Vigilantes: the GOP Voter Suppression Movie

Greg Palast: Why now, what's changed? The voter laws.

So I'm down in Georgia with these grown men dressed up for Civil War, and they're all excited about this new voting law in Georgia.

A law they're certain will allow the south to rise again. Law is called SB 202.

And it's 98 pages of breathtaking obstacles to voting.

I mean, they've made mail-in voting nearly illegal.

They've shuttered ballot drop boxes.

They've cut Sunday Black Souls to the Polls day.

And if you hand someone a slice of pizza or a bottle of water while they're waiting in line for five hours, you'll be charged with a felony crime.

I'm not kidding. In Georgia, pizza is an act of civil disobedience.

I've been covering vote suppression for The Guardian, BBC, Rolling Stone for two decades.

And I've never seen anything like it.

But what shook me up, I'm going through the bill and I see a landmine planted in it.

It's barely noticeable.

For the first time in Georgia history, any voter can challenge an unlimited number of other voters and stop their ballots from being counted.

And when I say unlimited, I mean unlimited.

Our team contacted all 159 counties in Georgia.

Muskogee County tells us 4,000 voters were challenged.

In Cobb County, it was 48,000 voters challenged.

- My husband is a huge Disney fan. And oh geez, Tommy should have moved our ammo. There's our ammo. (people laughing) (gentle music)

So my name is Pamela Reardon. I am currently six district committee woman to the state party. So the last two years I hit over 10,000 doors for President Trump and Marjorie Taylor Green.

- Did President Trump really lose the state of Georgia? - No. - Tell me why? Why do you think that? - Because I know for sure that voters have voted here and do not live here.

- [Greg] I gotta give you this. This is, do you know this woman? Do you recognise that woman?

- Not offhand. - You don't recognise her? - No, but I- - Do you recognise- - If they were taking pictures with me with them, I mean.

- [Greg] I'm not gonna blame you if you took a picture with her. She's a very nice person. - I don't know. I don't- - Her name is Tamara Horne.

Do you know Tamara, you don't know any Tamara Horne? - I don't, the name's not familiar. - [Greg] You're absolutely certain you don't?

- I don't - You never spoke to her? - No. No. - What what about this guy and his wife on his honeymoon? See, there he is.

Just so the camera could see that he's on his honeymoon. But do you recognise that man? - No.

- [Greg] He as an interesting name. His name is Storm Saul. - And I suppose he was on the list. - [Greg] Yeah, did you ever speak to Storm Saul?

- No, I told you already. I did not speak to the 32,000 people. - [Greg] But okay.

Well- - I can't even follow up on my own people that are calling all the time. - [Greg] So you never call them, but you challenge the right to vote.

- I'd have to go back and look at the list. - Oh, explain that story. In fact, if I get the math right, you made two challenges.

You challenged 32,379 voters, said, "Don't count their ballots or, you know?" - No, no, just send them a letter to come in and prove that they live still in Georgia at that address.

- Okay, I have a piece of paper from you. This is what you filed with the county, which said you are challenging her right to have her ballot counted.

- No, I'm not. - [Greg] It says right here, "Accept this letter as a challenge to these electors' eligibility to vote."

Sign Pamela Reardon. - I can't go through 32,000 people. I was handed the list. - [Greg] Wait, you can't go through 32,000?

Excuse me- - True the Vote vetted these. - [Greg] Have you ever heard of the Ku Klux Klan Law? - Okay, so this- - [Greg] Have you heard of the Ku Klux Klan Law of 1871?

- I'm from Canada. - So you don't know the Ku Klux Klan Law? - I'm from Canada. - Clearly you don't know a Georgia law. - I.

- [Greg] Ku Klux Klan Law of 1871. - Get out! - Do you believe this woman shouldn't have her vote counted? - This has nothing to do with it.

- Is this an attempt to remove a lot of Democrats - That has nothing to do with it. - Black people. - No it isn't. - From voting to win the election?

- I'm far from that, Sir. And you have crossed the line. You have crossed the line. Get outta my house now! - I shall get out of your house.

- Before I throw you. - And you are sure that this is your legal voting address?

- You are an asshole. - Thank you.

They do have a rifle right next to the door. So believe me, I wasn't gonna overstay my welcome.

So we phoned about 800 of these allegedly illegal voters. And they were shocked. First, what do you mean my right to vote is being challenged?

And what do you mean I don't live where I live? We added it up. And more than a quarter million Georgians are facing a challenge to their vote by these vigilante vote challengers.

88 of them. Now, one of them likes to dress up like, well, a vigilante. - This is a new, it's a Ruger New Vaquero.

It's a single action.

I got it stuck in there where it won't fall out.

(whip cracking) (lively music) I am Alton Russell from Columbus, Georgia. I'm the Georgia Tell Teller. And I'm a toilet paper salesman as well, I make my living.

Wiping up.

Right now, I'm the Chairman of the Columbus Muskogee Republican Party, and I serve on the state committee and the state executive committee for the Georgia State Republican Party.

So I'm pretty involved in that, which I think is the right, let's see. That would be the right way to be. And also I'm on the right.

- [Greg] Apparently you had filed some challenges to 4,000 voters. - Yes.

- No ballot.

No ballot in the mail. Called to register. And the announcement there was, "Mr. Turner you have been challenged."

- [Rosario] Major Gamaliel Turner is the military's expert on warfare of the future. - I project weapons and capabilities out to the future.

Yeah, for me, it's all about the survival of the soldier - [Rosario] Assigned to Port Hueneme in California. - So you're telling me 2,600 miles away, two days or three days before the election that if I want to vote, all I have to do is show up

and prove

as American citizen that I have the right to vote? Again.

