“A Badge of Honor”: Burt Jones “Boasts” About Working to Overturn the 2020 Election

“A Badge of Honor”: Burt Jones “Boasts” About Working to Overturn the 2020 Election

“There were few state officials who played more important roles than Mr. Jones in the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power.”

New reporting from the New York Times highlights just how extreme and out of touch GOP candidate Burt Jones is, detailing “the lengths to which he went” to overturn the 2020 election.

The reporting showcases how Jones “would not accept the president’s defeat” in 2020, leading him to join “a fake Electoral College contingent from Georgia that sent its false votes to Washington as part of a multistate effort to try to derail the certification” and leading Trump to proclaim that Jones was “in my pocket.”

This follows recent reporting from the Washington Post that illustrated the numerous election deniers running for governor across the country, including Burt Jones, Andy Biggs in Arizona, Stacy Garrity in Pennsylvania, Tom Tiffany in Wisconsin, and John James in Michigan, and how should they win in November, they would hold “key oversight roles in the 2028 presidential election.”

Jones is locked in a nasty feud for the next three weeks in Georgia’s GOP primary runoff, filled with personal attacks and biting accusations of corruption. His opponent, Rick Jackson, has also denied the results of the 2020 election. The race has become the nastiest primary in modern Georgia history, and no matter who wins in June, Georgia Republicans will be stuck with a nominee defined by a history of self-enrichment, scandal, corruption, and unbreakable ties to D.C. Republicans’ agenda that is raising prices and pushing healthcare out of reach.

Read the New York Times story here, and see key excerpts below: 

• Burt Jones, the Republican front-runner in the Georgia governor’s race, presents his considerable efforts to overturn Donald J. Trump’s election loss in 2020 as a badge of honor. On the stump, he even boasts about it.

• But Mr. Jones still carries the baggage — or as some would have it, bragging rights — from the presidential election of six years ago, when there were few state officials who played more important roles than Mr. Jones in the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power.

• […] in the weeks after the election, Mr. Jones, then a state senator, coordinated with the Trump campaign and was even in contact with Mr. Trump himself, who would proclaim during a 2020 rally that Mr. Jones was “in my pocket.”

• Mr. Jones tried to organize a special state legislative session to overturn Mr. Trump’s electoral loss. He helped arrange public hearings in the State Senate, where Rudolph W. Giuliani demonized Atlanta election workers and advanced false claims that the election had been stolen. He joined a fake Electoral College contingent from Georgia that sent its false votes to Washington as part of a multistate effort to try to derail the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. He backed Texas litigation challenging his own state’s election results.

• And on the eve of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, he traveled to Washington for an audience with Vice President Mike Pence.

• If elected governor, Mr. Jones would join several Republican governors who are 2020 election deniers just as the Trump administration is using the Justice Department to seize 2020 ballots and revive old conspiracies.

• After the 2020 election, Mr. Jones cemented his role as a Trump supporter who would not accept the president’s defeat.

• Mr. Jones worked on assembling a slate of fake electors to potentially replace the real ones. […] Ultimately, Mr. Jones served as a fake elector.

• Weeks later, on Jan. 3, at 11:07 p.m., White House phone logs show that Mr. Trump had a three-minute conversation with Mr. Jones. What they discussed is not known. On the morning of Jan. 5, Mr. Jones sent a text to a person whose identity is not clear from the records obtained by The Times. “I am in DC, where are you today?” Mr. Jones wrote.

• The reply: the Willard Intercontinental Hotel, which had become the working headquarters for members of the election-denial movement, including the conspiracy theorists Alex Jones and Roger J. Stone Jr.

• Mr. Jones would remain a true believer, even as Republican leaders in the Georgia legislature stripped him of a committee chairmanship for his efforts to overturn the election.

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