Georgia election workers sue pro-Trump website over false claims that led to racist threats

Two election workers in Georgia have sued a right-wing conspiracy website that falsely accused them of manipulating ballots to ensure Donald Trump's loss in the state.

Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss sued the Gateway Pundit website, which is run by twin brothers Jim and Joseph Hoft, after they were targeted with death threats, unwanted pizza delivery orders and racist harassment after the website pushed debunked claims that the two women “pulled out suitcases full of ballots and began counting those ballots without election monitors in the room," reported the New York Times.

“I want the defendants to know that my daughter and I are real people who deserve justice, and I never want them to do this to anyone else,” Freeman said in a statement.

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Trump and his allies promoted claims, based on a misleadingly spliced segment of surveillance video that Moss, who still works for the Fulton County elections board, and her mother, a temporary employee during the 2020 election, had helped pull 18,000 fraudulent ballots from a suitcase and illegally fed them into the voting machines.

The false claims led to a flood of threats, which drove the elections workers into hiding.

An investigation by the Georgia secretary of state's office found the women did nothing wrong and were legally counting ballots.