You talk to fools like that. I'm not a fool.

You can't compel somebody to say, "Oh, you can vote." I'm trying to vote now. How are you going to put these other things?

Like it is no more than a poll tax. It's no more than how many pieces of bubble gum in this draw. It's the same thing over and over, just modernised and reviewed.

- [Greg] So it's an old Jim Crow tactic? - It's the same thing.

But I know what it looks like.

'Cause I was there. (lively music) - [Rosario] Indeed. He was there. Major Turner comes from an illustrious Civil Rights family.

His father, Reverend Harold Turner, founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference alongside Reverend Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King.

(lively music) - A lot of the meetings, private meetings, coordinating meetings was done at our house. Martin was there, Reverend Abernathy were there.

- They were just like friends and family and people coming in.

We're sitting here at this table. But I'm gonna tell you, this table had papers on it.

This was a working table. (lively music) - Speaking from the pool cliff. I had an opportunity to change some lives.

Did I take that opportunity wisely? I think I did. - [Greg] Well, it looks like you did. - He baptised me. - Wow. So. - Then me. (people laughing) (film reeling) - [Rosario] The modern Civil Rights Movement that was born right here at this dining room table would lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act

and change America's heart and soul.

A revolution planned right here because the Turner House was strategically located between the King and Abernathy homes.

So the leadership could cross through a series of backyards and not be seen for their safety. - This is a hideout. - They slowly but surely, one at a time, there were a five or 10 minute gap between each other, will come through the backyards and sit.

- Bless his house, oh Lord. - [Rosario] He remembers praying. - Stand it on solid ground. - [Rosario] Praying they wouldn't be arrested or beaten on their way back home.

- Let the Lord in. - Yes, yes, - Yes, it was a very scary conversation about what they were about to do. (gentle music)

- [Rosario] His mother taught at a grammar school until 1960 when it was dynamited by segregationists.

- It was tough. Being Black.

- [Greg] How did you feel when they said you've been challenged?

- I was angry.

I was fearful.

I couldn't believe it. Not my country.

Not now. Not this day in time.

It was just hard to accept.

It was hard to accept.

Excuse me. - And behind the challenge to Major Turner. (explosion booming) - I blow up government spending. My chainsaws really- - [Rosario] Behind the vigilante law is this man.

- I got a big truck just in case I need to round up criminal illegals and take them home myself. (car engine cranking) Yep, I just said that.

I'm Brian Kemp. If you want a politically incorrect conservative, that's me.

- I've been investigating vote suppression for decades, but for each of the last nine years, my investigation has always end up in Georgia.

Ever since this Brian Kemp became Secretary of State. (film reeling) Here's an example. Leading up to the 2016 presidential election, Rolling Stone wants me to investigate a scheme that's removing thousands of voters that are voting in two states.

Well, voting twice is a crime. So they're knocking off these thousands of voters. But where do they get the list of double voters?

I find that Brian Kemp is sharing his voter rolls with another Secretary of State, a guy in Kansas named Kris Kobach. Kobach is Donald Trump's special vote fraud hunter.

Kobach takes Kemp's list of voters and cross checks it against the voter rolls in two dozen states. And there's scrubbing literally hundreds of thousands of double voters from the rolls, all these criminals.

So I get my hands on Kemp's little secret list. And guess what? The double voters all have names like Jose Garcia, James Brown.

In fact, in Georgia, they claim that this James Brown voted 288 times.

I'm looking closely at the lists and realising that almost none of the middle names match. They didn't care. They got rid of thousands of Jose Garcia's in two dozen states.

And while I'm in Georgia, I stopped at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, you know, Martin Luther King's old church. And I run into the leader of the Democrats in the state legislature.

- My deep concern is that this is one more attempt to purge voters unlawfully and without adequate information, as opposed to what a Secretary of State should be committed to, which is enfranchising voters to the best of his ability.

- [Greg] While I was at the church, I also showed the Kemp hit list to the minister. - So far there's been very little evidence produced to show the basis for all of these voter ID laws, cutting voting in half.

This is voter suppression, pure and simple. - In 2018, I'm sent back down to Georgia because this time Kemp has removed a breathtaking half million voters from the voter rolls.

He says they don't live in Georgia anymore. Okay, you don't live in Georgia, you shouldn't vote in Georgia. So I get Kemp's new hit list and give it to the same experts who tell Amazon and Google where you live.

Believe me, they know where you live. The experts run Kemp's list through their computer. And they tell me, here are 340,134 voters

who still live at their legal voting address. In 2018, Kemp is Secretary of State. So he is in charge of the voting, he knocks off all these legal voters while he's running for governor.

I tried every way conceivable to talk to Kemp about the voter purges, including filing a lawsuit. I finally caught up with him at a pig roast.

- How are you, Brother? - Mr. Kemp, are you removing Black voters from the voter rolls just so you can win this election?

Sir, why do we have to sue you to get the names of voters who've been removed? Why are you? You know, we use the wonderfully polite term, voter suppression.

But come on, when your car gets stolen, you don't say, "My car has been suppressed. " It's been stolen. Your right to vote's been stolen.

Now I'm talking all these numbers, like 340,000 voters, 48,000 voters, 32,000 voters. But it's not just numbers.

I've been to the polls and I've been there when these Americans are told, "Go away. You can't vote here anymore."

Has this ever happened to you before? - Never.

