The disbarment trial of Donald Trump’s former DOJ official, Jeffrey Clark, continued into its second and final week on Tuesday, featuring testimony from three witnesses for him.
Clark, a defendant in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ RICO prosecution, is being disciplined for drafting a letter never sent to Georgia officials after the 2020 election advising them of their options for dealing with the election illegalities.
Retired IT professional Garland Favorito of the election integrity group VoterGA resumed his testimony from the previous day. He discussed Georgia legislative subcommittee meetings that looked into fraud in the 2020 election. One committee, whose findings were known as the Ligon Report, concluded in early December 2020 that the election was so “fraught with irregularities” that it “should have never been certified.” Clark cited that report in his draft letter.
Favorito said he was very concerned with the video from State Farm Arena showing poll workers taking out ballots stored underneath a table and counting them after observers had gone home. He said the room is curved, so when he was an observer he could not see around the other corner, which he said he believed violated transparency law. He also said he believed that putting the ballots under tables violated transparency laws. Additionally, he said stopping the counting and then restarting violated another statute.
He said Fulton County officials did not know the results of their own audit, which he found astounding. He said they entered the results into the system and then let the Georgia Secretary of the State (GASOS) Brad Raffensperger announce them. It was unheard of to him in his 40-year career to have a broken chain of custody in an audit.
In Floyd County, which went heavily for Trump, Favorito said 2,700 ballots from an urban location were stuck in adjudication. The techs there could not explain it. Finally, they reran the ballots and got accurate results.
Favorito discussed the second machine count done after the election in Fulton County. He said it included 17,000 new votes that “seemed to come out of nowhere” to correct a report officials had provided to the Georgia Secretary of State a day earlier that was 17,000 votes short. He said no explanation has ever been given for where the votes came from.
A significant portion of his testimony consisted of discussing a report he issued titled Election, Fraud, Errors and Irregularities Abound in Georgia. Item No. 8 in his report stated that “86,860 voters had false registration dates.” He said they had voter registration dates prior to 2016, but were only present in the 2020 voter registration file, not the 2016 voter registration file, “indicating that the votes may not have been cast by legitimate voters.”
Item No. 9 in his report stated that “drop box video surveillance for 181,507 ballots” was destroyed. When VoterGA asked for the surveillance of drop boxes, “[t]hey found that over 100 counties had destroyed their video surveillance despite federal and state election record retention law described above.”
Item No. 13 in his report refuted statements made by cybersecurity experts Alex Halderman and Harry Hursti that there wasn’t any fraud in the machines used in Georgia. In contrast, Favorito’s report stated that those two said in expert testimony “that it is possible to manipulate the vote via various types of hacking.”
The D.C. Bar’s attorney, Hamilton Fox, asked Favorito about a press release issued by Raffensperger, which said that a signature match audit in Cobb County found no fraudulent absentee ballots. Favorito retorted that the GASOS has admitted they have no procedure to determine whether ballots are fraudulent. Additionally, he noted that Cobb County didn’t have accusations of ballot trafficking and absentee ballot fraud, so it didn’t make sense that Raffensperger would choose that county to audit.
Fox asked Favorito about a press release issued by Raffensperger which stated that Pro V&V, a U.S. Election Assistance Commission-certified testing laboratory, “found no evidence of the machines being tampered.” Favorito retorted that Pro V&V does not conduct audits. They did “health checks,” which determined that the software was still the same as when it was installed. Favorito said the press release was an attempt to “cover their tracks that the audits were not successful.” He addressed the issue more in Item No. 17 in his report.
Favorito said election officials and law enforcement ignored his concerns. He said he believes that the only time an investigator ever responded to him was to try and entrap him. He had submitted his concerns since he said he did not believe a 20-to-1 ratio of Biden votes to Trump votes was accurate. He said at most, there may be a 70/30 ratio in Fulton County. He submitted an affidavit, and an investigator called him. Favorito said it became obvious to him that the investigator wasn’t interested in what he had to say. Favorite said the investigator was trying to entrap him. At that point, Favorito cut off the conversation. That was the only time anyone from any election or enforcement agency interviewed him.
Fox frequently asked Favorito to agree with statements he made that were not accurate, such as that Raffensperger supported Trump in 2020. Favorito objected every time. Fox asserted that Raffensperger conducted extensive investigations into voter fraud after the 2020 election. Favorito said that “he didn’t even conduct 1/100th of an investigation.” He said Raffensperger’s “pretense of investigations” were “politically motivated.” Favorito said Raffensperger “overstates things in order to put himself in a good light.” He said election officials have a number one priority of having a “quiet election with no controversy,” and will “do whatever it takes.”
