Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp Says Sidney Powell’s Election ‘Fraud’ Case Could Hurt Senate Runoffs

A temporary restraining order obtained by former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell and Trump supporting lawyer Lin Wood could threaten Georgia’s Jan. 5 Senate runoff elections, Gov. Brian Kemp (R) told a federal judge Friday.

The order prevents general election voting data from being altered or deleted in Cobb, Gwinnett and Cherokee counties, as Powell pushes for an audit of the Dominion Voting Systems Inc. machines used by the state — to which both she, Wood and Trump have attributed election fraud, though evidence of widespread fraud is yet to be proven.

“[T]here were all imaginable varieties of voting fraud, including machine-controlled algorithms deliberately run by Dominion Voting Systems that generally took more than 2.5% of the votes from Mr. [Joe] Biden and flipped them to Mr. Trump for a more than 5% fraudulent increase for Mr. Biden,” the lawyers wrote in a filing.

Powell and Wood likely miswrote that Trump was receiving fraudulent votes, as their entire lawsuit is based on the premise that Biden supposedly received fraudulent votes. Further, there is no evidence that Dominion — either intentionally or unintentionally — changed votes to Biden.

The TRO was issued on Nov. 29 by U.S. District Judge Timothy Batten, who later stayed the proceeding after Powell filed an appeal believing the order was insufficient.

In a court filing late Thursday, Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the order could result in the run-off elections being significantly hindered if not practically precluded altogether while voters in Gwinnett County could be deprived of the same rights to early voting as voters in other Georgia counties.

They continued: “Cobb and Gwinnett voters may also be subject to long lines due to an insufficient number of voting machines. There is no reason for these outcomes and, consequently, the State respectfully requests that this Court dissolve the TRO or otherwise modify Paragraph Two of the Order to permit Cobb and Gwinnett County machines to be used in the rapidly approaching Run-off Election.”

The two races on Jan. 5 will decide which political party wields control of the Senate; both Republican incumbents would have to lose for the Democrats to gain control.

About a day after Kemp and Raffensperger filed, a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta rejected Powell’s appeal.

“The plaintiffs have not demonstrated that the alleged harm is imminent — that the defendants would have wiped all these machines county-by-county, destroying all the data they contain, unless the district court had granted broader relief on Sunday night,” Judge Andrew Brasher, a Trump appointee, wrote. “In fact, the district court’s order was specifically designed to avoid this consequence.”

The state additionally noted the data had already been secured.

Since the Eleventh Circuit rejected the case it will return to Batten.