[guest post by Dana]

At the end of November 2020, I wrote about the death threats that Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his wife Tricia received after certifying an election win for Joe Biden. Reuters has released a damning report that includes specific threats that the family received on the heels of Trump’s election loss. These are nothing less than terrifying:

Late on the night of April 24, the wife of Georgia’s top election official got a chilling text message: “You and your family will be killed very slowly.”

A week earlier, Tricia Raffensperger, wife of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, had received another anonymous text: “We plan for the death of you and your family every day.”

That followed an April 5 text warning. A family member, the texter told her, was “going to have a very unfortunate incident.”

Those messages, which have not been previously reported, illustrate the continuing barrage of threats and intimidation against election officials and their families months after former U.S. President Donald Trump’s November election defeat. While reports of threats against Georgia officials emerged in the heated weeks after the voting, Reuters interviews with more than a dozen election workers and top officials – and a review of disturbing texts, voicemails and emails that they and their families received – reveal the previously hidden breadth and severity of the menacing tactics.

A look at Tricia Raffensperger’s response to death threats:

In an exclusive interview, Tricia Raffensperger spoke publicly for the first time about the threats of violence to her family and shared the menacing text messages with Reuters.

The Raffenspergers – Tricia, 65, and Brad, 66 – began receiving death threats almost immediately after Trump’s surprise loss in Georgia, long a Republican bastion. Tricia Raffensperger started taking precautions. She canceled regular weekly visits in her home with two grandchildren, ages 3 and 5 – the children of her eldest son, Brenton, who died from a drug overdose in 2018.

“I couldn’t have them come to my house anymore,” she said. “You don’t know if these people are actually going to act on this stuff.”

In late November, the family went into hiding for nearly a week after intruders broke into the home of the Raffenspergers’ widowed daughter-in-law, an incident the family believed was intended to intimidate them. That evening, people who identified themselves to police as Oath Keepers – a far-right militia group that has supported Trump’s bid to overturn the election – were found outside the Raffenspergers’ home, according to Tricia Raffensperger and two sources with direct knowledge of the family’s ordeal. Neither incident has been previously reported.

“Brad and I didn’t feel like we could protect ourselves,” she said, explaining the decision to flee their home.

Brad Raffensperger told Reuters in a statement that “vitriol and threats are an unfortunate, but expected, part of public service. But my family should be left alone.”

Clearly, it wasn’t just the Raffenspergers who were targeted after the election:

In Georgia, people went into hiding in at least three cases, including the Raffenspergers. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, told Reuters she continues to receive death threats. Michigan’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson – a Democrat who faced armed protesters outside her home in December – is also still getting threats, her spokesperson said, declining to elaborate.

But many others whose lives have been threatened were low- or mid-level workers, just doing their jobs…

The intimidation in Georgia has gone well beyond Raffensperger and his family. Election workers – from local volunteers to senior administrators – continue enduring regular harassing phone calls and emails, according to interviews with election workers and the Reuters review of texts, emails and audio files provided by Georgia officials.

One email, sent on Jan. 2 to officials in nearly a dozen counties, threatened to bomb polling sites: “No one at these places will be spared unless and until Trump is guaranteed to be POTUS again.”

Moreover, Fulton County’s elections director, Richard Barron, whose staff is predominantly Black, said that there was any number of ugly racial slurs directed at workers:

Among those targeted was Barron’s registration chief, Ralph Jones, 56, who oversaw the county’s mail-in ballot operation and has worked on Georgia elections for more than three decades, including senior roles.

Jones said callers left him death threats, including one shortly after the November election who called him a “n—–” who should be shot. Another threatened to kill him by dragging his body around with a truck. “It was unbelievable: your life being threatened just because you’re doing your job,” he said.

