Secret testimony by Trump allies refuted baseless stolen election claims

When Donald Trump was facing four criminal indictments, two of them stemmed from his efforts to overturn the United States' 2020 presidential election results: a federal case prosecuted by then-special counsel Jack Smith for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), and a Georgia case prosecuted by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Both of those cases were doomed when Trump narrowly defeated Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in 2024.

In 2020, Trump and his allies claimed, without evidence, that Democrats stole Georgia's electoral votes from him — a claim that two prominent Republicans in the Peach State, Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, pushed backed against. Kemp and Raffensperger adamantly maintained that then-President-elect Joe Biden won Georgia fair and square.

Kemp and Raffensperger spoke publicly and on the record. But according to New York Times reporters Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim, other Republicans spoke candidly about Georgia's 2020 election results in closed-door testimony from 2022.

In an article published on January 13, Fausset and Hakim explain, "Transcripts of secret grand jury testimony from the Georgia election interference case against Mr. Trump and his allies, obtained this week by the New York Times, show just how alarmed and exasperated a number of senior Republicans felt about the president's efforts to overturn an American presidential election. The testimony, given in 2022, is emerging at a time when Mr. Trump is again raising complaints about his 2020 defeat and voicing regret that he did not order the National Guard to seize voting machines after the election."

Those transcripts, according to the Times reporters, "were part of the investigative file" in Willis' election interference/RICO case against Trump and others and were "conducted by a special purpose grand jury."

Republicans who testified included Kemp, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and former Georgia House Speaker David Ralston.

Describing the testimony, Fausset and Hakim report, "Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina found President Trump's claims of election fraud in 2020 'unnerving.' Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia described Mr. Trump's efforts to get his state's lawmakers to intervene a 'fruitless exercise.' David Ralston, a former speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, called the plan to create slates of fake pro-Trump electors in states he had lost 'the craziest thing I’ve heard.'"

Graham, according to Fausset and Hakim, had no doubt that Biden won Georgia when he spoke to the grand jurors in 2022.

Graham testified, "I have told him more times than we can count that he fell short…. If you told him Martians came and stole votes, he'd be inclined to believe it."

Recalling a conversation with Trump after the 2020 election, Ralston testified that "right off the bat, I've got to tell him I disagree with him."

Read Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim's full article for The New York Times at this link (subscription required).