Following the announcement by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger that there was no evidence of voter fraud in Cobb County, Georgia in Cobb County, Georgia, Trump tweeted a conspiracy theory that Raffensperger with the Chinese government.
Trump
tweeted that Raffensperger has a brother who ‘works for China’, who insinuates some bad, pro-China conspiracy to make Trump lose the race in Georgia.
“Now it turns out that Brad R’s brother works for China, and they definitely do not want ‘Trump’. So disgusting!” tweeted the president after he attacked Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in Georgia.
Facts first: This is false. A Raffensperger spokesman told CNN that the secretary of state have no brothers and sisters working for China, as Trump unjustifiably claimed.
“There are no family members who work for China or are connected to China,” said Jordan Fuchs, deputy foreign minister.
While it is unclear exactly where Trump gets the idea that Raffensperger’s brother works for China, it is possible that he is spotting a false conspiracy theory by former political consultant Dick Morris, who made the allegation during an interview on Newsmax on Tuesday night and on his personal website.
In the interview, Morris raised several false or misleading allegations against Raffensberger, including that Raffensperger is related to Ron Raffensperger, the chief technology officer of Chinese company Huawei Enterprise Storage Solutions. Fuchs said the secretary of state does not have a brother or sister named Ron.
Georgia Public Broadcasting reported ‘public documents and records’ on Wednesday [show] that Raffensperger does have four siblings, including a brother, but none of them is called Ron, and no one works for Chinese technology companies. ‘
Morris also falsely accused Raffensperger of standing in the way of narratives and refusing to verify signatures. Georgia conducted a nationwide audit and counted about 5 million ballots, and Raffensperger oversaw an additional version. In addition to the state’s existing signature verification process that takes place twice in the case of absentee ballots requested by mail, Raffensberger announced that his office will help maintain a signature audit across the country to further verify signatures on absentee ballots.
In a statement, Newsmax told CNN:
“Newsmax has never claimed wrongdoing by Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger or any family member. On Tuesday night, while appearing on the network, commentator Dick Morris claimed that he reported on Dickmorris.com an allegation that Raffensperger a brother who worked for a Chinese company. This claim was apparently inaccurate. During the segment, the Newsmax host was very skeptical about Morris ‘allegations and suggested that there was no evidence behind Morris’ allegation, and Morris specifically asked to provide proof of his claim. ‘
CNN tried to reach Morris for comment, but has not yet received a response.
CNN’s Jason Morris contributed to this article.
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