ATLANTA — The FBI says Georgia was one of five battleground states that Russia targeted with hoax bomb threats on Election Day.
The threats temporarily closed 13 precincts in Fulton, Gwinnett, and DeKalb Counties.
The Russian embassy in Washington, DC denied any involvement.
Despite those threats, Georgia had a record number of voters cast ballots in the 2024 election.
Channel 2 investigative reporter Justin Gray learned that those bomb threats impacted even more polling places than we thought were targeted.
We now know it was 60 polling places were named in bomb threats that election authorities suspect were linked to Russia.
That investigation has been turned over to the FBI.
But Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told Gray the threats did not impact the election on Tuesday and felt there was enough data in to make a call just three hours after polls closed.
“We got our results done so quickly that about 10 last night. We knew how we thought it was going to go, but I didn’t want to call the governor until about 10:30 p.m., just in case,” Raffensperger said.
Raffensperger told Gray that Georgia’s results were being counted and reported so quickly on Tuesday night, that his office was confident in the winner of the election long before the official calls of the race.
“I beat the officials’ calls and then we had to go beat on their doors and say, ‘Folks, you know, we know this race is over. President Trump has carried the state of Georgia,’” Raffensperger said.
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Quick counting of a record turnout election of nearly 5.3 million Georgians, thanks in part to a law change requiring early votes to be reported by 8 p.m. even with what appears to be a concerted effort by foreign actors to disrupt the polls.
We now know the scale of bomb threats at polling places was even greater than reported on Tuesday -- 60 polling places in Georgia were targeted with hoax bomb threats.
“How concerning to you those bomb threats, foreign actors possibly again focused on Georgia,” Gray asked Raffensperger.
“But they didn’t win,” Raffensperger said. “Even in Fulton County where they had 30 bomb threats, they still uploaded by 8 p.m. their 65%, 70% of early voting. So we worked through it we realized it was hoaxes, we got that out really quick and many of the precincts continued to stay open.”
Channel 2 Action News was there at the scene of some of those evacuations in Fulton and DeKalb Counties. Some polling places did have to have extended hours.
Clayton County also received email threats. Officials say they were sent from a Russian email host.
“Russian interference once again with the presidential election, the same way that they did in 2016, same way that they did in 2020. But we’re much more prepared at this time than we were then,” said Georgia Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson.
“At the end of the day, Russia picked on the wrong Georgia,” Raffensperger said.
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