved in efforts to overturn the election. His record of promoting unsubstantiated allegations is so extensive that he was sanctioned by a federal court for making “false, misleading and unsupported factual assertions” in a 2022 Arizona election challenge. [Source: Arizona Republic]

Olsen’s involvement in initiating an FBI investigation he has used as a political weapon poses a serious threat to American democracy. This is not a legitimate inquiry but a blatant political weaponization of federal agencies. Allowing a known purveyor of debunked conspiracies, who has faced legal penalties for dishonesty, to trigger an FBI raid sets a troubling precedent. It signifies a dangerous erosion of federal law enforcement’s impartiality and its vulnerability to partisan manipulation.

The unusual involvement of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in a domestic law enforcement operation further amplified concerns, prompting Senators Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) to demand immediate briefings. [Source: The Washington Post] This intermingling of intelligence and domestic law enforcement, particularly when driven by demonstrably false premises, poses an existential threat to the rule of law.

A Clear and Present Danger to Democracy

This episode is more than just a rehash of old lies; it is a calculated effort to “dramatically remake our elections to curtail who is able to vote and whose votes are counted,” as Lauren Groh-Wargo, CEO of Fair Fight Action, warned. [Source: NPR] The willingness of federal agencies to act on such flimsy, politically motivated referrals—rooted in the discredited narratives of figures like Kurt Olsen—sets a perilous precedent. It undermines public faith in democratic institutions, emboldens those who seek to disenfranchise voters, and paves the way for further partisan interference in our electoral processes. The deliberate recycling of debunked election lies, now amplified by the power of the federal government, is an undeniable assault on the foundations of American democracy.