- And it's just, it's horrible. She's been in this community back when we could, when they were doing sit-ins, she held Civil Rights meetings in her home and today to come out and not be able to vote.

And no one can give you an explanation like it's extremely emotional. And it bothers me. It bothers me to my core. Like there's actually no record of her whatsoever voting in any election whatsoever.

And it's ridiculous.

I'm sorry. - [Greg] The next day I went over to her home, the home Kemp said she no longer lives in. Yes, Jesus love me

- [Greg] Now, given her age, I asked her if she ever met Martin Luther King. And she said, "Yeah, he had Sunday dinners here.

He was my cousin." - Daddy King was my great uncle. - So, you know, when I grew up around, like constantly hearing about the Civil Rights Movement and everything that people have done for us to get this power, and to know that it was taken away from my grandmother,

like next year it could be taken away from me. Like you never know. And I was just really hurt. And I really couldn't believe it.

I could not believe it.

Since I was about five, I've been going with her to vote, every year like religiously. And she always made sure I got my voter sticker.

"You gotta get your sticker." - [Greg] So it's like you were disappeared. Like you were not even a person anymore. - That's what I said.

I was dead and gone buried. But I'm still on top of the earth by the hip of the master.

- [Greg] Now, what could possibly be the excuse for cancelling the votes of Christine Jordan, Major Turner?

The politician's excuse is always the same, voter fraud. - [Reporter 1] Evidence of voter fraud. - We have numerous double voters.

- Seeing millions of ballots all over the country. There's fraud. They found them in creeks. - Truth is they want voter fraud.

- Voter fraud. - Voter fraud. - We have numerous out-of-state voters. - California, Georgia, Indiana, Alabama, Washington, and so many other states.

- The deceased casting ballots. - This is going to be a fraud like you've never seen. - Well, elections are more important than necklaces, but for some reason we don't act that way.

- It's a fraud. (lively music) - Now, president Trump claimed there were thousands of illegal voters in Georgia. Where did Trump get this crazy idea?

- I led the fight to aggressively investigate all allegations of voter fraud. Stop voter fraud. Stop potential voter fraud.

- Kemp arrested dozens. He's accused thousands. He's cancelled the registrations of over half a million suspect voters, but not one, not a single voter has been convicted of attempting to cast an illegal ballot.

Now, I'm not saying there's no fraud ever. Out of several billion, and I mean billion ballots cast in the past decade in America, there are a few cheats.

- [Reporter 2] These three retirees from The Villages are charged with voter fraud. Prosecutors say they cast multiple ballots during last year's presidential election.

- [Reporter 3] Joan Halstead, Jay Ketcik, and John Rider were all registered Republicans at the time. - One side screaming voter fraud and the other side they're actually finding people that's committed voter fraud.

I think that's a little hilarious.

- But when Trump and Kemp talk about voters stuffing ballot boxes, they don't mean white voters. It's an old story. (gentle music)

A hundred years ago, there was a Ku Klux Klan propaganda film called "Birth of a Nation". It showed a white actor in blackface, sneaking in an extra ballot.

(gentle music) Film was a huge hit. It was screened at the White House. And it convinced Americans that you had to have all these restrictions on Black people or they'll commit voter fraud.

Now, today, there's a new film. - [Narrator] "2000 Mules", live from Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Former President Donald Trump live on salemnewschannel.com.

- It's the new "Birth of a Nation". And once again, it says that Black men buy the thousands commit voter fraud. They vote several times.

- This particular individual we have in a number of different locations, he's actually a mule. He gets out, approaches the box.

When people walk up with intention to cheat, they look around, they basically walk fairly quickly. They try to stuff them in.

They try to get out of there. In this case, he drops a few on the ground, pick them up, stuff them into the box.

Then he hustles back and hustles outta there. So this is what it looks like. - All I see is a black guy putting a couple of ballots into a drop box.

You know, folks drop in their family's ballots too, which Georgia law encourages. Now take this, every single drop box in Georgia has a security camera on it.

And the "2000 Mules" guys say this voter has dumped ballots in 27 drop boxes. And they have the videotapes. But oddly, they don't show the 27 videotapes.

They showed the same tape over and over.

- He needs a shoe horn. - This is a smoking gun. This is OJ Simpson being seen leaving the scene of the crime. - But they tell you they have something better than videotape.

- [Speaker] What we're gonna show you now, what kicks it up a notch is that we have the geospatial data to support the video.

- They've got a very fancy scientific method to nail these Black ballot stuffers. It's called geo-tracking. They track millions of cell phones.

It's very scientific. They show satellites up in the sky and computer lights flashing back and forth. And these mules going from drop box to drop box.

I mean, it's pretty convincing unless you know something about geo-tracking, which is that you can't get closer than about 93 feet.

So anyone within 93 feet of a drop box is a mule. Now, who would go by these same drop boxes every day? Well, how about we change the name of the film from "2000 Mules" to "2000 Mailmen"?

Wow. So did you see OJ Simpson leaving the scene of the crime? - No, I mean, lemme tell you what I saw. You know, this is the complexity and the nuance of racism in America.

That by the very presence of who he is, he's considered guilty. Because in the dehumanising of Black people, who the hell is he to think that he has a right to vote?

The truth didn't matter. What they want was the image. And just them showing up alone constitutes something fishy and criminal like is happening.

That is the greater issue. I mean, to call a human being a mule. - Yeah. - A man who literally is getting out his car, doing his democratic duty to go vote, and to refer to him as a mule.

I mean, full stop. Where do we go from there? - So who came up with this "2000 Mules" film? It's an outfit called True the Vote.

