No election would be complete without a Project Veritas undercover expose of campaign staffers saying things in private that they would never say in public, and that includes the Georgia Senate runoff.
Project Veritas released Monday undercover recordings showing two people identified as campaign finance aides for Democrat Raphael Warnock offering assurances that the candidate is more leftist than he lets on when it comes to defunding the police.
“So, he avoids using ’defunding the police’ because he knows that the Republicans are going to try to grab onto it and attack, right?” says a man identified as a Warnock finance assistant. “But in reality, his whole platform with police reform is along the lines of the same people who are saying ’defund the police.’”
Mr. Warnock, who’s challenging Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler in the Jan. 5 runoff, has repeatedly said that he opposes defunding the police but does want to hold law enforcement accountable.
A woman identified as the Warnock campaign’s director of small business engagement said on a phone call with a Project Veritas investigator that Mr. Warnock was “very progressive” and “pro-police reform, absolutely, 100% without a doubt.”
Asked if he was “on our side when it comes to defunding these suckers in blue, these police,” the woman replied, “Absolutely! Absolutely!”
Is @ReverendWarnock another swamp politician?
— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) January 4, 2021
His staff admits he says one thing publicly, but means another thing privately.
’He avoids using defunding the police…But in reality his whole platform is along the lines of those saying defund the police’pic.twitter.com/MwC6xhm5JW
Project Veritas, which said it spent months inside the Warnock campaign, identified the staffers by name. The Washington Times has not independently confirmed their identities, and has reached out to the Warnock campaign for comment.
The female staffer, who is Black, also offered insights into what goes behind the scenes with get-out-the-vote efforts, saying that Black voters must be contacted at least nine times to get them to cast ballots.
“We have to touch Black voters a minimum of nine times to remind them to go vote. A minimum,” she said. “So that’s why everybody’s inundated with text messages and phone calls.”
Let me be clear, I oppose defunding the police.
— Reverend Raphael Warnock (@ReverendWarnock) October 19, 2020
But we have to respect law enforcement enough to hold them accountable. #GASen
She discussed how Democrats advocating for police reform have been “looking at creative ways to police the community so that implicit bias is not used,” but also spoke frankly about Black-on-Black crime, a topic that Democrats are typically careful to avoid in public.
“There is a lot of crime going on in the city of Atlanta by Black people against Black people. There are Black people killing each other inside the city of Atlanta,” she said.
She said that “Black people want something done about crime in Atlanta.”
“Right now we’ve got people shooting children that are sitting in cars at Lenox mall. Black people did that, it wasn’t white people,” she said.
She referred to the Dec. 21 death of seven-year-old Kennedy Maxie, who was hit by a stray bullet while Christmas shopping with her family at the upscale Phipps Plaza mall in Atlanta.
Police issued arrest warrants Dec. 29 for 24-year-old Daquan Reed, saying he fired three shots out his car window after getting into an argument in the mall parking lot outside Saks Fifth Avenue, according to 11Alive in Atlanta.
“That had nothing to do with racism. There was no white person involved,” said the woman identified as the Warnock staffer on the Project Veritas video.
At the same time, she was clearly leery of law enforcement. “We know police officers are not all good, you know what I’m saying? Most of them are bad. We know that.”
The video was released the day before the double Georgia Senate runoff, which also pits Republican Sen. David Perdue against Democrat Jon Ossoff, an election that will determine control of the Senate.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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