A top Republican elections official in Georgia said Sunday that threats against another official led to his unloading on President Trump during a press conference last week.
Georgia voting systems manager Gabriel Sterling told NBC News’s “Meet the Press” that he was informed of threats against a contractor in Gwinnett County that sparked his fiery remarks directed at the president during the press briefing.
“What for lack of a better word set me off on Tuesday was about an hour before or an hour and a half before a previously scheduled news conference, I got a call from the project manager from Dominion Voting Systems out of Colorado who was telling me in a very audibly shaken voice that one of their contractors had received some threats in Gwinnett County,” said Sterling, who voted for Trump in the election.
{mosads}“When I was going through the Twitter feed on it, and I saw it basically had the young man’s name, which was a very unique name, so they tracked down his family and started harassing them,” he added.
“It said his name. ‘You’ve committed treason. May God have mercy on your soul,’ with a slowly swinging noose. And at that point, I just said, ‘I’m done.’”
What followed was Sterling’s Tuesday address to Trump while the voting systems manager looked visibly shaken.
“Mr. President, it looks like a likely loss in the state of Georgia,” he said. “We’re investigating. There’s always a possibility. I get it. You have the rights to go through the court. What you don’t have the ability to do — and you need to step up and say this — is stop inspiring people to commit potential violence. Someone’s going to get hurt. Someone’s going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed. It’s not right.”
Despite Sterling’s request, the president has continued to promote unfounded claims that he won the state after widespread fraud “rigged” the election, including at a Saturday rally for the two Republican Senate candidates in Georgia.
Republican officials in Georgia who voted for the president have rejected Trump’s claims of winning the state and of fraud.