You may recall their other handiwork. - Let me explain. - Yeah, go ahead. - Those lists come from True the Vote. - Who's True the Vote?

- They're out of Texas and they work on this constantly. And they've been doing it for over 10 years. - This is the crew out of Texas that targeted Major Turner.

And they're the hitmen behind mass attacks on hundreds of thousands of voters from Missouri to Pennsylvania. I hunted down the source of True the Votes cash to Milwaukee, to the doorstep of their uber right wing billionaire backers, the Bradley Family Foundation.

Now the Bradley Foundation's secretary is Cleta Mitchell, Donald Trump's attorney, who directed his scheme to overturn the election.

- It was about fraud, this election was rigged. - She's now created yet another army of vigilantes, supposedly using artificial intelligence, a programme called Eagle AI.

Based on spurious evidence, they've already challenged thousands of innocent voters. In 2021, Mitchell was hauled before Congress over her role in instigating the January 6th insurrection.

(gentle music)

- [Rosario] Brian Kemp didn't invent the voter vigilantes. The challenge game goes back to 1942 to a character named Eugene Talmadge.

Talmadge was the Ku Klux Klan's candidate for governor. In a statewide radio address Talmadge said, "Wise Negroes will stay away from the white folks' ballot boxes."

But Franklin Roosevelt, Talmadge's nemesis had promised Black soldiers returning from World War II that they'd have the right to vote.

So to cover his tracks, Talmadge rebranded the Klan as a corporation. - The name the Klan chose for itself, Vigilantes Inc.

- [Rosario] Its sole purpose, was to remove Black voters from the rolls, and they did. FBI files reveal that the entire list of negro registrants was challenged.

By removing thousands of black voters, Vigilantes Inc. succeeded in electing Talmadge to the Governor's mansion.

- Well, we had lots of fun out of the campaign. You know, in this campaign they accused me of practically everything except a capital offence.

- [Rosario] But there was a capital offence. - The FBI came here to Monroe to investigate Governor Talmadge and the Vigilantes Inc. mass challenge of Black voters.

In response that very week, two Black veterans and their wives were taken out and shot.

That's quite a warning to any Black person who would dare vote. - [Rosario] In 1946, unlike today, the mass challenge of Black voters was ruled illegal.

- Today's vigilantes have simply taken the Klan plan and shot it into cyberspace.

- Talmadge's Vigilantes had to write down the name of every voter they challenged. The new GOP Vigilantes have gone digital replacing white sheets with spreadsheets.

They challenge thousands of voters with a single email.

The FBI recommended Talmadge be indicted. But the governor was saved from prison when he had a fatal collision with a bottle of bourbon.

- You could expect anything from Eugene Talmadge because to begin with, Eugene Talmadge was an alcoholic. He was probably two thirds drunk, two thirds of the time he was in office.

The age 13 or 14, I was working as a bartender. I worked at the Henry Grady Hotel and that's where he would do his drinking.

And they would come by the hotel and get him and take him out as a dead person on a cart, and take him back to the governor's mansion.

- [Rosario] With Talmadge dying, Joe Turner was able to vote. - That was the first year that Georgia opened the voting up to Blacks.

And we all went down to register. You see, they asked you to write a line of the Constitution. She said, right, "There shall be no imprisonment for debt."

- [Greg] So she kind of gave you the answer? - Yeah, oh yeah. - So you cheated? - No, no, no, no, uh-uh. I followed instructions.

- [Greg] I see, okay.

- [Rosario] 75 years after Joe Turner won his right to vote, he learned that Kemp had denied the ballot to his nephew, the Major, using the same method employed by Talmadge.

- In 2014, the group founded by Stacey Abrams, registered 89,000 voters. Mostly young Black students, but 40,000 somehow didn't show up on the voter registry.

- And so we approached the Secretary of State and said, "Hey, what's up with these 40,000 missing voters?" And they responded with launching a criminal investigation into the New Georgia Project and the work that we do, alleging that we somehow are illegally or improperly registering voters.

- And we're just not gonna put up with fraud. I mean, we have zero tolerance for that in Georgia. So we both in an investigation and serve some subpoenas.

- The charges were never filed, but 40,000 voters missed the election. (lively music) - Hey! - Greg Palast. - Hey Greg. - Around that time, I also met with a cheerful group that had launched a campaign called 10,000 Koreans Vote.

Now for 10,000 Koreans to vote, they had a register 10,000 Koreans. - And the way we do it is people fill out their card, kind of like a dentist appointment.

Later on, we'll put a stamp here, we'll chop this off. And this goes in the mail to them.

- But their lawyer, Helen Ho, contacts Kemp's office and says, "Hey, why don't we see our voters on the rolls?" Kemp's response.

- [Officer] Police Department search warrant, open the door. - He sent in the robocops to raid the group's office and threatened these elderly Koreans with long prison sentences.

Of course, the charges were tossed out, but that was the end of 10,000 Koreans Vote, which was the point.

But Kemp's not done. As I speak, he claims that the group Stacey Abrams started recently handed in some registration forms a couple of days late.

Now for this picayune clerical matter, Kemp is demanding that the Attorney General arrest the group's leaders and send them to prison for 10 years or more.

- Absolutely, they want to put us under the jail. It stinks of desperation and it seeps through everything that they do.

And it often comes along with the threat of violence.

We are talking about a Secretary of State that went after college students. They raided a voter registration office and tried to send all of these college kids to jail.

And came against them with criminal actions, right? And the penalty for what they call voter registration fraud in Georgia, it carries with it a penalty of up to $10,000 in fines and 10 years in prison per form.

