Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts has sent a very direct message to GOP gubernatorial candidate David Perdue, who filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to inspect absentee ballots from the November 2020 election: “Stay the hell out of Fulton County.”
“My advice to him would be to concentrate on his upcoming election and leave Fulton County alone,” Pitts said in a statement.
The lawsuit, filed just four days after Perdue launched his campaign to unseat fellow Republican Brian Kemp, echoes the failed legal challenges by supporters of former President Donald Trump, who claim massive election fraud put President Joe Biden in office.
The former U.S. senator, who was ousted in the January runoff against Democrat Jon Ossoff, is a vocal Trump supporter and continues to repeat baseless claims of election fraud. His lawsuit seeks to inspect 147,000 of Fulton’s absentee ballots, despite digital images of the ballots being available to the public since June.
Three ballot counts and multiple investigations by state election officials have turned up no evidence of election fraud.
Pitts called the lawsuit “baseless.”
“It’s disheartening to see former Senator Perdue engage in this desperate attempt to appeal to believers of the Big Lie,” Pitts said, referring to the ongoing conspiracy theory that Trump lost the election due to voter fraud. “The 2020 election is over – the votes have been counted three times, including once by hand, and no evidence of wrongdoing has ever been found. It’s clear that the former Senator is only doing this to play dirty politics and try to get out of a tough primary.”
Kemp’s spokesman Cody Hall was also dismissive of the lawsuit in a statement to the AJC. “David Perdue is so concerned about election fraud that he waited a year to file a lawsuit that conveniently coincided with his disastrous campaign launch.”