In the latest news from the Peach State, specifically Fulton County, a judge on Thursday dismissed seven of nine claims in an election lawsuit, but allowed two to proceed.
The two require the county to produce digital images of approximately 150,000 mail-in ballots that are at the center of plaintiffs’ allegations of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, the Epoch Times reports.
In an order, Henry County Superior Court Chief Judge Brian Amero ruled that the respondents of the lawsuit - Fulton County, Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, and Fulton County Clerk of Superior and Magistrate Courts - could not be defendants in the suit due to immunity protections.
However, Amero granted a request by the plaintiffs to add five named individual members of Fulton County’s Board of Registration and Elections as respondents in the case.
Don Samuel, an attorney for the Fulton County elections board, said there are plans to get the rest of the lawsuit dismissed.
“That litigation is finished,” Samuel said. “Is there going to be an audit? Not right now...there’s no discovery permitted. There’s no lawsuit pending anymore.”
But Garland Favorito, the lead plaintiff in the case, views the judge’s order as a win.
“We are pleased that the court has ruled in our favor again for the fifth time. The ruling substitutes Defendants by replacing currently named government organizations with individual board members we named originally in our lawsuit. It also moots Don Samuels’ attempt to dismiss our case. This continues the string of victories we have including how we obtained the original protective order, conditional approval to inspect ballots, access to ballot images, and the order to unseal the ballots.”
“This is a huge victory for everyone who wants to get to the truth about the way in which Fulton County mishandled the absentee ballot count,” Bob Cheeley, lead attorney for two of the petitioners, told Just the News.