Georgia Republican election official debunks Trump's election conspiracy theories 'point by point'

(Image credit: AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

A day after the audio of President Trump's controversial phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger leaked to the public, Georgia's voting system implementation manager debunked several of the election conspiracy theories espoused by the commander-in-chief.

During a press conference Monday, Gabriel Sterling — who like Raffensperger is a Republican and has called out Trump before — went point by point to prove the president's allegations of widespread voter fraud were "easily, provably false."

First he addressed Trump's question about whether election officials are shredding ballots in Georgia. The short answer from Sterling was no, but he went on to explain that "there's shredding of envelopes that were the non-used ones, or there's also shredding of the secrecy envelopes that came through" along with mail-in ballots. Sterling said those have "no evidentiary value" and are "basically trash." On the other hand, signature and oath envelopes and the ballots themselves are being kept for 22 months, as required by law.

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Next, Sterling hit the president's claim that people were "changing parts" of Dominion voting machines. Sterling was admittedly stumped by this one, not because there was any validity to it, but because "I don't know even know what that means ... I don't even know how exactly to explain that."

Growing exasperated, Sterling quickly clarified that Raffensperger does not have a brother named Ron who works for Huawei, and then broke down why there was no "hacking of Dominion during a Senate hearing last week." Ballot marking devices and scanners don't have modems, he said, and "it's very hard to hack things that don't have modems." Watch the clip below.Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.