- [Officer] 630 to 9010:4.

- Again, was doing what I do, talking to people everywhere I see them at. (officer knocking) "Hey, have you voted?" - Ms. Pearson? - Yeah.

Not everybody likes that I'm doing it. - [Rosario] Olivia Pearson's mother led the county's NAACP. - My mother sued the city of Douglas to get more representation on the city council.

- [Rosario] After years of registration drives, Olivia became the first black woman to win election to the council. - When I received the letter in 2016 from the Secretary of State, signed by Brian Kemp.

- [Rosario] Kemp used his power as Head of the State Election Board to have Olivia charged with the felony crime of interfering with voters.

- I could have served up to five years in prison. So it was very, very, very frightening. It was very depressing.

I had to go and receive counselling to help me to cope with it. (dramatic music)

It was horrendous.

- [Rosario] A jury quickly found her not guilty because as it turned out, disabled voters had filled out the official forms requesting her help.

- They had the handcuffs around my back, you know, my hands to the back. I couldn't get into the car with them like that.

I was in excruciating pain. - [Rosario] The New York Times wrote that Olivia's case made Brian Kemp a pioneer of present day voter suppression.

- The young lady that I was with at the time, she told me, she said, "Miss Olivia, I don't even want to vote.

After all of this, I don't want to vote anymore. I don't want to do it." And I had to beg her and explain to her that that's what they're doing it for, is to cause people to be afraid to exercise the right to vote.

- [Rosario] From his very first year as Georgia's Voting Chief, Brian Kemp literally ordered armed seizures. He sent the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Georgia's own version of the FBI, to Quitman, Georgia to arrest 10 newly elected members of the school board.

The first Black members on the board, arresting teachers, including two PhDs. Kemp accused them of stuffing tampered ballots into mailboxes.

That same old accusation as in "2000 Mules". Kemp had them paraded in handcuffs in orange suits like there were terrorists at Guantanamo.

Local journalists, George Boston Rhynes has closely tracked the case.

- I'm George Boston Rhynes and I'm in Quitman, Georgia. And I am immediately, just got down here. These are the Quitman 10, this is what I do.

- [Rosario] After four years of prison over their heads, the Quitman 10 were acquitted of every charge.

- [George] So much stress was on those people. Lula Smart even considered taking her own life. - With all the indictment that I had, in my mind, I thought, "Well, if I just commit suicide, this will be over."

- [Rosario] Another suffered from lupus.

- Latashia Head, she died. And I interviewed her father. And he said that he believed that his daughter's death was a result of the stress and pressure brought about

by Secretary of State Brian P. Kemp. - [Rosario] Rhynes explained that the persecution of the Quitman 10 brought up traumatic memories of the lynching of 12 black men in 1918, what is called The Week of Terror.

When Mary Turner raised her voice about the execution of her husband by vigilantes, they came after her. (dramatic music)

(dramatic music continues) - Oh wow.

- [Greg] Where are we, can you tell me what we're about to do? - This is the old Brooks County Jail.

This is where all of the equipment, and this is where all of the men that were arrested during that week of terror in May of '18, would have been housed in this jail

before they was lynched.

This is my first time ever coming into this place. (dramatic music)

I've heard some horror stories about this place.

In May of 1918, Mary Turner was lynched.

They took her, she was nine months pregnant, turned her upside down, riddle her body with bullets. A white mob member took a hog knife ripped over her abdomen, and out fell a eight month old foetus.

And when that foetus fell to the ground, the white mob member took the heel of his boot and crushed that baby's head.

- [Rosario] Even today, the memory of Mary Turner is a political battlefield. The plaque commemorating her was shot up so often it had to be removed.

(dramatic music) (lively music) Mamma (lively music)

- [Brian] We are getting up every day working as hard as we can to make sure that Stacey Abrams is not gonna be our governor or your next president.

What a great night to be a Georgian, everybody.

- He was a builder, worked hard, and started from scratch. He's a self-made man. - [Rosario] At least that's the story he sells, that he rose from a humble little cabin in the woods.

- [Reporter 4] Their three daughters grew up here. - I need to get on that tractor right now and cut that pasture right there.

- [Rosario] That little house, it was one more gift from his father-in-law, insurance mogul, state rep, Bob Argo, a Georgia political powerhouse.

We discovered a trove of documents telling a very different story from Kemp's invented history. (lively music) They reveal that Brian Porter Kemp comes from a long line of privilege and property.

(lively music) His millions arrived early, yet no one seems to ask, "How did some kid out of college end up with a big construction company?"

The old fashioned way. He joined his daddy's and grandpa's well-connected company.

They cashed in early on building student housing.

To make way for their buildings, the land had to be cleared of the black homeowners on it.

- Front door would've been right along in here. And you opened the door and you walked into the, what we call the front room.

'Cause it didn't have but rooms.

And all of us children slept in the middle room.

We loved it.

We would wake up on Saturday mornings and whatever's on our minds and we end up in pillow fights.

Pillow fights until our daddy said, "Cut it out." (gentle music) And the men in the community built us a house not knowing that it was an urban renewal zone.

(gentle music) Urban renewal, it was burnt down. On the family survey form it said the fire department training burned it down.

- Wait, the fire department used your new house as training for the fire department by burning your new house down? - Some houses were burned down, some was pushed down.

- [Rosario] Or bulldoze them with just hours notice.

How Brian Kemp always ended up with a golden shovel is explained by four-term Congressman John Barrow. Barrow served on a local housing commission with Kemp.

