President Donald Trump’s legal team on Thursday presented surveillance footage to a Georgia State Legislature hearing that appears to show election ballot-counting workers kicking out poll observers late at night on Election Day before pulling out suitcases allegedly filled with ballots.
A woman who identified herself as Jackie Pick, a lawyer who is assisting with their legal case, said the team received video footage from State Farm Arena’s vote-tabulation center in Fulton County, Georgia. The team said that GOP poll watchers were not allowed to watch the counting process in the poll center.
But, according to Pick, an unusual occurrence took place later in the evening at around 10 p.m. ET. A woman—described as a blonde woman with braids—told workers to stop counting and told everyone to go home.
“Everyone clears out, including the Republican observers and the press, but four people stay behind and continue counting and tabulating well into the night,” Pick said. They counted unobserved until about 1 a.m.
Pick said that video footage shows Fulton County election workers waiting at their scanning areas until GOP poll watchers and reporters left the room before they started “scanning ballots,” ostensibly without any observation. Pick noted that it contravenes state and county law.
WATCH: Footage of State Farm Arena in #Atlanta shows that after poll monitors and media were told counting was done, four workers stayed behind to count #ballots, at times pulling out suitcases containing ballots from underneath desks.
Watch full video: https://t.co/EHnM5HZFWj pic.twitter.com/xuT8Svgxbr
— The Epoch Times (@EpochTimes) December 3, 2020
At 11 p.m., once everyone is gone, the workers are seen “pulling ballots out from underneath a table.” She asked if it’s normal to “store suitcases of ballots under a table cloth?” Pick said after reviewing footage that it’s not a normal procedure.
It’s not clear if election workers knew they were being recorded on camera.
The lawyer further alleged that the same woman with the blonde hair and braids, presumably the manager, had placed the table there earlier. It’s not clear where those ballots came from, and it’s not clear when the suitcases of thousands of ballots were placed under the table.
Witnesses have sworn in affidavits that the counting continued until the early morning hours, Trump’s team said.
A woman is seen carrying a suitcase allegedly filled with ballots without poll challenger supervision on the night of Nov. 3, 2020. (NTD screenshot) 
A woman is seen carrying a suitcase allegedly filled with ballots without poll challenger supervision on the night of Nov. 3, 2020. (NTD screenshot) 
(NTD Screenshot)
“Why are they counting them when the place is cleared out with no witnesses?” Pick said.
She argued that based on the number of ballots there, it is “beyond the margin of victory” in the presidential race. It’s because three scanners—which can carry out several thousand ballot processes per hour—were working several hours that night. This process, she said, “goes on, and on, and on” until the early morning hours.
President Donald Trump said on Twitter that the video is significant evidence showing voter fraud.
Trump wrote: “Wow! Blockbuster testimony taking place right now in Georgia. Ballot stuffing by Dems when Republicans were forced to leave the large counting room. Plenty more coming, but this alone leads to an easy win of the State!”
In the hearing, it was noted that officials cleared out State Farm Arena on Election Night due to an alleged pipe break. Pick and other members of Trump’s team said it’s not clear whether this was the reason why poll workers and members of the press were kicked out.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, told reporters this week that Fulton County “cut corners” during the second recount. Officials with the secretary of state’s office said last month that they were seeing “managerial sloppiness” and “chain of custody” issues in the county.
Fulton County Board of Commissioners Chairman Rob Pitts challenged the criticism during a public hearing on Thursday, saying he would give the county an A+ for how it handled the election.
Supporters of President Donald Trump protest outside State Farm Arena as ballots continue to be counted inside on November 5, 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia. Attention is focused on a few key battleground states as the U.S. presidential election remains too close to call. (Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images)
A Fulton County spokeswoman hasn’t responded to a request for comment about the Trump team’s claims or the video.
In early November, the spokeswoman told Epoch Times via email that officials were “not aware of direction given to any observers to leave.”
Registration & Elections Director Richard Barron said that when he learned that staff were dismissed at 10:30 p.m., he advised that some workers needed to continue.
“Based on that directive, a smaller crew continued to work through the night. It may be possible that observers left at the time the majority of the staff left, but from the information we have, the processing area was never closed to observers,” the spokeswoman added.
Georgia Republican Party Chair David Shafer said Fulton County officials “falsely announced that the counting of ballots would stop at 10:30 p.m.”
“This video proves our allegation – that they continued counting ballots in secret until 1:00 am,” Shafer wrote in a tweet on Thursday.
Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
