Trump Allies Sue to Allow Election Officials to Refuse to Certify Results

This story is being published in partnership with American Doom, a newsletter that focuses on right-wing extremism and other threats to democracy.

A Republican election official in Georgia’s largest county who has worked for prominent election denial groups is now suing for the discretion to refuse to certify election results with the help of Donald Trump’s America First Policy Institute. 

Julie Adams, a member of the Fulton County election board, filed her lawsuit on May 22 with the help of lawyers from America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank. The lawsuit seeks access to voting records that Adams says she was denied by Fulton County’s election director, Nadine Williams, and also seeks the court’s ruling on whether Adams’ duty to certify election results is up to her discretion. 

Adams’ lawsuit specifically requests that the judge “clarify” that her “duties are, in fact, discretionary, not ministerial.”

In recent years, Republican election officials have refused or delayed certification of election results at least 15 times in eight states, as Rolling Stone previously reported — part of efforts to call elections into question based on Trump’s election lies. 

Adams’ lawsuit marks the first legal attempt by Trumpland to help sway Georgia’s election results in November, but not her first involvement with election denial tactics. While it has been reported that Adams served as a director for the Tea Party Patriots, a pro-Trump group that helped organize the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, Rolling Stone and American Doom have found she served with another prominent election denial group that was at the forefront of efforts to overturn the 2020 election and has continued that work into 2024.

In an undated biography at the Virginia Public Policy Institute, Adams is listed as the “southeast regional coordinator” for the Election Integrity Network (EIN), Rolling Stone and American Doom have found. EIN is the brainchild of Cleta Mitchell, seen as one of the most prominent leaders of the election denial movement and a lawyer who has advised the Trump campaign.

It’s unclear when Adams served in the role — or whether she still does. She did not respond to questions about her work for EIN or Tea Party Patriots. An official at America First Policy Institute said the organization is providing pro bono representation to Adams in her capacity as a member of the Fulton County board of elections. Adams and AFPI first began discussing the issues at the center of the lawsuit in April, the AFPI official said — about a month before the lawsuit was filed.  

The Adams lawsuit is an attempt to pave the way for Republican election officials to deny election results en masse — a fundamental part of Trump’s strategy of baselessly questioning election results and making claims of widespread voter fraud. According to Axios, the Republican National Committee has been staffing up lawyers, legal observers, and poll watchers to “gather string for lawsuits challenging the results of the Nov. 5 vote.” The RNC “plans to hire more people for the operation than for any other department it has,” Axios reported. 

Adams’ lawsuit stems from her request for election records from the May 21 primary that include voter check-in lists, poll tapes, ballot recap sheets, ballot removal forms, drop-box ballot information, provisional ballot information, and “cast vote” records. After requesting the records, Adams was told by Williams that the material was “not required for certification.” Still, Williams eventually handed over some of the records as Adams continued asking for more material heading into the May 21 primary.

When told that the materials Adams had already received would be all the election director would hand over before certification, Adams claimed she was “unable to fulfill her oath of office,” according to her lawsuit. Adams voted against certifying the results of the May 21 primary; she was outvoted by her fellow election board members, including Republican Michael Heekin.

Adams’ lawsuit could pave the way for Republican election officials to more broadly refuse to certify results based on suspect claims that widespread fraud exists, Georgia Democratic Party director Tolulope Kevin Olasanoye says in a statement.

Olasanoye says that Adams “is not even one step removed from MAGA ‘stop the steal’ ringleader Cleta Mitchell and her conspiracy-fueled mass voter challenge operation,” adding that the party will “continue to combat MAGA Republicans and Trump allies’ efforts to undermine our democracy and ensure local elections are certified, which is required by law.”

Adams’ lawsuit could also backfire and prove that the certification process — a previously mundane and “ministerial” task that election deniers have hijacked in recent years — is not up to the discretion of officials like Adams, says Derek Muller, a professor at Notre Dame Law School who has written about the issue of local certification of elections.

“[Adams] had no basis in law to refuse to certify the results,” Muller tells Rolling Stone and American Doom. “If anything, this lawsuit is likely to result in a legal decision that shuts down claims like hers well before the election in Georgia.”

Still, Adams’ refusal to certify is just the latest iteration of an election denial tactic that has been employed across the country in recent years. Since November 2020, Republican election officials in eight states have refused or delayed certification of election results 15 times. Among the states where refusals to certify have occurred were the pivotal swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia — which remain crucial to Trump’s chances of victory in November. 

But like all election matters, Adams’ lawsuit is complicated. Marilyn Marks, a left-leaning plaintiff in the long-running Curling vs. Raffensberger lawsuit, which seeks transparency about Georgia’s voting machines and its broader election process, said that while Adams’ intentions are clearly based in election denialism, the records she’s seeking should be released. 

“So long as they are working with public records and we demand full transparency, the press can oversee what they are doing, and call BS on their failure to certify,” she said of Adams and other Republicans who have held up certification over records like those sought in the America First lawsuit.