“Exclusive: Georgia probe into Trump examines chaplain’s role in election meddling”

Reuters:

Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman didn’t recognize the man who banged on her door. Terrified, she called 911. She had reason to fear.

By the morning of Dec. 15, 2020, when she saw the stranger’s red sedan parked in her driveway, she had received hundreds of threats from supporters of former U.S. President Donald Trump. Two weeks earlier, Trump’s campaign had falsely accused Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, of pulling fake ballots from suitcases at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena to rig the 2020 election for Democrat Joe Biden.

The man had already passed a message to Freeman through a neighbor: Freeman’s time was running out, he said, and he could help her and her daughter. When a police officer responded and questioned the man outside Freeman’s home, he introduced himself as Steve Lee, a police chaplain from Illinois.

Now Lee is under scrutiny in a criminal investigation into alleged election interference by Trump and his allies in Georgia, according to a source with direct knowledge of the probe.

Lee played a central role in a failed effort to pressure Freeman to admit to an election fraud that never occurred, according to a Reuters examination of police body camera footage and court documents, as well as interviews with key participants. After being rebuffed by Freeman, Lee contacted Harrison Floyd, who had run outreach to black voters for Trump’s 2020 campaign. Floyd arranged another visit to Freeman on Jan. 4, 2021, this time from Chicago publicist Trevian Kutti, who threatened Freeman with jail unless she provided information on election fraud, Reuters reported last December.

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