And Barron, who is White, also received ugly death threats:

At a Dec. 5 rally – ahead of a runoff election in Georgia that would determine control of the U.S. Senate – Trump showed a video clip of Barron and accused him and his staff of committing a “crime,” alleging they tampered with ballots. After the rally, Barron was bombarded with threats. “I underestimated how hard he was going to push that narrative and just keep pushing it,” Barron said of Trump.

Between Christmas and early January, Barron received nearly 150 hateful calls, many accusing him of treason or saying he should die, according to Barron and a Reuters review of some of the phone messages.

“You actually deserve to hang by your goddamn, soy boy, skinny-ass neck,” said a woman in one voicemail, using a slang term for an effeminate man.

And so it goes.

You ask why this matters now? Because the same individual that ratcheted up the anger and fury with outrageous lies about a stolen election appears to be the Republican Party’s current presumptive nominee for 2024:

A new poll from Quinnipiac University found that two-thirds of Republican voters (66 percent) said they would like Trump to run for the presidency in 2024, while only 30 percent were opposed to the idea…

“The numbers fly in the face of any predictions that Donald Trump’s political future is in decline,” the Quinnipiac poll analyst Tim Malloy said in a statement. “By a substantial majority, Republicans: (1) believe the election was stolen from him, (2) want Trump to run again, and (3), if they can’t vote for Trump, prefer someone who agrees with him.”

Two-thirds of Republicans said they believed President Joe Biden’s election victory was illegitimate, and only a quarter told pollsters they believed his win was legitimate.

Asked for their opinion on Trump, most GOP voters (84 percent) said they had a favorable view of him, and a marginal 13 percent had an unfavorable view of their ex-party leader.

And if anything, today’s Retrumplican Party has made loyalty to Trump a litmus test of worth and viability within the Party, as well as becoming their brand. If another post mentioning the outrageous corruption and lies of Trump and the illegal behavior of his loyal fanatics bother you, turning that annoyance toward the real root of the problem would be more appropriate.

Exit question: If Trump runs in 2024 and loses, tell me why you don’t think a repeat of his 2020 election loss insanity wouldn’t be repeated? We know that he hasn’t changed, and apparently his followers haven’t changed either (given the polling), so what would make another election loss any different?

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

Georgia’s top election official announced that an investigation into voting irregularities is ongoing:

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has repeatedly said there has been no evidence of systemic election irregularities or fraud, but he said during a news conference at the state Capitol that his office is investigating any credible claims of illegal voting and violations of state election law.

More than 250 cases have been opened and need to be fully investigated, but there has been nothing so far that jumps out as being likely to change the outcome of the election, Gabriel Sterling, a top official in Raffensperger’s office, said during the news conference.

The secretary of state singled out groups that he said are working to register ineligible people to vote ahead of a high-profile runoff election for Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats. His office’s 23 investigators also continue to look into allegations of problems with absentee ballots, as well as claims of people who voted twice, people who cast a ballot in a dead person’s name and non-residents who voted in Georgia, he said.

But Raffensperger also punched back — as he has repeatedly in the weeks since the Nov. 3 general election — at allegations circulating online that the state’s election was marred by widespread fraud. President Donald Trump, who narrowly lost to Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia, is among those criticizing the state’s handling of the election.

“There are those who are exploiting the emotions of many Trump supporters with fantastic claims, half-truths, misinformation and, frankly, they’re misleading the president as well, apparently,” Raffensperger said.

I think Raffensperger is being charitable to Trump here. Trump is obviously exploiting the situation as much as he can for his own gain. If that includes manipulating his followers and keeping them agitated over an allegedly unjust election outcome, he will keep playing that card. In turn, he gets the outcomes he hopes for: He remains dominant in the GOP, he persuades followers to contribute to his defense fund/PAC, and he reinforces that the swamp needs cleaning out as evidenced by the rigged election. In other words, the President exploiting the situation itself, and the emotions of Trump supporters continue to benefit him.

Raffensperger endorsed Trump in 2016, and in turn, the President endorsed him in 2018. But President Trump strained that support by attacking Raffensperger on Thanksgiving day as “an enemy of the people” because he certified the 2020 election in Georgia for President-elect Joe Biden.