Next, Fox said all of the lawsuits in Georgia over the 2020 election were dismissed by the end of the year. Favorito disagreed, pointing out that Trump v. Raffensberger was withdrawn in January.
Fox began asking Favorito about fraud, and Favorito pointed out that Georgia law doesn’t just prohibit fraud but also “errors” and “irregularities.” Fox asked him if he had any evidence of fraud, not just “the opportunity for fraud.” Favorito responded with a list of evidence.
First, he said when he requested ballot images from the 2020 election, he discovered they had been destroyed, violating state law. Some of them from Fulton County had been digitally altered prior to certification. “That is actual fraud that has not been investigated to this day,” he said.
Second, there were 8,000 ballots double scanned statewide, he said, which was “fraud, errors, or a mixture of both.” Third, 200,000 ballots were inserted after the election was conducted, which was also fraud.
Fox asked Favorito about a point-by-point letter that Raffensperger issued asserting there was no fraud in the election. He asked if he thought the letter was inaccurate, and Favorito responded, “that would be an understatement.” Favorito issued his own response to Raffensperger’s letter.
Next, Fox asked Favorito about a statement issued after the election by several officials and activists declaring that there was no fraud. Favorito said the statement was issued on November 16, 2020, before the evidence about ballot trafficking and ballot box stuffing had come out.
Fox asked Favorito if the election was rigged. Favorito said they found evidence that Fulton County ballot images were altered before certification.
Favorito went over his audit of the Fulton County election. He found a 60 percent error rate, and the results did not match the ballot images. The tally sheet totals also didn’t match the ballot images. He found falsified tally sheets; some were “100 to nothing for Biden.” Some were “200 to nothing, a technical impossibility.” In contrast, the corresponding ballot images showed a 60-40 ratio of Biden to Trump.
He found 200,000 duplicate scanned ballots; since then, ongoing research has bumped that number up to 375,000. He said Fulton County’s hand audit count was short — 17,000 votes had no ballot images. He said Dr. Spock confirmed that in the Raffensperger case, where he called them Cast Vote Records (CVR). Favorito explained, “A ballot image is necessary to create a CVR. It’s not possible to have more votes than ballot images. It’s like creating votes out of thin air.”
Former Attorney General Ed Meese spoke next. He said it was legal for the DOJ to provide advice to state officials on how to select presidential electors. “No reason legally why that could not happen,” he said.
When asked specifically about Clark’s draft letter, he said, “I see no legal problems with the letter.”
Fox attempted to prevent Clark’s witness, Heather Honey, from testifying, becoming very agitated, claiming that Clark’s attorney, Harry MacDougald, had not provided him with printed-out copies of information about her but only emailed them to him. MacDougald, who is a Georgia lawyer temporarily in Washington D.C. for the trial, explained that the printer at his hotel was not working. Fox got Merrill Hirsh, chair of the disciplinary panel, to stop the proceedings until MacDougald could secure printed copies. After Fox received them, he complained that it was at the last minute and some were not dated.
Honey, an election integrity investigator in Pennsylvania, discussed the discrepancy between the number of voters and ballots in Pennsylvania’s 2020 election. Each week after the election, she requested public records of the ballots counted from each county. By December 21, 2020, she found a 205,000-vote discrepancy. She said there has never been an explanation given for the discrepancy.
Fox asked her about news articles claiming there was no discrepancy, which she said she disagreed with.
Fox refused to allow Clark’s witnesses to discuss anything dated after he drafted his letter, even if the topics were related to before that. Hirsh went along with Fox.
The last witness to testify was Help America Vote Act (HAVA) expert Harry Houry, who also drafted much of HAVA. MacDougald asked him what happens if a machine is not auditable. Houry responded, “It does not comply with HAVA.”
MacDougald asked him what it means if the chain of custody for ballots is lacking.
He said, “Trust anchors have been removed,” which he explained means “the reason you trust the system no longer exists.” MacDougald asked him what if the chain of custody for over 100,000 ballots was lost. Houry responded, “It’s invalid under the law. Doesn’t mean it can’t be cured.”
MacDougald asked about the lack of signature verification on 146,000 signatures in Fulton County in 2020. Hoary said in Georgia in 2020, that was a violation of a mandatory standard under HAVA. He said it’s “a violation of the trustworthiness of the system.” He said “the normal process would be to investigate whether the violations could have affected the election — not whether it did affect the election. The process wasn’t intact.”
The trial resumes Wednesday at 1:15 p.m. EST on the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility’s YouTube page.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter / X. Email tips to [email protected].