- While he was on that committee, he was building multifamily units that exploited these loopholes that actually did some of the things we were explicitly trying to do away with.

He, for example, would come up with fake windows. I mean, there are all kinds of things like that that were going on. For some people it's very difficult to think that there's anything wrong with something that puts a dollar in their pocket.

- [Rosario] Playing fast and loose with the facts helped Kemp's political rise. - I'm a small business owner. - [Rosario] It began with his run for State Senate in a swing district with many Black voters.

So Kemp ran ads claiming his family fought segregation.

- [Reporter 5] Former senator Julian Cox, Brian Kemp's grandfather, boldly voted to integrate the University of Georgia.

Those are the values that Brian Kemp was raised on. - When the record was completely different.

They came up with a scheme that Mr. Cox supported. A scheme to essentially privatise the public school. State sponsored, state supported privatisation of segregation.

(gentle music)

- [Rosario] Kemp's unleashing Pam Reardon and the posse of vigilante voter challengers ran into a problem. Their first attempt to challenge voters was rejected by local elections boards.

So Kemp added an extraordinary provision to SB 202. Kemp gave himself the right to remove any local Elections Commissioner that rejects the challenges.

Helen Butler runs the Voting Rights organisation that was founded by the Reverend Joseph Lowery. She was placed on the Elections Board for her expertise.

- I was a member of the Board of Elections. I had been on the board since 2010 and I was on until June of 2021. - She is Mrs. Vote in Georgia.

She's the one who taught me everything I know about voter registration and voter mobilisation. - [Rosario] Civil right attorney Gerald Griggs, famed for bringing R. Kelly to justice, is now president of the Georgia NAACP.

- And they removed her? - Yes. - Why? - They removed her because again, the provisions of SB 202 allow for a state takeover of local election boards.

Another reason why we're suing. - They wanted people that were not as vocal as we were. Wanted to make sure that they had total control of the Board of Elections.

- [Rosario] Helen asked questions and when Kemp didn't answer, she and reporter Palast won a federal court order forcing Kemp to open his voter purge files.

Griggs was their attorney. - [Greg] So you think it was retribution? - I mean, they won't say it was retribution, but what other reason would you take over that election board and remove Helen?

- They wanted to make sure to silence our voice. 'Cause the Board of Elections, as I said, they determine who gets registered, when they get registered, how they get registered, whether your vote counts, when it counts, how it counts.

And we get to certify the election. - So who are they that, you said they didn't want? - My board, County Board of Commissioners who happen to be majority Republican.

- [Rosario] Removing sceptical experts from elections boards, lets Kemp once again choose his own voters and count his own votes and dangerously it opens the door to overturning the presidential vote in 2024.

- Trump said to the Secretary of State, find me 11,000 votes. How do you find those 11,000 votes? - Well, to find those 11,000 votes, you either have to have the members of the Boards of Elections, who will not certify the elections and say, "No, I think these,

we can disqualify these amount of votes." Well, I'm not going to be a party to that. Whatever the voter's intent was, that's what it is.

- [Rosario] Griggs suggested that the Justice Department shoot back at the vigilantes with the post-Civil War Ku Klux Klan Act, which makes intimidating a voter, a prison time offence.

- You said the Ku Klux Klan Law 1871. - Yes. - Okay, it's well over, it's a century and a half. - But we are in the middle of the new Jim Crow, Jim Crow 2.0.

And so we have to use the same means that we use against Black codes and Jim Crow to now deal with Jim Crow 2.0. Because there is a feeling in this country that certain people by mere race or ethnicity or gender, are not as fundamentally American and thus not entitled to the protections

of American civil rights. So we have to use those civil rights protections to continue to grow access to the franchise, which is why we've used a code that's almost 130 something years old.

- And so what we see is we see a consistence, a consistency with Kemp. Creating mechanisms to actually lift up the violence that has been inflicted on African American communities.

We can even talk about the sign in of Senate Bill 202 that was passed shortly after the election in Georgia, where we were able to put these two new senators, an African American and a Jewish man in office.

After we were able to, the state flipped to be a democratic state, that what we saw immediately coming out of that was a legislative session where they passed this bill Senate Bill 202 in that bill it is filled with violence.

(woman knocking) - [Bystander] For what, under arrest for what? - And at the same time, right outside the room, when a duly elected official who had every right to be at the signing of a bill.

- [Bystander] Why are you arresting her? - She actually was dragged out as if she was a criminal. As if she wasn't human.

If you go back to the bill signing, what you will see, you will see Governor Kemp sitting under a painting of a plantation.

What is more violent than an image of a plantation where people were killed, maimed, stolen sold dehumanised right? And flanked by all white men as if that is in any form or fashion representative of the state of Georgia.

(lively music)

- [Rosario] Kemp's family, if you know, had several such plantation houses. But that old cotton picking wealth has transformed into a company Kemp calls Plantation Partners, LLC.

(lively music) Part of a portfolio of private forests. He'll cut down these trees for Koch Industries to turn it all into toilet paper.

- The governor values this little toilet paper farm at $2.2 million.

He's got a lot of others. (lively music) - [Rosario] Kemp's family was once one of the largest plantation owners in Georgia.

(lively music)

(lively music continues)

(water sloshing)

(gentle music) Roswell Mills was the manufacturing heart of the Confederate War machine.

Where Kemp's ancestors made the grey uniforms known as Roswell Grey. (gentle music) And here is one of their grand manner houses.

(gentle music)

Even the toys taught the children the difference between their happy lives and the lives of those they owned. (gentle music) But to find the original source of their wealth, you have to travel to the humid Savannah coast.