Before the President’s Thanksgiving Day criticism, Raffensberger had already faced public criticism from the President, and took it in stride:

The night before, Trump had tweeted about him, accusing him of hiding tens of thousands of illegal votes and asking, “Why is he afraid of Stacey Abrams?”

Raffensperger hadn’t seen the tweet yet. “Did he at least spell my name right?” he laughed. “It’s ‘Raffensperger’ with a ‘p,’ not a ‘b.’ ”

Unfortunately, it was right after “Republican U.S. senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue — looking at Jan. 5 runoffs and not wanting to face the wrath of Trump — called for Raffensperger’s resignation for election “failures” that they did not detail” that the death threats to Raffensperger and his wife began. Only to be followed by a startling and despicable silence by Republican officials:

Raffensperger — his wife of 44 years, Tricia, by his side — discussed how he has approached his crucial role overseeing the election, his message for Trump, and what it’s been like to have nearly the entire GOP, goaded by the president, abandon him.

And he and his wife both described the faith and family that keep them going in the middle of accusations and lawsuits against him — and death threats against them both.

“We’re straightforward people, simple people,” Raffensperger said about himself and his wife, who met in their 11th-grade homeroom in Pennsylvania. “I love Tricia and she loves me. We love our kids. We love our grandkids. We’re quiet people in an unquiet role.”

…

“The very first one that we got was really a warning,” Tricia Raffensperger said. “Now it’s every sexual connotation. It’s horrific. Who am I for you to do that to? I’m just a regular person just like they are, and their wives and their daughters and their mothers. Would you say that to your mother?”

The latest round were sent from a dummy account meant to look like Raffensperger directly threatening his wife.

“It’s vulgar,” he said. “It’s disgusting.”

Even as he has had to have around-the-clock security and news of the attacks against him have been publicized, the response from the Republicans who aren’t attacking him has been silence.

Multiple requests for comment to Republican lawmakers who have supported him in the past were declined or not returned. “I’ll take a pass,” said one.

This is utterly disgusting. I don’t care what side of the aisle an individual is on. If they are doing the job before them that they have been elected to do, and do it with unbiased professionalism, that should be respected. And in this case, accepted. Criticism, even if unfounded and delusional, is one thing. But death threats should be loudly condemned by every elected official in the state. At the very least. Shame on the Republican lawmakers. And for the President of the United States to be leading the way by publicly attacking Raffesnperger because he arrogantly can’t believe that he didn’t win in Georgia is beyond the pale. He is, with obvious intention, goading his loyal base to pile on Raffensperger as well. Despicable behavior by the President, and despicable behavior by Americans. The President’s sycophants who are choosing to look the other way and pretend they don’t see what is happening is what we have come to expect of Trump-supporting lawmakers at large. All they care about is themselves. And frankly, if getting re-elected requires remaining in Trump’s good graces, they’ll kiss that damn ring any day of the week. They don’t deserve our respect and they don’t deserve our votes. Shame on them. Shame on the GOP. And shame on President Trump for being such an ugly bastard toward a man doing the job he was elected to do. And doing it honorably.

Raffensperger had this message for Trump:

“When you lose an election, you should leave quietly. It’s the will of the people that has been expressed,” Raffensperger said.

So true.

But perhaps it’s Tricia Raffensperger’s message that reassures us most that they will survive all of this. Because, despite the attacks from the most powerful man in the nation, the Raffenspergers have already experienced far, far worse:

…2018 also brought tragedy for the family, when the Raffenspergers’ oldest son died after years of struggling with addiction.

“I’ve been through the very worst thing that can possibly happen to anyone,” Tricia Raffensperger said. “When you lose a child, it doesn’t matter how that happened, how old they were, it’s indescribable.

“And they can throw all they want, they can call me all the names they want, they can do whatever they want. But they can never hurt me like that.”

–Dana