AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File
- Gov. Brian Kemp steadfastly defended Georgia against claims of voter fraud after the 2020 election.
- Kemp, who rejected Trump's push to overturn Biden's Ga. win, dismissed Giuliani's claims in 2020.
- "For somebody to manipulate that process to me is very troubling," Kemp told WSB Radio last week.
Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia on Thursday said that he was troubled by former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani's admission that he made false statements regarding the integrity of the state's elections, as the ex-personal attorney for former President Donald Trump for years had accused two election workers of mishandling ballots in Fulton County.
Kemp — who repeatedly rejected Trump's pressure campaign to overturn now-President Joe Biden's 2020 victory in Georgia — told then-WSB Radio journalist Sandra Parrish that the accusations made by Giuliani were problematic given the raft of measures that have put in place to instill confidence in statewide elections.
"There's a lot of people, including me, that were under a lot of pressure then from legislators and other people because of supposedly false statements that he had made," the governor said of Giuliani.
"Which is really troubling when you're trying to have secure, accessible, fair elections in the state," Kemp continued. "For somebody to manipulate that process to me is very troubling."
Giuliani's admission came as he filed court papers connected to a defamation lawsuit brought by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss — a mother and daughter poll worker duo — who were accused by the former mayor of manipulating ballots during the vote-counting process at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta while they worked for the Fulton County Board of Elections.
Trump for years has insisted, without evidence, that alleged voter fraud in Fulton County was a main culprit behind him losing the state to Biden by nearly 12,000 votes.
Fulton, a Democratic stronghold, voted for Biden over Trump 73%-26%, or by 243,000 votes.
When Giuliani sought to influence conservative state lawmakers in 2020 to entertain his election claims, Kemp was skeptical of the ex-mayor's narrative and at the time called his statements about the vote count in suburban Cobb County a "joke."
"He doesn't know the Georgia Bureau of Investigation very well," Kemp said of Giuliani in December 2020.
After the 2020 election, Trump continued to needle Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger over their refusal to boost his false election claims and prod legislators to reverse the outcome.
The former president recruited primary challengers to defeat both men last year, but Kemp and Raffensperger easily won their respective primaries and went on to win their respective general election reelection contests.