AJC:

Republican David Perdue is cozying up to Donald Trump ahead of his Saturday rally in Georgia by embracing one of the former president’s favorite lies: That the 2020 election was “stolen.”

The Trump-backed challenger to Gov. Brian Kemp has long promoted the falsehood that rampant fraud in Georgia’s 2020 election led to Joe Biden’s victory. But this week he began claiming that his defeat to Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff was also tainted.

“Most people in Georgia know that something untoward happened in November 2020,” he told conservative radio host Brian Pritchard. “I’ll just say it, Brian. In my election and the president’s election, they were stolen. The evidence is compelling now.”

The election wasn’t stolen. Three separate tallies of the roughly 5 million ballots upheld Biden’s narrow victory, court challenges by Trump allies were squashed, and bipartisan election officials have vouched for the results.

An audit of absentee ballot signatures in Cobb County found no cases of fraud. Perdue previously didn’t argue his election was “stolen” — in fact, he conceded to Ossoff shortly after the Jan. 5, 2021, runoff.

But Perdue’s embrace of the conspiracy theory reflects reliance on Trump to narrow Kemp’s solid lead in polls and in fundraising. With less than two months before the May 24 vote, time is running short for Perdue to erase Kemp’s lead.