Georgia Election Official Shares 'Biggest Concern' Amid Fervid Trump Rhetoric
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Georgia Republican election official Gabriel Sterling said he’s afraid Donald Trump’s rhetoric could radicalize people to carry out violence as the former president faces a potential criminal indictment in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the election there.
Sterling appeared on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis reportedly prepares to present her case to a grand jury.
Trump has been targeting Willis on social media and in a new attack ad called “The Fraud Squad,” which also goes after President Joe Biden and other prosecutors pressing charges against the former president.
The ad accuses Willis of being politically motivated and corrupt, and claims, without evidence, that she had an affair with a gang member.
ABC’s Jonathan Karl asked Sterling if he was concerned about the ad and Trump’s increasingly torrid language.
“Obviously at this point, you never know what’s going to happen,” Sterling said. “My biggest concern for years now ... is somebody will be motivated by some of this kind of language at some point, and do something stupid.”
“It’s not going to be an organized thing. It’s not going to be a bunch of conspirators together,” he added. “It’s going to be one probably mentally unstable individual who’s going to be radicalized through this process.”
Gabriel Sterling, a top GOP Georgia election official who has repeatedly rebuked former Pres. Trump's claims of voter fraud, tells @JonKarl that his "biggest concern" remains the potential risk of violence from incendiary attacks on election integrity. https://t.co/Il5bNmm2b9pic.twitter.com/BrDDBhCDba
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) August 13, 2023
Sterling went viral in December 2020 for calling on Trump and lawmakers to show leadership as he, his colleagues and their family members faced harassment and threats about the election, which Trump refused to concede.
“You need to step up and say this — is stop inspiring people to commit potential violence. Someone’s going to get hurt, someone’s going to get shot, someone’s going to get killed. It’s not right,” he said in an emotional address at the time.
Sterling’s latest remarks come just a week after the fatal FBI shooting of a Utah man who authorities said plotted to kill President Joe Biden and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is prosecuting Trump in the Stormy Daniels hush money case.
Craig Robertson described a plan to shoot “radical fool prosecutor” Bragg, whom he accused of being “corrupt” in a social media post.
Trump has leveled relentless attacks against prosecutors in the three criminal cases against him, and once told followers that an indictment by Bragg could result in “death & destruction.”
