Politics

(NEW YORK) — In a blistering farewell address to constituents on Monday, a defiant New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo blasted the State Attorney General’s five-month investigation that found he sexually harassed multiple women, calling it a “political firecracker” that triggered an “unfair and unjust” rush to judgment against him.

The 63-year-old Cuomo is set to leave office at 11:59 p.m. Monday, and his replacement, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, will be sworn in as New York’s first woman governor at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday by the state’s chief judge, Janet DiFiore, in a private ceremony at the state capitol in Albany.

But in a noon address, Cuomo used the opportunity to slam the allegations against him and tout his accomplishments as governor.

“Let me say now that when government politicizes allegations and the headlines condemn without facts, you undermine the justice system and that doesn’t serve women and it doesn’t serve men or society,” Cuomo said. “I understand that there are moments of intense political pressure and media frenzy that cause a rush to judgment, but that is not right. It’s not fair or sustainable. Facts still matter.”

Cuomo, who has insisted he did not touch anyone inappropriately, announced his resignation on Aug. 13, ten days after State Attorney General Letitia James made public the results of an investigation she alleged found the governor sexually harassed multiple women, including current and former state employees, and had retaliated against one of his accusers.

“A firecracker can start a stampede, but at one point everyone looks around and says, ‘Why are we running?'” The truth is ultimately always revealed,” Cuomo said. “The attorney general’s report was designed to be a political firecracker on an explosive topic and it worked. There was a political and media stampede but the truth will (come) out in time. Of that I am confident.”

Cuomo also sought to establish a legacy beyond the allegations that drove him from office, saying, “No governor in the nation has passed more progressive measures than I have.” He listed his accomplishments, including a refurbished LaGuardia Airport, a new Penn Station transportation terminal in New York City and marriage equality as cornerstones to what he called a “new paradigm of government that actually works.”

He offered advice for the pandemic that made him a national figure for the empathy and seriousness he showed during his daily press briefings on the crisis. And he reminded listeners that under his leadership, “We faced up to the facts and we made the tough but necessary decisions.”

Cuomo acknowledged that at midnight Kathy Hochul will become governor and said “I believe she will step up to the challenge.”

But he returned to the scandal that has led to his dramatic downfall.

“Now there are moments in life that test our character, that asks us are we the person we believe we are or are we the person we try to be at our best. You know me, I am a fighter and my instinct is to fight this because it is unfair and unjust in my mind,” Cuomo said.

“But you also know that I love New York and I serve you,” he said. “That is the oath that I took. And in this moment, I believe the right thing is that my service comes first. Prolonging this situation could only cause governmental paralysis and that is just not an option for you and not an option for the state, especially now.”

He began his last day on the job Monday with his top aid releasing a statement on his behalf, saying Cuomo “has no interest in running for office again.”

Melissa DeRosa, secretary to the governor, issued a statement on Cuomo’s immediate plans when he leaves the job he claimed a decade ago, one once held by his late father, Mario Cuomo.

DeRosa said that Cuomo has spent nearly 25 years in public service, from being secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton administration in the 1990s to getting elected state attorney general in 2006 and serving as governor since 2010.

“And the way he does it, it’s 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” said DeRosa, whose resignation on Aug. 8 as the most powerful unelected bureaucrat in state government will also take effect Monday night. “He looks forward to spending time with his family and has a lot of fishing to catch up on. He is exploring a number of options, but has no interest in running for office again.”

Over the weekend, Cuomo sought to show he was in control until the end as he presided over briefings on Tropical Storm Henri. He requested his emergency management team remain in place and said Hochul had been briefed despite her absence from the news conferences.

Attempting to keep reporters “on topic,” Cuomo asked that questions be limited to the storm.

“We’re dealing with an emergency and New Yorkers want to hear about an emergency,” Cuomo said.

The first question he took was whether he still planned to resign on Monday.

“And, yes, my final day is [Monday],” Cuomo said during a news briefing Sunday.

Unlike Cuomo, who honed his political instincts at the hip of his father, Hochul’s political career began on a town council in Western New York. She briefly served in Congress and has been lieutenant governor for seven years.

“I’m excited about this,” Hochul said last week during a visit to New York City’s Queens borough. “I’m excited about this opportunity. I’m very prepared for this.”

