Fox News host Sean Hannity held up a video purportedly showing nefarious activity in a Georgia ballot-counting room as proof of massive election fraud in the state, insisting on Monday night that it hasn’t “been debunked by anybody.”
The problem, however, is that his own network debunked the video days ago, noting that it had been investigated and that the fraud claims were “unfounded.”
With days running out on President Donald Trump’s increasingly longshot bid to overthrow President-elect Joe Biden’s decisive election victory, Hannity kicked off his primetime program on Monday by keeping hope alive for his viewers. Despite Georgia recertifying its presidential election results for the third time this week, the pro-Trump host tried to exert pressure on state Republican officials to flip the state for Trump.
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Playing a clip of Trump supporters chanting “Fight for Trump!” at this past weekend’s Georgia rally, Hannity—who also serves as an informal Trump adviser—grumbled that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp wasn’t calling a special legislative session to review and change the state’s mail-in ballot laws.
“Governor Kemp, where are you?” Hannity exclaimed, echoing Trump’s complaints about the governor. “You can call the legislature back into session, fix this horrendous unequal application of our law in Georgia before the January runoff. You’ve done nothing so far and sadly Georgia’s problems don’t end there!”
Hannity then turned to the so-called “suitcase” video, which Trump’s legal team, at a hearing last week, claimed showed counters pulling out untallied ballots after witnesses left. Hannity parroted Team Trump’s claims.
“In the video, you can see now partisan observers and the media, they were asked to leave the room,” Hannity declared. “The vote counting room and then guess what, after being told about the vote-counting had stopped for the evening, well… election workers the few allowed to stay behind, well, underneath the tables they got large containers that were hidden.”
“These containers, yep, apparently filled with thousands and thousands of ballots which are then counted by the workers that were allowed to remain in the room that pulled them out of the suitcases they conveniently had there,” he continued. “Without partisan observers, without the media. The media mob pretends this is some kind of debunked story. No, nothing has been debunked by anybody!”
He then went on to cite an opinion piece by Federalist editor and Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway, which has been flagged by social media platforms for misinformation, to bolster his case.
The fact remains, however, that while Hannity wants his audience to believe “nothing” about the story has been debunked, Georgia election officials quickly threw cold water on Team Trump’s outlandish claims at the time and the Fox News news division further reported those denials.
Noting that the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections voted to recertify its election results last Friday, Fox News reported that the Georgia secretary of state’s office outright refuted the allegations of ballot-stuffing.
“A senior source in Raffensperger's office told Fox News that the video has been investigated and claims that it showed ballot fraud deemed unfounded, adding that Fulton County election officials had a designated observer at the location the entire time—a practice that has been in place since June,” Fox News’ digital story on the video read.
“Raffensperger's office also debunked allegations that the ballots were stuffed in a pair of ‘suitcases’ that one election official pulled out from beneath a table in the video, saying footage shows the ballots in the cases that they were supposed to be kept in,” the story continued. Fox News reporter Griff Jenkins would also report the fact-check multiple times on-air last Friday.
