Former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) had multiple exchanges with Georgia political leaders as she navigated the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, the runoff election in which she lost to Democrat Raphael Warnock, and in the lead-up to and fallout from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, according to text messages obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Fifty-nine pages of Loeffler’s texts, which the outlet noted came from an unidentifiable source but some of which were independently confirmed by multiple outlets, give insight into Georgia politics through exchanges with the secretary of state’s wife Tricia Raffensperger, Loeffler’s advisers, and Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Jody Hice (R-GA). Georgia was central to former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims that the election was stolen from him.
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The document, which included over 400 text messages, came from a service called Cellebrite, which is used by investigators to obtain data from cellphones, according to Politico. This could signal that Loeffler’s phone was subpoenaed by officials in Fulton County, Georgia, as part of their investigation into Trump’s election fraud claims.
The Washington Examiner has not independently verified the text messages.
“Never did I think you were the kind of person to unleash such hate and fury on someone in [a] political office of the same party,” Tricia Raffensperger said in a Nov. 9, 2021, text to Loeffler, the same day she called on Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to resign. “My family and I [are] being personally besieged by people threatening our lives because you didn’t have the decency or good manners to come and talk to my husband with any questions you may have had. Instead you have put us in the eye of the storm.”
Facing a difficult special election runoff against Warnock, who eventually beat her on Jan. 5, Loeffler aligned herself with Trump and said Raffensperger should resign because of the apparent voting irregularities in the state. Loeffler didn’t appear to reply to the text.
Other texts relate to Loeffler and the plot to have fake electors try to certify the Georgia election for Trump. Attorney Daryl Moody, who was involved with Loeffler’s campaign, reached out to ask if him going to the GOP electors’ meeting would “reflect well” on the senator. She told staffers to let him know that “we had no issues with that.”
Greene, who wouldn’t be sworn in as a representative for another month, reached out to Loeffler on Dec. 2 asking her to join the “plan we are developing on how to vote on the electoral college votes on Jan 6th. I need a Senator! And I think this is a major help for you to win on the 5th!!”
Hice also reached out to her on Dec. 17 to say, “Kelly, I wanted to give you the heads up that I will be contesting the electoral votes on January 6. Wanted to check with you about doing the same in the Senate. … I know you’ve had people ask, I was wondering if you have made a decision?”
AJC said the records indicate Loeffler did not respond to this message.
Loeffler, despite her stalwart public support for Trump, was privately conflicted over the choice. While at a Jan. 4 rally, she pledged to “fight for Trump” but didn’t sign a pledge backed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) not to accept the election results. However, in the last days of her campaign, she released a statement promising to give “President Trump and the American people the fair hearing they deserve and object to the Electoral College certification process.”
After the events of Jan. 6, Loeffler reneged on this pledge. Her campaign adviser Malorie Thompson texted her about the violence unfolding on television and speculated that the Republicans still pushing to block the certification were doing so out of 2024 aspirations.
“This isn’t what we signed on to, we said we would debate and present evidence, not shoot our way through the capital,” Thompson texted.
The next day, Loeffler announced on the Senate floor that she would vote to certify the election.
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“The liberal media are being weaponized by criminal elements on the Left to promote unverified content in a desperate attempt to distract voters twenty days from the election,” a spokeswoman for the former senator, Caitlin O’Dea, said in a statement in response to AJC’s reporting.
Warnock is now running for a full term against Trump-endorsed Herschel Walker. Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp, who also pushed back on Trump’s election fraud claims, won their primaries despite his efforts to oust them. Hice was Raffensperger’s primary challenger.