A public swearing-in ceremony will be held for Hochul at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday in the Red Room of the state capitol building. But she wasted no time in announcing the first two appointments of her administration, picking Karen Persichilli Keogh, a former senior aid to Hillary Rodham Clinton, as Secretary to the Governor and Elizabeth Fine, executive vice president and General Counsel of Empire State Development (New York’s economic development agency), as Counsel to the Governor.

Once she takes office, among Hochul’s first tasks will be appointing a new lieutenant governor and she has said it would be someone from a New York City borough. She has signaled there would be “turnover” from the Cuomo administration, particularly among those in the Executive Chamber that were named in the state attorney general’s report as enabling Cuomo’s alleged harassment.

“I’m looking forward at the right time to introducing the members of my administration,” Hochul said.

Another priority is the pandemic and repopulating the depleted ranks of the state’s health department.

Hochul said the state has the authority to mandate masks in schools statewide and has said she believes “we will need mask mandates for children to go back to school … and that will have to be universal, it will be statewide.”

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(WASHINGTON) — U.S. diplomats at the embassy in Kabul warned in a classified memo to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the department’s leadership last month that the Afghan government was at risk of collapse as the Taliban offensive swept across the country, a source familiar with the memo confirmed to ABC News.

The dissent cable, as such memos are called at the agency, was sent on July 13 and was immediately brought to Blinken’s attention, the source said.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price declined to comment on the cable, saying dissent cables are “strictly between the Department’s leadership and the authors of the dissent messages,” but said Blinken reads and responds to each and values their use.

It’s another example of how U.S. officials had been warning senior Biden administration officials about the risks of the president’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, although even diplomats on the ground had no idea the collapse could come so quickly.

The cable, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, called on the Biden administration to begin an airlift operation immediately for Afghans who helped the U.S., according to the source.

It also urged the U.S. government to use stronger language to condemn the Taliban’s atrocities as they swept across the country and gained control of provinces, per the source — something the embassy, its top diplomat Ambassador Ross Wilson and eventually the department started doing around that time.

Blinken read the cable and responded to it, according to the source, who said the “thoughts of the drafters reflected much of the thinking at the department.” The day after the cable was sent, the administration announced Operation Allies Refuge to begin relocating Afghans who assisted the U.S. military and diplomatic missions and their families to the U.S.

But that operation did not begin until late July, and before Kabul fell on Sunday, it had only brought under 2,000 Afghans to the U.S. — those who had been approved for special immigrant visas and already undergone security vetting. In total, some 20,000 Afghans who worked for the U.S. have applied for these visas, according to the State Department, for themselves and tens of thousands more family members.

The administration has been criticized by U.S. lawmakers of both parties and veterans groups, among others, for not beginning that operation sooner, moving Afghans to the U.S. quickly enough or securing agreements with safe countries to host Afghans who have not yet passed security vetting.

“There was a concern that if we moved too quickly that it would undermine the confidence of the Afghan government and it would lead to a collapse even faster,” Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told ABC News Wednesday.

“I appreciate that in hindsight people are saying, ‘Why didn’t you do this? Why didn’t you do that?'” she added. “The focus now today is getting all those SIVs out.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The Cannon House Office Building, a congressional office building in Washington, D.C., was evacuated via underground routes Thursday morning due to a suspicious vehicle, according to a law enforcement sources.

The Capitol Police in a tweet called it “an active bomb threat investigation.”

Messages have been sent to congressional staffers asking that they “remain calm and relocate to Longworth House Office Building using the underground tunnels.”

The Library of Congress is also being evacuated, sources told ABC News.

The FBI said it’s responding. The White House is monitoring the situation and is receiving updates from law enforcement, according to an administration official.

Congress is in recess.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
 

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(WASHINGTON) — Several governmental buildings in Washington, D.C., were evacuated Thursday morning due to a suspicious vehicle and what Capitol Police call “an active bomb threat investigation.”

Law enforcement negotiators are working to make contact with the person in the vehicle, law enforcement sources told ABC News.

Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said in a press conference around noon local time that negotiations are still ongoing to have a “peaceful resolution” and the suspect’s motives were unknown.

The suspect told responding police he had a bomb, and responding officers said he had what appeared to be a detonator in his hand, Manger said.

The Cannon House Office Building, a congressional office building, was evacuated via underground routes. The Library of Congress and Supreme Court building were also evacuated. Both the Supreme Court and Congress are on recess.

