Defendant in Georgia elections case argues Trump won
One of the defendants in the Fulton elections interference case is pursuing a unique legal strategy: trying to prove that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election in Georgia.
While other Trump allies, notably those who have reached plea deals with prosecutors, have backed away from election fraud claims, Harrison Floyd is doubling down. The one-time head of Black Voices for Trump was charged in August with three felony counts stemming from his alleged role in the harassment of poll worker Ruby Freeman.
In a court hearing Friday, attorneys for Floyd said they plan to present evidence that rebuts the information at the heart of the 97-page indictment: that Trump lost the 2020 election, including in Georgia and Fulton County, and that the case’s defendants refused to accept that fact, “knowingly and willfully” engaging in a conspiracy to unlawfully change the results of the election.
To do that, Floyd’s team has fired off a flurry subpoenas to a handful of state and local government agencies. Among the mountains of information it has requested: all mail-in absentee ballots cast in Fulton in the Nov. 2020 election, along with the envelopes they came in and every absentee ballot application; reports from Dominion Voting Systems, which manufactures Georgia’s voting machines; and forensic images of the servers used to count, tabulate and report election results.
Floyd’s team has also demanded an unredacted copy of the Secretary of State’s investigative report of alleged election fraud at State Farm Arena on election night 2020, where Freeman and her daughter were working, along with unredacted copies of any and all documents related to the report. That includes interviews FBI investigators conducted with a person who created a fake Instagram account that purported to be Freeman and posted about engaging in election fraud.
Floyd’s team believes the subpoenas will produce exculpatory evidence. If Fulton can’t reconcile suspicious-looking ballots, his attorneys in a recent court filing, “then the state’s indictment about many things including false statements evaporates — instantly.”
Even if they can’t prove that Trump outright won, Floyd’s attorneys said there is enough evidence to show that on January 4, 2021, when Floyd spoke with Freeman, his beliefs that there may have been substantial election fraud were not unreasonable and hence there was no criminal intent.
The Secretary of State’s office, Fulton County Clerk and Board of Registration and Elections have asked Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the case, to quash the subpoenas. Attorneys for the agencies have called Floyd’s requests “vague,” “unreasonable” and a “fishing expedition.”