Candidate Jones’ involvement in fake ‘electors’ for GA spells trouble

State Sen. Burt Jones’ role involving a phony slate of GOP electors in Georgia, may be coming back to bite him on the leg. 

As the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in Georgia, State Sen. Burt Jones has some explaining to do regarding his role following the 2020 presidential election. 

Candidate Joe Biden won Georgia, but there were those in high places who were determined to award the state to then-President Donald Trump in a failed effort to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. 

The Justice Department is intensifying its investigation into the fake Georgia electors after a U.S. House committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol presented evidence last month that tied the former president to the scheme to put forward pro-Trump slates. 

The Justice Department last month sought records from Georgia GOP Chairman David Shafer and Brad Carver, an attorney and Republican activist who was among the 16 fake electors.

The actions of Jones and the others are under a microscope as the investigation intensifies. Fulton DA Fani Willis says the GOP electors are under scrutiny as part of her investigation into Trump’s attempt to reverse his defeat in Georgia. 

After a presidential election, electors from the party of the winning candidate meet to cast the state’s electoral votes for the winner and send them to Congress to be certified. 

As the official Democratic electors met on December 14, 2020, to cast Georgia’s electoral votes for Biden, Shafer gathered an alternative slate of Republicans to cast votes for Trump. An email sent by Trump’s Georgia election day staffer just before the group of alternate electors assembled at the state Capitol directed participants not to disclose why they had gathered and to tell Capitol security guards they were attending a meeting with Jones and Alpharetta Republican state Sen. Brandon Beach. 

Quick to point out Jones’ involvement and duplicity is the Democratic nominee for Lt. Governor, Charlie Bailey. In campaign speeches and fundraising emails, Bailey is shining a spotlight on Jones’ role and the review underway by the FBI and Fulton County. This scrutiny and the constant drum beating by Bailey has tongues wagging with some strategists worried the issue could damage the rest of the GOP ticket. 

During his runoff victory speech, Bailey said Jones is “not a patriot and not a true American.” In an interview with the AJC, Bailey said, “Burt Jones doesn’t get to decide whose votes count and whose votes don’t. When you step in and say, ‘I am the official elector of this state and I am saying that Donald Trump won this state despite the law, despite the certification (of votes), we are saying this because we want it to be the case,’ there’s nothing more unAmerican, there’s nothing more unpatriotic than an action like that.” 

Jones spokesman Stephen Lawson, called Bailey’s comments “politically motivated.”

In a statement, Jones said, “These are nothing more than fake political attacks.”  

“If we don’t have representative democracy, we don’t have America. Period. And that’s what Burt Jones and his friends — that’s what they tried to take from the people of America and the people of Georgia,” said Bailey.