Messages have been sent to congressional staffers asking that they “remain calm and relocate to Longworth House Office Building using the underground tunnels.”

Senate staff were asked in a message to “remain clear of the police activity” and to “please move indoors” if they were outside on Capitol grounds.

The FBI said it’s responding. The White House is monitoring the situation and is receiving updates from law enforcement, according to an administration official.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(WASHINGTON) — Several governmental buildings in Washington, D.C., were evacuated Thursday morning due to what Capitol Police call “an active bomb threat investigation” after a man drove a pickup truck onto a sidewalk.

The bomb threat suspect, 49-year-old Floyd Ray Roseberry of North Carolina, surrendered Thursday afternoon and is in police custody, Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said.

It’s still unclear if there were explosives in the truck, Manger said in an afternoon news conference.

The suspect had been sitting in his truck for several hours in front of the Library of Congress and said he had explosives, Manger said.

Responding officers said he had what appeared to be a detonator in his hand, Manger said.

Authorities tried to negotiate with the suspect by writing messages on a whiteboard, Manger said. Authorities then used a robot to give the suspect a phone, but he wouldn’t use it, Manger said.

The suspect then exited his truck and surrendered without incident, Manger said.

Authorities are also investigating a video posted to Facebook that purports to have been posted by the man in the vehicle.

The Cannon House Office Building, a congressional office building, was evacuated via underground routes. The Library of Congress and Supreme Court building were also evacuated. Both the Supreme Court and Congress are on recess.

Messages were sent to congressional staffers asking that they “remain calm and relocate to Longworth House Office Building using the underground tunnels.”

Senate staff were asked in a message to “remain clear of the police activity” and to “please move indoors” if they were outside on Capitol grounds.

The FBI said it was responding. The White House is monitoring the situation and is receiving updates from law enforcement, according to an administration official.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(WASHINGTON) — When President Joe Biden marked his 100th day in office, both the pandemic and the American occupation of Afghanistan seemed like they would soon be in the rearview mirror. Just over a hundred days later, the sudden resurgence of the coronavirus and the Taliban are twin crises with the potential to sink his reputation on the world stage.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, the president defended his administration’s strategy on both fronts, despite facing waves of criticism over the chaotic military exit and plans to offer booster shots while many countries can’t immunize even their most at-risk populations.

Biden insisted the drawdown in Afghanistan was a “simple choice,” and could not have been carried out more effectively.

“So you don’t think this exit could have been handled better in any way, no mistakes?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“We’re gonna go back in hindsight and look, but the idea that somehow there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens,” Biden said.

But when Biden announced the plans for the withdrawal in April, he did not foreshadow mayhem, saying instead that the exit would be done “responsibly, deliberately, and safely.” And in the months that followed, he repeatedly dismissed the possibility of a Taliban takeover.

Stephanopoulos pressed Biden on if there had been a breakdown in intelligence.

“I think there was no consensus. If you go back and look at the intelligence reports, they said that it was more likely to be sometime by the end of the year,” Biden said.

“But, you didn’t put a timeline out when you said it was highly unlikely. You just said flat out it’s highly unlikely the Taliban would take over,” Stephanopoulos responded.

“The idea that the Taliban would take over was premised on the notion that somehow, the 300,000 troops we had trained and equipped was gonna just collapse, they were gonna give up,” Biden replied. “I don’t think anybody anticipated that.”

Biden committed to keeping American soldiers on the ground until every American who wants to be evacuated can be, even if it means keeping a troop presence past the end of the month.

As for the nation’s Afghan allies who now fear retaliation from the Taliban, Biden said the U.S. would relocate as many as possible.

“The commitment holds to get everyone out that, in fact, we can get out and everyone who should come out. And that’s the objective. That’s what we’re doing now. That’s the path we’re on. And I think we’ll get there,” he said.

The scenes of bedlam at the Kabul airport played out just two months after the president’s first foreign trip in office, a mission meant to shore up relationships with key European allies that were strained during the Trump administration. During the tour, the president repeatedly declared, “America is back,” and ready to again take the helm on global issues.

Biden now defensively asserts that the bleak end to the military mission in Afghanistan doesn’t belie that promise.

“Before I made this decision, I met with all our allies, our NATO allies in Europe. They agreed, we should be getting out,” he said, adding that he was working the phones to make sure he and other world leaders “have a coherent view of how we’re going to deal from this point on.”

