Former US President Donald Trump sent a letter to Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Governor Brian Kemp demanding they look again at reports of 43,000 DeKalb County absentee ballots counted in the 2020 presidential election, despite purportedly violating the proper chain of custody rules. Trump added that should the reports be proven true, Kemp and Raffensperger should launch a process of "decertifying the election" results in the state or undertaking "whatever the correct legal remedy is".
The ex-POTUS also lamented that the two top Georgia officials systematically ignored his calls to investigate voter fraud allegations, the existence of which the former commander-in-chief failed to prove in court on over 60 occasions in 2020. He urged Kemp and Raffensperger to correct what he characterized as their mistakes, by ending the presidency of Joe Biden, which he continues to complain is "illegitimate".
"[Brad Raffensperger] and [Brian] Kemp are doing a tremendous disservice to the great state of Georgia and our nation, which is systematically being destroyed by an illegitimate president and his administration. The truth must be allowed to come out".
The estimated 43,000 absentee ballots Trump refers to in the letter were brought up on 30 August, in a local Georgia Star News investigation. The newspaper studied absentee ballot drop box transfer forms in DeKalb County, Georgia, and claimed that around 46% of all local ballots were delivered to the elections registrar on the next day after being collected. Another 26% of local absentee ballots were said to have had no receipt time recorded by the elections registrar.
If true, both acts go against the requirements established in the Georgia Emergency Rule by the state authorities in July 2020, ahead of the election. There is no official confirmation that the absentee ballots were registered in violation of the chain of custody rules. If proven to be true, however, it could undermine Biden's razor-thin 12,000-vote victory in Georgia.
Despite handing over the presidency to Biden in January 2021, Trump continues to claim that voter fraud took place in 2020 and that the election was "stolen from him". Trump's legal team, however, has failed to prove any of the over 60 voter fraud allegations in courts.