The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports a network of far-right actors are working with President Donald Trump to derail elections in Georgia and cast doubt on any vote that removes Republicans from power.
“The meeting and the call recounting it offer a glimpse at how activists, once on the fringe of the conservative movement, are now trying to overhaul elections in Georgia and across the country,” reports AJC. “Now several are in the Trump administration, and Fulton County is firmly in their sights ahead of the 2026 midterms.”
For years, the AJC reports a “network of activists has cast doubt on Georgia’s 2020 election, questioning the integrity of the state’s voting machines and the voter rolls that determine who can vote.”
Legitimate election officials dismissed their challenges and investigators debunked their fraudclaims, said AJC. But now several are in the Trump administration, “and Fulton County is firmly in their sights ahead of the 2026 midterms.”
The AJC reports a recent Zoom call revealed conservative activists eagerly sharing tips and tricks for election engineering, which they learned at a February summit in Washington with several Trump administration officials, including Kurt Olsen, Trump’s director of election security and integrity, who played a key role in the FBI’s January raid on an election warehouse in Fulton County.
“Kurt is leading a team and leading a charge of great people that are working together,” said Holly Kesler, a Georgia conservative activist, during a recent “election integrity” meeting of the Georgia Constitution Party, audio of which was obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“It is a multiagency approach,” she said, reports AJC. “And there are a lot of things going on behind the scenes. I’ve been a part of some of that.”
“Others involved in the Election Integrity Summit included Brad Carver of the Georgia Republican Party; Marci McCarthy, a former DeKalb Republican official who now oversees public affairs at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; and Clay Parikh, a cybersecurity expert whose expertise was used by the U.S. Department of Justice to justify seizing troves of Fulton County’s 2020 election records,” said AJC.
The AJC adds that Carver currently leads the “Election Confidence Task Force” within the Georgia GOP and was one of the 16 Trump fake electors in 2020. More recently he called Georgia “the biggest topic”at the Washington summit and expressed frustration with people in the Trump administration who were not pursuing Trump’s attacks on elections with proper vigor.
“But some of those involved in efforts to overhaul elections have been careful about how much they reveal to the public,” reports AJC. “In the Zoom, Carver said meetings like the ones hosted by the Georgia Constitution Party and Signal group chats are helpful because they allow information to be shared without ending up ‘on the front page of liberal media.’”