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Pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood has been cleared in an investigation to determine if he violated Georgia election laws by moving to another state before voting last year.
“The State Election Board voted on Tuesday to dismiss the case the Georgia secretary of state’s office launched in February into where Wood had been living when he voted early in person in Georgia during the 2020 general election. A spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office said there was no violation found,” Newsweek reported.
“The investigation was launched once the secretary of state’s office found out from a television reporter that Wood had possibly been living in South Carolina at the time he voted. On February 1, Wood announced on Telegram he had moved to the state from Georgia,” the outlet added.
“A person’s residence is considered ‘that place in which such person’s habitation is fixed, without any present intention of removing therefrom’ under Georgia law. The measure also states that if a person moves to another state ‘with the intention of making it such person’s residence, such person shall be considered to have lost such person’s residence in this state,'” the outlet continued.
Wood argued that he was “domiciled in South Carolina for several months after purchasing property in the state in April.”
“While I spent time in South Carolina in 2020, I considered myself domiciled in Georgia and a resident of Georgia at all times in 2020,” Wood wrote.
He added he voted in person in Georgia on October 21 for the 2020 general election, but did not vote in January for the Senate runoff.
🇺🇸Linwood🇺🇸👍 pic.twitter.com/Ld9AWe9niO
— Faith over Fear 🇺🇸 (@usa_daria) December 14, 2021
The state of Georgia has remained in the news lately.
Former GOP Sen. David Perdue of Georgia will primary the Peach State’s current Republican governor, Brian Kemp, next spring.
And what’s more, Perdue already has a party heavyweight in his corner: Donald Trump.
Trump has had a thing for Georgia since he came to the conclusion that neither Kemp, whom he backed in 2018, or the Georgia Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, did enough to try and overturn what he saw as bogus election results following the November 2020 election which saw Joe Biden win the state — the first Democrat to carry Georgia in decades.
But some analysts believe that the internal GOP war likely contributed to the loss of both of the state’s Republican U.S. senators — Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed to her seat by Kemp.
“Adding to the high stakes: The winner will face Democrat Stacey Abrams, who announced last week that she’ll challenge Kemp, to whom she narrowly lost in 2018,” Politico reported. “A campaign featuring Abrams and Perdue would place Abrams’ signature issue — voting rights — as well as Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud at center stage.”
But one GOP official who has also advised Perdue to challenge Kemp recounted recently polling from the former president’s Save America PAC showing that a Trump endorsement puts Perdue in a commanding position over the first-term governor.
“Trump’s endorsement matters to Republican voters and he’s going to be helpful because this race is important to him,” the adviser said, adding that the former senator wants Trump to support him via his PAC, his email list, or via a fundraiser at the 45th president’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla.
