A top election official in Georgia took aim at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., for spreading “disproven conspiracies” after she falsely claimed during a House panel on election integrity that former President Donald Trump won the state in the 2020 election.
“I had a discussion with the Election Integrity Caucus. A big part of that is talking truthfully about the challenges in elections and identifying REAL issues,” wrote Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in a tweet Tuesday night.
“Some still deal in disproven conspiracies. It’s a challenge we all face, but having a @CocaCola makes everything better,” Sterling tweeted alongside a screenshot of him taking a deep swig of soda while seated next to Greene.
Sterling, who came into the national spotlight when he denounced false claims of election fraud in Georgia after the 2020 election, was one of several elections officers who appeared Tuesday before the GOP-led House Election Integrity Caucus. Greene is a member of the group.
The roundtable discussion was intended to address “election administration best practices,” said a press release from Rep. Claudia Tenney, a New York Republican and the caucus co-chair. “Panelists discussed what went right in their states during the 2022 election and raised a range of ideas for improving elections as we look forward to 2024.”
Greene on Tuesday evening posted a video from that event that showed her turning to Sterling and criticizing him directly.
“Gabe, I do not consider you an expert on this issue. As a matter of fact, I consider you a major problem,” Greene said.
She floated an array of disputed claims about election fraud in Georgia’s 2020 general election, beginning with the claim that her ex-husband had showed up to vote in person and was told he had already voted by absentee ballot.
“No one gave a s— about what happened to him,” Greene said, claiming that many others had reported the same issue.
Greene then made the repeatedly disproven assertion that there were “thousands” of dead voters whose ballots were counted in Georgia.
Sterling interjected: “There were four.”
Greene continued her broadside. She told Sterling he has “constantly shilled for this election” and claimed there was “complete and total fraud and you know it.”
“I’m going to follow up with one more thing: Trump won Georgia,” Greene said, before voicing more election conspiracies, including the debunked claim that “suitcases” full of ballots were secretly scanned in Atlanta. Sterling and Raffensperger said in sworn testimony last year that that conspiracy theory was false.
Greene’s tweet presented the video as a gift “on behalf of President Trump and all of his voters in Georgia.”
On Wednesday morning, Sterling tweeted another version of the photo of him drinking soda next to Greene, this one mocked up with the old Coca-Cola slogan, “Have a Coke and a smile.”
The offices of Tenney and the Georgia secretary of state did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for Greene responded to Sterling’s tweets by reiterating some of the congresswoman’s criticisms of Georgia’s election.
Trump never conceded the 2020 election to President Joe Biden. He engaged in numerous failed attempts to overturn his losses in key swing states, including Georgia, and spread a wide array of false or unfounded claims of widespread election fraud.
Sterling, a Republican, issued a fiery rebuke of Trump in late 2020 for staying silent as Georgia was flooded with threats against people overseeing the state’s elections.
“Stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone is going to get hurt, someone is going to get shot, someone is going to get killed,” Sterling said at the time.
Trump’s efforts to reverse his election loss culminated in the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when a violent mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol and forced lawmakers to flee their chambers.
Trump remains a major figure in the Republican Party and is currently a leading contender for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.