ATLANTA — Georgia has officially closed the book on one of the most infamous fraud claims dating back to the 2020 election.
Officials said Tuesday that the State Election Board had dismissed the case related to the "suitcases full of ballots" allegations at State Farm Arena on Election Night 2020.
The State Farm Arena episode was central to former President Donald Trump's claims that Georgia had fraudulent election results in favor of President Joe Biden. Instead, the long-running investigation by the state determined the claims related to that night were "false and unsubstantiated."
The former president and his supporters at the time had seized on vote scanning and processing that occurred after most election workers, observers and media left State Farm Arena on Election Night. A leak in the arena in the morning had delayed operations and as the evening grew late, officials on scene told everyone they could go home.
After learning counting had stopped, state officials and Fulton County made the call for the few election employees remaining to resume work.
Surveillance videos from inside the arena showed this process happening, with conspiracists focusing in on ballot containers that were removed from under tables. Two election workers on scene, a mother and daughter named Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, became the subject of an intense harassment campaign by Trump and his supporters.
Freeman and Moss later testified to the Jan. 6 Committee about how their lives were turned upside down by the harassment campaign.
State election officials stressed the "suitcases" were normal ballot containers, and long ago released the full surveillance footage showing they were put under tables by the workers who had begun leaving.
One worker interviewed explained to state investigators that "once everyone was relieved, they put the ballots in a ballot box, placed seals on the ballot boxes and then placed the ballot boxes underneath the table so they would know where to start with the ballots that had already been opened."
Despite the repeated explanations for the State Farm Arena activity - including Georgia's hand count audit that showed no major discrepancy suggesting "ballot stuffing" or otherwise nefarious activity at the arena after election activity resumed - the "suitcases" claim persisted in the efforts to overturn Georgia's results.
Among its most prominent proponents was Rudy Giuliani, who appeared before a Georgia Senate subcommittee to lay out fraud allegations - with the State Farm Arena videos central to his case. Giuliani was later asked to testify before the Fulton County special purpose grand jury that investigated the efforts to interfere in Georgia's election by Trump and his allies.
The Georgia State Election Board's report into the State Farm Arena episode concludes that accounts from election employees, poll watchers with the Georgia Republican Party and the surveillance video largely provided a consistent account of what happened on Election Night.
It additionally states:
Furthermore, Investigators from three law enforcement agencies reviewed the entire unedited video footage of the events in question surrounding Freeman and Moss at State Farm Arena. There was no evidence of any type of fraud as alleged. Fulton County Board of Elections and Registration put specific processes in place to store ballot boxes underneath tables and to have them in a certain order to monitor and track ballots during the tabulation process so election workers would know where to begin the next day. No evidence was provided to show that Freeman or Moss deviated from that established process. The initial tabulation, the statewide audit involving a manual hand count of every ballot, and the machine recount reveal there was no evidence to suggest fraudulent ballots were scanned and counted in the final tabulated results for the November 2020 General Election in Fulton County.
The investigation also determined an Instagram account that posted a supposed "confession" by Freeman to committing fraud on Election Night was in fact a fake.
"The account creator admitted he created the fake account and confirmed the content that was posted on the account was fake," the report states.
In a statement, Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger said, “We are glad the State Election Board finally put this issue to rest. False claims and knowingly false allegations made against these election workers have done tremendous harm. Election workers deserve our praise for being on the front lines.”