A lawsuit filed a year ago in the federal court for the Northern District of Texas, barely noticed in Georgia media, is ongoing and appears to be the discovery stage—and it could cause a huge problem for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
The suit says Raffensperger defamed Jacki Pick by publishing statements that falsely accused her of presenting “deceptively sliced and edited” video footage and “lies” in testimony before the Georgia state legislature when, in fact, Pick’s presentation of the unedited, uncut, November 3, 2020, video at State Farm Arena revealed that Raffensberger had spent weeks lying about what had really happened at State Farm Arena on election night.
The suit further says “Raffensperger further claimed that Ms. Pick lied about Fulton County’s use of ‘suitcases’ to store ballots, when he was aware this term was field jargon among election workers. The term had been used by the state’s own election monitor for Fulton County in a report to the Georgia State Board of Elections – on which Raffensperger sits ex-officio. Ms. Pick’s testimony was true and her evidence Case 7:22-cv-00112-O Document 1 Filed 10/31/22 Page 1 of 25 PageID 1 unedited and authentic, as Raffensperger has known from the start.”
The secretary of state, the suit says, “made these statements in his book Integrity Counts and subsequent national promotional interviews, from which he profited. Raffensperger’s allegations about Ms. Pick were knowingly false, defamatory, made with actual malice, and have caused Ms. Pick severe damage for which she seeks to be made whole.”
Pick is a Texas citizen who served many years on Capitol Hill as legal counsel to the chairman of the U.S. House Subcommittee on the Constitution and the former Ranking Member of the U.S. House Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee, the suit notes. “At the time of her testimony before the Georgia state legislature, she was a Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation,” the suit continues, and that she “has devoted her professional and civic life to upholding and defending the U.S. Constitution. She loves her country and volunteered after election 2020 to defend its rule of law and its free and fair elections.”
Defendant Raffdnsperger “is sued in his individual capacity as the author of Integrity Counts“ and the lawsuit maintains “this Court has personal jurisdiction over Raffensperger because he sold the book to Texans through online booksellers and physical stores located in Texas. Raffensperger promoted book sales through national media outlets that broadcast to the Texas market.” It says the Texas federal court is the proper venue “because the brunt of the reputational harm was experienced by Pick in the (Texas) Northern District, which is Ms. Pick’s home district.”
The heart of Pick’s argument against Raffensperger is that the 2020 presidential election vote counting should not have been stopped and, when Republican election observers were told to leave by election officials and in fact left, the counting was illegally started again. Her suit notes that Georgia law requires that returns “be open to public inspection at the office of the superintendent as soon as they are received from the chief managers.” Georgia Code § 21-2-491. Furthermore, Georgia Code § 21-2-492 (2020) required that the superintendent give “at least one week’s notice prior to the primary or election by publishing same in a conspicuous place in the superintendent’s office, of the time and place when and where he or she will commence and hold his or her sessions for the computation and canvassing of the returns . . . .” . In short, the suit contends, Georgia law both allows members of the public to be present when votes are being counted and requires election officials provide notice regarding when ballots will be counted.
Bottom line: The plaintiff says Raffensperger, in his book, lies about what happened that night and defames her in the process. And she seeks remedial compensation.
Stay tuned as to how this lawsuit process unfolds.