Whether the U.S. will recognize the Taliban’s rule remains to be seen. The president said he did not believe the group had reformed since it brutally wielded power over Afghanistan at the turn of the millennium, but that “the way to deal with that is putting economic, diplomatic, and international pressure on them to change their behavior.”

The president also said Afghanistan is not the same incubator of extremism that it was before the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

“Al Qaeda, ISIS, they metastasized. There’s a significantly greater threat to the United States from Syria. There’s a significant greater threat from East Africa,” Biden said, saying the U.S. maintains the ability to eliminate those threats without having a military presence on the ground.

“My dad used to have an expression,” Biden continued. “If everything is equally important to you, nothing is important to you. We should be focusing on where the threat is the greatest.”

Nearly a year and a half into the global COVID-19 pandemic, the virus remains one of the greatest threats to the American public. On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced plans to begin rolling out booster shots, explaining that the move was necessary to stay ahead of the virus, especially amid the surging delta variant.

Other wealthy nations will also offer boosters, but low- and middle-income countries are still struggling to access vaccines. In the poorest countries, only about 1% of the population has received even a single dose, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The World Health Organization slammed booster shots, equating giving third injections to handing out extra life jackets to people who already have them “while we’re leaving other people to drown without a single life jacket.”

“Are you comfortable with Americans getting a third shot when so many millions around the world haven’t had their first?” Stephanopoulos asked the president.

“Absolutely, because we’re provided more to the rest of the world than all the rest of the world combined,” Biden said. “Before we get to the middle of next year, we’re gonna provide a half a billion shots to the rest of the world. We’re keeping our part of the bargain. We’re doing more than anybody.”

The president said he and the first lady will roll up their sleeves again soon.

“We got our shots, all the way back in, I think December. So it’s past time,” Biden said.

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(WASHINGTON) — In an exclusive interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, and the president’s first since the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, President Joe Biden stood firm in his defense of the United States’ withdrawal, but asserted for the first time that he believes the chaos was unavoidable.

“So you don’t think this could have been handled — this exit could have been handled better in any way, no mistakes?” Stephanopoulos asked Biden.

“No, I don’t think it could have been handled in a way that, we’re gonna go back in hindsight and look — but the idea that somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens. I don’t know how that happened,” Biden replied.

“So for you, that was always priced into the decision?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“Yes,” Biden replied, but then amended his answer.

“Now exactly what happened, I’ve not priced in,” he said. “But I knew that they’re going to have an enormous — Look, one of the things we didn’t know is what the Taliban would do in terms of trying to keep people from getting out. What they would do. What are they doing now? They’re cooperating, letting American citizens get out, American personnel get out, embassies get out, et cetera, but they’re having — we’re having some more difficulty having those who helped us when we were in there.”

Biden’s decision to withdraw has led to scenes of pandemonium in Afghanistan, with as many as 11,000 Americans and tens of thousands of endangered Afghans scrambling to evacuate the country. Scenes of civilians swamping planes on the runway at the Kabul airport, desperate for escape, have triggered bipartisan criticism that the Biden administration handled the hasty exit poorly.

Biden grew defensive when Stephanopoulos referred to the scenes of distress.

“We’ve all seen the pictures. We’ve seen those hundreds of people packed in a C-17. We’ve seen Afghans falling –“

“That was four days ago, five days ago!” Biden interjected, although the photo Stephanopoulos referred to, of hundreds of evacuees packed into a C-17 cargo plane, was taken Monday.

“What did you think when you first saw those pictures?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“What I thought was, we have to gain control of this. We have to move this more quickly. We have to move in a way in which we can take control of that airport. And we did,” Biden said.

The U.S. said late Tuesday it has successfully evacuated 3,200 people from Afghanistan, including all U.S. Embassy personnel, except for a core group of diplomats at the Kabul airport. Officials have said they hope to ramp up to being able to evacuate 9,000 people each day.

But the U.S. government is not currently providing American citizens in Afghanistan with safe transport to the airport, and it remains unclear how many will be able to safely reach the airport, as Taliban checkpoints continue to harden.

Despite the reality in Afghanistan, Biden was adamant in defending his decision.

