WASHINGTON, DC – JUNE 21: Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss (left), former Georgia poll worker, testifies during the fourth hearing on the January 6 investigation, while her mother Ruby Freeman (right) June 21 at the Cannon House office building listening, 2022 in Washington, DC
Two Georgia poll workers targeted by former Presidents Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani with conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 presidential election have been acquitted by state authorities.
“There was no evidence of any type of fraud as alleged,” the 10-page report from the Georgia Board of Elections bluntly stated.
“No evidence was presented”
For many Trump supporters, two officials — mother Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss — were the face of a supposedly vast conspiracy aimed at robbing the former president of victory in the Peach State. In lawsuits and testifying before Congress, Freeman said the smear campaign harassed her with threats and harassment, through dozens of text messages, hundreds of emails and a personal mob that formed outside her home. She has been forced to leave her home for months since January 6, 2021, the day of the attack on the US Capitol.
Since then, Freeman and Moss have fought doggedly to reclaim their names. Freeman made an emotional statement before Congress, introducing himself to the nation as “Lady Ruby.” Both women filed defamation lawsuits against far-right figures and media outlets who allegedly slandered them.
On Thursday, Georgia election officials provided additional justification with a report that dispelled the paranoid theories surrounding them.
The focus was on footage from surveillance video of the absentee ballot and military ballot count at State Farm Arena.
After confirming President Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia on Nov. 20, 2020, Trump’s team circulated footage purportedly showing them producing boxes of 18,000 fake ballots — enough to overcome the former president’s defeat by 11,780 votes. One America News, a pro-Trump broadcaster, aired the edited footage and reached a settlement just over a year ago to settle the campaign workers’ defamation lawsuit.
After a full review of the footage, investigators from three law enforcement agencies unanimously found the clips in question harmless.
“The Fulton County Board of Elections and Registration has put in place special processes to keep ballot boxes under tables and keep them in a specific order to monitor and track ballots during the tabulation process so poll workers know where they are the next day should start,” the report states. “No evidence was presented that Freeman or Moss deviated from this established process. The initial tabulation, the statewide review, which involved manually counting each ballot by hand, and the machine recount found that there was no evidence of forged ballots being scanned and included in the final tabulated results for the November 2020 general election in Fulton County were counted.”
“Finally bring this problem to rest”
In an alternative theory, Giuliani claimed that Moss gave her mother “flash drives” full of voices “like they were vials of heroin or cocaine.” When Moss testified before the committee on Jan. 6, he revealed that the alleged flash drives were actually “Ginger Mint.”
“All allegations made against Freeman and Moss were baseless and unfounded,” the report’s investigative findings read.
Posts also circulated on social media purporting to show Freeman admitting to conspiracy to election fraud. Investigators also exposed the posts as scams and found out the actual creators of the content.
“Eventually, the FBI identified and interviewed the true creator of the Instagram account, which reportedly contained a post by Freeman admitting that she was conspiring to negatively influence the November 2020 election,” the statement said Report. “The account creator admitted that they created the fake account and confirmed that the content posted on the account was fake.”
ATLANTA, GA – NOVEMBER 6: Georgia Secretary of State Ben Raffensperger holds a press conference on the status of the ballot count on November 6, 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)
Georgian Foreign Minister Brad Raffensperger (R), whom Trump urged in a now-released phone call to “find” 11,780 votes, condemned the former president’s conspiracy theories and issued a statement praising the report’s findings.
“We remain diligent and committed to investigating actual allegations of voter fraud,” Raffensperger said in a statement. “We are glad that the state election committee has finally solved this problem. False claims and knowingly false allegations against these poll workers have done tremendous harm. Poll workers deserve our praise for being on the front lines.”
The press release said the report found “no evidence of conspiracy or fraud.”
Although Raffensperger presents the report as a closing piece, Moss and Freeman’s story will likely continue to make headlines as their pending case against Giuliani in federal court progresses. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) has also scrutinized the campaign workers’ story as part of her investigation into Trump’s attempts to overturn the Georgia 2020 election results. Indictments are widely expected later this year.
Read the full report here.
