Georgia lieutenant governor: Giuliani election claims helped lead to new voting law

Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) said Wednesday that Rudy Giuliani’s false claims about the 2020 presidential election helped lead to the state’s new voting law.

Duncan made the remark during a CNN interview as he was discussing when he believed the legislature really began to look at new voting restrictions.

Giuliani, who led former President Trump’s unsuccessful campaign challenges in a handful of states, testified before the Georgia legislature in December in a bid to overturn President Biden’s narrow victory in the state. He repeatedly claimed that the election was riddled with widespread voter fraud.

Claims of widespread voter fraud in Georgia and other states during the 2020 presidential election have been debunked, and ballots in the state were counted multiple times. Meanwhile, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is currently investigating Trump and his allies’ efforts to interfere in the state’s election.

“This is really the fallout of from the 10 weeks of misinformation that flew in from former President Donald Trump,” Duncan said. “I went back over the weekend to really look at where this really started to gain momentum in the legislature, and it was when Rudy Giuliani showed up in a couple of committee rooms and spent hours spreading misinformation and sowing doubt across, you know, hours of testimony.”

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) last month signed S.B. 202, which among other restrictions limits the use of ballot drop boxes and imposes photo ID requirements for absentee voting. The legislature also removed the secretary of state as chairman or a voting member of the Georgia State Election Board.

Since the bill was signed, at least three lawsuits have been filed against it, some major companies have publicly opposed the bill and Major League Baseball moved its All-Star Game out of Atlanta.

Duncan said that it’s time for the party to move on from the 2020 election.

“We’ve lost two U.S. senate seats as Republican, we’ve lost the White House, we lost the All-Star Game. Look, we need to pick up the pieces here and move on,” Duncan said. “We need to turn the page.”