[ad_1]
CUMMING, Georgia – Three days before the run-off election to decide control of the US Senate, Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) – who has led a relentlessly negative campaign against her Democratic challenger, Pastor Raphael Warnock – launches the attacks the toughest and most personal ever in this already stormy race.
During a campaign stop Saturday morning in Cumming, a town in the conservative northern suburb of Atlanta, Loeffler accused Warnock of being “involved in child abuse, domestic violence – he is in hiding, he will not respond. to these questions. “
That line drew cheers from the crowd – and from one man, the familiar Trump-era refrain reserved for the most hated politicians: “Lock him up!”
The senator then said that “Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer” had contributed to the Warnock campaign. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” she added. Loeffler was probably referring to David Boies, the prominent lawyer who once represented Weinstein. Boies donated to a PAC supporting Georgia Democrats, but not specifically the Warnock campaign, according to federal records.
In making the explosive charges, Loeffler was referring to a pair of events that defined the GOP’s efforts to attack the character of Warnock.
One is a March incident in which police were called after a dispute between Warnock and his wife while they were in the process of a divorce. Warnock’s ex-wife alleged he crushed her foot with his car; Recently released police body camera footage captures her telling officers that Warnock was a “great actor.” This line was featured in an attack advertising blitz, funded by Loeffler’s GOP allies, flooding Georgian airwaves ahead of the election.
Warnock has denied any wrongdoing and no charges were filed after the incident. the Atlanta Newspaper Incorporation reported on December 30 that, according to hours of body camera footage, police in Atlanta expressed doubts that Warnock injured his wife. Ouleye Warnock told AJC that she felt the incident had no place in the Senate elections.
The second is a 2002 incident at a Maryland summer camp run by then-Warnock Church in Baltimore, in which he and another church leader were arrested after disrupting a police investigation into the allegations. abuse in the camp. Warnock said at the time that he was preventing police from talking to campers without the children’s lawyers present; Maryland Police later credited him with his cooperation in the investigation and called the arrest “miscommunication.” Last week, the story resurfaced when a former camper alleged counselors punished him by forcing him to sleep outside and throwing urine at him.
Last week, after Loeffler said Warnock “must answer” for what happened, the Warnock campaign told the AJC“No matter how many lies Senator Loeffler told, the facts are the same: Reverend Warnock assisted law enforcement with their investigation and they thanked him.
Responding to Loeffler’s claims, a spokesperson for Warnock said the senator “spent her entire campaign lying about Reverend Warnock and trying to divide the Georgians”.
“Georgians see through Kelly Loeffler’s dishonest campaign, and they know that during her year in the Senate she spent a lot more time defending herself than caring for them,” the spokesperson said.
For most of the two-month campaign, the GOP focused on portraying Warnock as a dangerous far-left radical by broadcasting clips from his past sermons. Many Democrats, including the candidates themselves, have called these ads racist in the way they play with certain tropes.
But many Republican voters in Georgia can’t think of the next election without dwelling on the November 3 election. President Trump has set his sights on Georgia, claiming without any evidence that the state election was fraudulent and hopelessly corrupt. This fantasy has taken root in the GOP base, and key leaders – including Trump – have urged Georgian voters to vote in the January 5 election even though they think the whole system is rotten.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) joined Loeffler on Saturday, who appeared at the rally shortly before his Senate office announced he would lead a group of GOP senators to oppose Biden’s victory when the Senate meets to certify the results of the Electoral College on January 6. In a joint statement, the senators claimed that the 2020 election suffered from “unprecedented” electoral fraud, but they had not produced specific evidence on this, as did Trump’s legal team n ‘failed to do so in their streak of attempts to overturn the election in court.
Addressing the crowd on the platform of a pickup truck, Cruz broadcast baseless allegations that Democrats stole the 2020 election – and accused them of planning to do the same for the second round in Georgia .
“Are they going to try to steal it?” Yes, ”said Cruz. “But I’ll tell you what we’re going to do – we’re going to win by a big enough margin that no one steals the state of Georgia.”
[ad_2]
Source link