“When you look at what’s happened over the last week, was it a failure of intelligence, planning, execution or judgment?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“Look, it was a simple choice, George,” Biden said. “When you had the government of Afghanistan, the leader of that government, get in a plane and taking off and going to another country; when you saw the significant collapse of the Afghan troops we had trained, up to 300,000 of them, just leaving their equipment and taking off — that was, you know, I’m not, that’s what happened. That’s simply what happened. And so the question was, in the beginning, the threshold question was, do we commit to leave within the timeframe we set, do we extend it to Sept. 1, or do we put significantly more troops in?”

Biden noted that violent attacks in Afghanistan had paused in recent months due to a deal negotiated by the Trump administration with Taliban leaders that was predicated upon an eventual U.S. withdrawal.

“I hear people say, well you had 2,500 folks in there and nothing was happening. You know, there wasn’t any more — but guess what, the fact was, that the reason that wasn’t happening, was the last president negotiated a year earlier that he’d be out by May 1st and that the return, there’d be no attack on American forces. That’s what was done. That’s why nothing was happening,” Biden said.

“I had a simple choice. If I said, ‘we’re gonna stay,’ then we’d better be prepared to

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(NEW YORK) — Seven months after he was pardoned by then-President Donald Trump, Ken Kurson, who is a friend of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and an associate of Rudy Giuliani, was arrested in New York on state-level felony charges.

Kurson’s pardon came shortly after federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charged him in October with cyberstalking related to his 2015 divorce.

Kurson now faces charges of eavesdropping and computer trespassing filed by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. 

“Mr. Kurson’s ex-wife wrote on his behalf that she never wanted this investigation or arrest and ‘repeatedly asked for the FBI to drop it,'” the Trump White House said in announcing Kurson’s pardon on January 20.

The pardon announcement said the investigation was because Kurson was nominated for a role within the Trump administration.

According to the charging documents, the FBI came across Kurson’s allegedly illegal conduct during a background check following the Trump administration offer of  a seat on the board of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Kurson helped manage Giuliani’s presidential campaign in 2008, and in 2013 he was named the editor of The New York Observer by Kushner, who owned the newspaper.

In the federal indictment, Kurson stood accused of harassing three unnamed people, including his ex-wife and another person he blamed for his divorce. Kurson has denied the allegations.

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(NEW YORK) — Seven months after he was granted a pardon by then-President Donald Trump, Ken Kurson, a friend of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and a former associate of Rudy Giuliani, was arrested Wednesday in New York on new, state felony charges.

Kurson received the pardon from Trump not long after federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charged him in October 2020 with cyberstalking related to his 2015 divorce.

Kurson now faces charges of eavesdropping and computer trespassing filed by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which took up the case almost immediately after the pardon was announced on Trump’s final day in office.

Manhattan prosecutors looked at the same alleged conduct as federal prosecutors and accused Kurson of spying on his ex-wife by unlawfully accessing her computer. The alleged eavesdropping and computer trespass occurred from Kurson’s work computer while he was still editor at The New York Observer.

“Mr. Kurson’s ex-wife wrote on his behalf that she never wanted this investigation or arrest and ‘repeatedly asked for the FBI to drop it,'” the Trump White House said in announcing Kurson’s pardon on Jan. 20.

“I hired a lawyer to protect me from being forced into yet another round of questioning,” the White House quoted her as writing. “My disgust with this arrest and the subsequent articles is bottomless.”

The pardon announcement also said that the investigation was only undertaken because Kurson was nominated for a role within the Trump administration.

According to both the current and prior charging documents, the FBI discovered Kurson’s allegedly illegal conduct during a background check after the Trump administration offered him a seat on the board of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Kurson helped manage Giuliani’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2008, and in 2013 was named the editor of The New York Observer by Kushner, who owned the newspaper. Kurson resigned from that position in 2017.

In the federal indictment, Kurson stood accused of harassing three unnamed people, including his ex-wife and another person he blamed for his divorce. Kurson, who denied wrongdoing, allegedly targeted the individual with negative reviews on Yelp along with threatening messages and anonymous calls.

“We will not accept presidential pardons as get-out-of-jail-free cards for the well-connected in New York,” District Attorney Cy Vance said in a statement. “As alleged in the complaint, Mr. Kurson launched a campaign of cybercrime, manipulation, and abuse from his perch at the New York Observer, and now the people of New York will hold him accountable. We encourage all survivors and witnesses of this type of cybercrime and intimate partner abuse to report these crimes to our Office.”