Georgia's plantation system was created by the first governor of Georgia and Kemp's family, James Habersham.

Habersham became one of the wealthiest men in the South by transforming agriculture. That is, he was first to import captured Africans into Georgia.

Sales boomed even when some of his products committed suicide or died of smallpox on the slavery ships.

- We've been brought up thinking that slavery was always just here in Georgia. That just ain't so. In fact, until just before the Revolutionary War, slavery was against the law because churchgoers like these fought a fierce bloody battle to prevent slaves from coming to Georgia.

- [Rosario] The horrified local farmers who attended this church, unanimously petitioned the King to stop the importation of enslaved people.

They wrote,

(gentle music) Thomas Jefferson, although a friend of the Habershams, threatened their human trafficking business. Here at the Habersham Savannah mansion, Jefferson wrote a draught of the Declaration of Independence, including a long passage that denounced the slave trade.

"Slavery is a war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty by captivating and carrying Africans into slavery, and miserable death."

It was the only passage of the declaration removed by the Continental Congress on the demand of the Georgia delegation headed by Joseph Habersham.

A British visitor, Fanny Kemble wrote in her diary about the cruelty she witnessed by the notorious slaver, Kemp's ancestor, Roswell King.

I see the sun Yeah I see the sun Yeah, oh, the sun is gonna shine I see the sun Yeah I see the sun Yeah, oh, the sun is gonna shine - [Fanny] The handcuff, the lash, the tearing away of children from parents, of husbands from wives, the labour of body.

(people singing indistinctly) The despair of mind, the sickness of heart.

These are the realities which belong to the system. The system in this country of yours, which boast itself the asylum of the oppressed, the home of freedom.

- [Rosario] Ultimately, the families were sold in the largest auction of humans in history. It is remembered today by their great-grandchildren as weeping time.

(gentle music) I see the sun Yeah I see the sun Yeah, oh, the sun is gonna shine I see the sun Yeah You lead the way I know On the other side I know (singing indistinctly)

- [Rosario] Gryphon Lotson directs the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters.

They preserve their Gullah language and songs from Africa's Rice Coast, and they brought rice planting technology to the South.

- [Greg] Wow, that was good, it was good. - [Rosario] Lotson's great grandmother was sold at the weeping time auction. - The phrase that they call weeping time came from the largest slave trade in America's history.

Most of those enslaved came from right here on Butler Island. (gentle music) - [Rosario] There's a defiant purpose in preserving this plantation and songs of his Gullah Geechee heritage.

- But if you suppress the history, you suppress the vote.

Yeah, I know a lot about the voter suppression firsthand.

- [Rosario] City councilman Lotson would've been commissioner, but ballots were suspiciously disqualified. - And I lost by one vote.

- Oh. - One vote. So you can't just talk about somebody, you know somebody that you're standing with now that have lost an election by one vote.

(gentle music) - So how do you say vote suppression in Gullah Geechee? - Oh vote suppression. My mother would say there's a dead cat on the line when it comes to voting, which the meaning of that is that something's not right.

(horn blaring) (lively music) - [Rosario] So Palast headed to Savannah where tourists drink cocktails at the riverboat dock.

(lively music)

But underneath you'll find the hidden storage cells where the Habershams kept Africans for auction. (dramatic music) At the Georgia Historical Society, Palast met with an expert on the origin of dead cats on the line.

- And so a central political issue of reconstruction was, will Black people, Black men be given the right to vote? The Klan originally came about as sort of the military arm of the Democratic party.

It was there to suppress voters. It wasn't just there to carry out intimidation against Black people who used to be slaves.

You know, they would pull a man out of his bed and say, "We heard that you plan to vote. It's that true." Yes, and he might be whipped within an inch of his life.

It was really about suppressing the vote more than just intimidating. - [Rosario] After the Civil War, it wasn't only the Klan that meted out vigilante justice.

Our modern vigilante tells us about his hero Doc Holliday. - He was a very educated and kind of a classy guy. One of the things that happened, they liked to go to swim and found out there was about five or six African American boys down there swimming and it really upset John Henry.

So he got a shotgun and ran them off. And, of course, part of the story is he ran them off with a shotgun. The other story is that he killed a couple of them.

- [Greg] Major Turner, if you could pull up a chair. (dramatic music)

So tomorrow you're gonna meet this, you're gonna meet this guy. He doesn't know he is gonna meet you. He doesn't know he is at your house, the house he says you don't live at and that you don't vote from.

He doesn't know anything except that he's gonna do his little southern shtick.

But then he'll meet you.

What would you hope? What would you hope would happen when you meet this man?

- Simple, "I'm sorry.

I did not fully understand the impact of what I was doing." Whether it's voting or a challenge like that, or whether or not there's someone coming in our churches and killing our people.

We have to be the ones to do the forgiving.

(gentle music) - [Greg] I take it you've never been in this house before? Have you met Mr. Turner, Major before? - All right, no sir, never have, but I'm glad to meet him today.

- [Greg] You had filed some challenges to 4,000 voters. - Yes. - Yeah. And including by the way, you have challenged the right to have Major Turner's ballot counted.

- I don't know what that means though. - [Greg] Well, did you send a note to any of those people? - No, I did not. - Ask you a question.

Here's Major Turner.

Did you contact Major Turner and tell him? - No I did not. - Listen, I'm challenging your vote. - No, I did not. - My country called and asked me to go help them out in California.

I have not missed any opportunities to vote. From 1996 since I've been here up until this last election. - Do you want to apologise to this man for what he went through?

- I don't.

