An election conspiracy that went viral on right-wing news sites and was promoted by former President Donald Trump has been exposed through security footage obtained exclusively by VICE News.
In May 2021, an alarm was sounded in Fulton County, Georgia, at a polling warehouse storing ballots and voting machines from the 2020 presidential election. A photo taken of an open door at the warehouse was used by conspiracy theorists and right-wing media to claim that the 2020 election was indeed unsafe. But through a series of interviews and Freedom of Information Act requests, VICE News found that it wasn’t poll workers who opened that door — it was off-duty cops.
The warehouse had become a point of contention earlier in the year when attorneys and pro-Trump activists sued Fulton County multiple times to review mail-in voting. As part of the fourth lawsuit against the county, a judge ordered the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department to monitor the camp 24 hours a day to make sure no one tampered with ballots.
That protection wasn’t enough for Bob Cheeley, one of the attorneys filing the lawsuit against Fulton County. Cheeley decided to hire off-duty deputies from neighboring Douglas County to police the warehouse himself. The deputies were hired by T&T Security, a private security company. Their job was to sit across the street from the warehouse and monitor any potentially unusual activity.
Poll workers at the camp, already on high alert after months of facing violent threats from Trump supporters who believe the election was stolen, were concerned that the off-duty sheriffs were watching them exit and enter the building .
“You know, it was only a few months after the uprising. People were very afraid of what might happen,” one worker told VICE News, who asked not to be named because of the harassment he was subjected to.
After the 2020 election, poll workers reported being followed home in their cars by people who believed they were involved in voter fraud, and some even replaced their license plates with new ones. Workers were even harassed at home by Trump supporters and forced to move to makeshift shelters. Others had threatened their children. Nevertheless, to this day there is no evidence of massive electoral fraud or ballot manipulation in the 2020 elections.
But on May 29, eight days after the judge assigned the police details, Fulton County lawmakers left their posts in the polling camp without being relieved. While the warehouse remained unmanned by Fulton County officials for a little over an hour, the off-duty deputies working for Cheeley claimed they heard an alarm at the warehouse, which they investigated.
The off-duty cops then took a photo of the camp, showing one of the doors left wide open, Cheeley said in an email obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act request to the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office.
Emerald Robinson, a former White House correspondent for far-right news site Newsmax, tweeted a picture of the open house and said “a secure building where ballots are kept” was “found wide open and unattended.” Robinson said she received the photo from an attorney working on the Fulton County audit.
An avalanche ensued: The Gateway Pandit, a website being sued by two Fulton County election officials for inciting harassment and making death threats, also picked up and shared the story.
The photo quickly sparked weeks of conspiracy theories with right-wing media and conservative influencers; They claimed that this open door proved that anyone could enter the building and possibly tamper with the ballots.
After the story made the rounds, it reached the former president.
On May 31, Trump released a statement with the same headline as the Gateway Pandit. “Great work is being done in Georgia to expose voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election,” the statement said. “But we must not allow anyone to compromise those ballots by leaving the building unsecured.”
By July 2021, the story made its way to Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News.
“On a Saturday night in late May this year, an alarm went off in a large, nondescript warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia,” Carlson told his audience of millions. “When these MPs came back to check the alarm someone had opened the £100 door to the warehouse.”
But several people working at the poll camp dispute this account.
“I’m guessing the police across the street decided today that we should come and enter the warehouse, which they did,” a poll worker familiar with the Fulton County warehouse’s alarm system told VICE News. “And once they got to camp, they set off our alarm…they had to enter and enter the building to set off the alarm.”
And, more importantly, security footage from that day, obtained by VICE News upon request under the Freedom of Information Act, shows that Cheeley’s off-duty sheriffs hired opened the warehouse door, entered the warehouse, and took the picture that sparked the conspiracy.
In security footage, taken shortly after the Fulton County sheriff’s deputies drove away, the off-duty Douglas County deputy approached the Fulton County polling camp and attempted to open several locked doors.
Next, one of the officers found a closed but unlocked door. He opened it and left anyway.
In the footage, he is accompanied by the other off-duty officer and together they spend about five minutes in the warehouse. Before they leave, one of the officers takes a picture of the camp door – which he or his partner opened.
The tape has no audio, so it doesn’t show whether officers responded to the alarm or whether the alarm was triggered for other reasons. An investigation by the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office into the incident is also inconclusive as to what triggered the alarm.
However, in an email obtained by VICE News, Cheeley tells the judge overseeing the trial that the off-duty sheriffs took the photos, which were shared on social media. Cheeley also claims that the warehouse door was “blown open.”
“I’m sure there are those who would seize the opportunity to burn the evidence if it weren’t for the security presence I’m funding,” he wrote in the email.
VICE News went to the warehouse and saw the door in question. Despite what right-wing media reported, there is another door separating the ballots and voting machines from the lobby of the building where the off-duty officers entered. Someone walking through that door would not have access to the ballots. (Again, multiple recounts have confirmed that President Joe Biden defeated Trump in Georgia by around 12,000 votes.)
In October, the judge dismissed Cheeley’s lawsuit, ruling that the plaintiffs had not provided enough evidence to establish the need for an audit.
However, the impact of these conspiracy theories should not be underestimated. A poll earlier this year found nearly half of Americans believe the election was stolen — in part due to hyperlocal conspiracy theories like the Fulton County open house.
And for those already skeptical about the election results, this story reinforced the belief that massive voter fraud had occurred in the 2020 election, prompting some to threaten actual violence.
When VICE News called the people who left death threats for Fulton County poll workers, some said it was an open house.
“We knew what they were doing. We’ve heard the stories of back doors that were insanely left open to secure facilities where ballots were held,” said John Johnson of Tennessee, who left a message for Fulton County workers in the months after the election.
“Whenever something shady happens,” he told VICE News, “it’s usually hiding something.” Unrepentant about phone harassing Fulton County poll workers, Johnson reiterated his belief that the election was stolen.
But for poll workers, the door incident had even more repercussions.
“Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve been told to trust law enforcement. You know, they’re here to protect and to serve,” an election camp supervisor told VICE News. “But you really can’t trust anyone watching you across the street… I always have to be on my guard.”