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(GEORGIA) — Georgia’s State Election Board appointed a bipartisan independent performance review panel on Wednesday to investigate potential violations of election law by officials in Fulton, the state’s largest county — a move that could lead to the takeover of the county Registration and Elections Board.

Under SB 202, the election code overhaul that Republican Gov. Brian Kemp enacted in March amid protests and outrage from Democrats and voting rights activists, members of the state legislature can now request a performance review of their respective county’s local election board. The county reviews could lead to what critics have called a state “takeover” of local election branches.

Once the Fulton County review is complete, if at least three members of the State Election Board determine that the review finds at least three violations in the last two general election cycles that have not been “sufficiently remedied,” and that there is “clear and convincing evidence” that within the last two years, the county has shown “nonfeasance, malfeasance, or gross negligence” in election administration, a temporary election superintendent will be appointed by the Board to replace the multi-person local board of elections for at least nine months.

If the Board votes to appoint a superintendent after reviewing the panel’s written report, that superintendent will assume all the local board’s responsibilities, which include hiring and firing power as well as certifying elections.

The Board was legally required to appoint the review panel because enough state representatives and senators — all Republicans — from Fulton County asked for it. But while county Board of Commissioners Chairman Robb Pitts acknowledged that, he also blasted the development.

“It is still outrageous to see the Big Lie and demands of conspiracy theorists continue to progress. This is the result of a cynical ploy to undermine faith in our elections process and democracy itself – it is shameful partisan politics at its very worst,” Pitts said in a statement to ABC News.

Stacey Abrams, founder of Fair Fight Action, also decried the move as “partisan,” submitting testimony to the Board saying appointing the review panel “endangers our democracy.”

But Kemp, who’s staunchly defended the new law, backed it, tweeting, “Fulton County has a long history of mismanagement, incompetence, and a lack of transparency when it comes to running elections – including during 2020. I fully support this review.”

The three-member review panel is made up of Stephen Day, a Democratic member of metro Atlanta’s Gwinnett County elections board; Ricky Kittle, the Republican chairman of rural Northwest, Georgia’s Catoosa County elections board; and Ryan Germany, general counsel in Raffensperger’s office. Along with the secretary, Germany was heard rebuffing former President Donald Trump’s false allegations of rampant voter fraud in a recording of the now-infamous Jan. 2 phone call in which Trump demanded Raffensperger “find” exactly enough votes to overturn the election in Georgia.

Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold and home to most of Atlanta and a little over 10% of Georgia’s registered voters, was at the center of election conspiracy theories that allies and supporters of Trump, as well as the former president himself, spread about the 2020 presidential election. Those included one the secretary of state’s office debunked numerous times alleging there were “suitcases” of mysterious ballots that showed up during the counting process in the county.

Just last month, Trump in a statement again targeted the November election in Fulton County as a “total fraud,” citing baseless allegations from a group fighting in court to review the county’s absentee ballots in order to claim the county “stuffed the ballot box.”

But while there is no evidence of election fraud or tampering in the county in any of the 2020 elections, managerial and administration issues that often trickle down to voters, like hours-long lines, have been documented for years leading up to November.

Former Voter Protection Director for the Democratic Party of Georgia Sara Tindall Ghazal, the lone Democrat serving alongside three Republicans on the State Election Board, spoke to that during Wednesday’s meeting.

She said the three-member review panel will face “tremendous political pressure on both sides to come to preordained conclusions” in this investigation.

“The narrative driving this pressure has been influenced by disinformation surrounding the November 2020 election, but the fact remains that Fulton County voters have reported numerous problems for far longer than November 2020, particularly surrounding registration and absentee ballots,” she said.

While she urged the panel to “resist” partisan pressure and said she believed the members would, she also urged Fulton officials to take the review as “an opportunity to have fresh eyes on their systems and their procedures and identify areas of improvement.”

Since SB 202’s passage, it was expected that Fulton County would be the first test of the new law. In June, GOP lawmakers representing Fulton formally requested the review in letters obtained by ABC News, with state senators calling it “a measure of last resort.”

“The public record clearly demonstrates ample evidence which calls into question the competence of [Fulton’s] local election official regarding the oversight and administration of elections.. with state law and regulations,” that letter concluded.

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