Georgia Attorney General Says State Board Can’t Direct His Office To Investigate 2020 Election
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr (R) stated that the State Election Board can’t ask his office to investigate Fulton County’s handling of the 2020 presidential election in an official opinion issued Monday.
This opinion stems from a complaint filed by voters Joe Rossi and Kevin Moncla, alleging mass election fraud in Fulton County — which President Joe Biden won by a tight margin in 2020. They claimed there were multiple duplicate ballots, missing ballot images and missing documents.
Janice Johnston, one of the Republican board members, reintroduced a discussion of the complaint at a July 9 board meeting.
Board chair John Fervier argued that “the case has been heard and adjudicated in a previous hearing,” but Johnston said this issue needs to be discussed more to ensure that Rossi and Moncla’s complaint is effectively heard.
“A complete investigation is absolutely necessary to help Fulton County and prevent the recurrence of the same problems for the 2024 elections,” Johnston said at the meeting.
Then, at an Aug. 6 meeting, the board voted to refer this case to the attorney general’s office “with the instruction to immediately investigate with outside investigators” and requested a report within 30 days. They said that if the attorney general rejects their request, they will hire outside counsel to investigate this case.
The Republican board members who voted for this were praised at a rally earlier this month by former President Donald Trump, who said they were “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory.”
In his opinion, Carr said the “authority to investigate potential violations of the election laws rests with the [State Election Board] and not with the Attorney General,” and that he is not required to conduct an investigation because a state agency asked his office to.
Additionally, he explained the state election code does not empower him to “act on his own as an investigator beyond the limited context of a referral of a case to the Attorney General for potential criminal prosecution.”
He said the board has a couple of options: they can conduct their own investigation or authorize the secretary of state to investigate an issue.
This is part of the larger GOP’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election — in states like Georgia — and Trump has played a large role in this. Despite their allegations of mass voter fraud being rejected multiple times, Republicans continue to push this narrative as the 2024 election approaches.