What I will do, Major. I apologise for the problems that you had. I don't know how I can apologise for the process 'cause obviously I don't understand the complete process, so I don't know how I can apologise for that.

(dramatic music)

- The law says we have to vote.

Nobody said we had to count the vote or have my vote counted. It's the same.

I just go through the process.

I, or none of my people have any assurance that a vote was actually counted. (gentle music) - [Rosario] And now a Black voter's ballot getting counted is in more danger because of the impact of "2000 Mules".

- We took a look at our 242 mules in Atlanta. So again, this is not grandma walking her dog. These are, you know, violent criminals sometimes

- [Rosario] Donald Trump called it the greatest and most impactful documentary of our time. And Trump is correct. Millions of MAGA believers bought into True the Votes hysteria leading to new laws, nearly eliminating ballot drop boxes in 16 states, including swing states,

Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Georgia.

In 2024 vigilante challenges spread out of Georgia like a virus. (lively music) In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, GOP Vigilantes have already challenged 16,000 voters.

Vigilante groups with names like Pig Pen Project are operating in Nevada, Iowa. And we track Vigilantes in swing state Michigan, where challenges have risen by 55%.

In Florida, Trump's lawyer, Cleta Mitchell has already challenged 10,000 voters.

In Wisconsin, 135,000 voters were challenged.

We mapped the challenges and discovered they were almost all in Black precincts of Milwaukee and aimed at students at the University of Wisconsin.

- And if I get taken off the voter rolls, it's just not fair. So if I'm living in Wisconsin, I would love to have my vote be counted.

- [Rosario] And the biggest threat comes from True the Vote, the 2000 Mules crew. In their test run in Georgia, they had 88 vigilante volunteers.

In 2024, True the Vote has signed up 40,000 vigilantes attacking in 43 states. By August, they'd already challenged 851,000 American voters.

And in Arizona. - Those Vigilantes showed up with their weapons and their drones. They had drones going over polling sites.

- What? - Monitoring people, like policing people. And employees are scared to go into their office. We sent our teams out to make sure that they would be okay.

So when you're showing up at a polling location and militarised or military looking uniforms, vests, goggles, and with weapons, or just posting out in front of these boxes, you are trying to intimidate folks who have experienced a history and a legacy of violence.

And I'm proud to be an American Where at least I know I'm free And I won't forget the men who died Who gave that right to me And I'd gladly stand up next to you - That's the QAnon shaman whose horns have been clipped, just got out of prison.

I love this land God Bless the USA - We can't get security on our streets until we reform and secure our elections. - One quick question.

They stop people from monitoring the drop boxes. What do we do about that? - Oh, we need to get rid of the drop boxes. (dramatic music) - [Rosario] And in Texas the vigilantes got violent.

- [Interpreter] He said, "Help me, help me." With his hand inside his coat. Then when I tried to help him, he pulls out a gun.

That is when I was told to get on the ground. - [Reporter 6] Court records show Aguirre believed Zuniga was driving his work truck around with 750,000 illegal ballots inside.

When police got to the scene, they found air conditioning parts inside, no illegal ballots.

- The accusation was that I mastermind this scheme to go and forge all of these mail-in ballots. - At eight seconds each would be about, I don't know, about 200 years to do that.

So it's amazing you've forged all those ballots. So tell me about how you forged the ballots? - First of all, I'm too lazy to sign hundreds of thousands of ballots.

I'd be nuts.

A vigilante stopped this air conditioning repair guy said that he was a police officer, had the guy on the ground telling him open up the truck, had his pistol out on the guy.

I mean, I can imagine how terrorised he was. - [Rosario] The gunman was not a lone wolf. He was one of dozens of armed vigilantes hired by an election denying billionaire - [Reporter 7] Was arraigned on felony charges of unlawful restraint and aggravated assault

with a deadly weapon in connection with a badly botched privately bankrolled investigation of alleged election fraud. - There were people outside my home with signs one day saying, "Stop the steal."

So one idiot is out there with a rifle on his shoulder.

So now there's a real fear of it.

I take the security now. It's a real concern. I mean the level of vitriol out there is just amazing. - [Rosario] Ellis was a target because during COVID, the commissioner was about to mail out ballots to all voters in Houston.

He was blocked by the Texas Attorney General who crowed that. - Harris County mail-in ballots that they wanted to send out were 2.5 million and we were able to stop every one of them.

Had we not done that, Donald Trump would've lost the election. - [Rosario] And back in Georgia in 2024, they passed a new law giving even more power to vigilante vote challengers.

- So I fully expect 2024 to be the wild wild west when it comes to election challenges. So if there was 180,000 challenge before, I'm looking at more maybe 300 to 400,000.

So they'll have unlimited voter challenges both before and after the election. So vigilantes are gonna be out in mass. Yes, they wanna make it easier to challenge and harder to vote.

- Why is Georgia always creating, seem to be creating the blueprints for vote suppression? - Well, we are the deep south.

We are the place where the southern strategy began, both Georgia and Alabama. The new southern strategy is beginning here.

- [Rosario] In the 1960s, the GOP Southern Strategy included Operation Eagle Eye, challenging Black and Hispanic voters right in the polling station.

(gentle music) - You may have heard of something called Operation Eagle Eye. Well, a better name for it would be Operation Evil Eye.

One of its objectives is to frighten you and others by frivolously challenging your right to vote. It has been launched in nearly every state in the Union.

- [Reporter 8] Eagle Eye recruits also patrolled certain wards of the city in mobile units equipped with two-way radios ready to pounce on the nearest irregularity.

- Spanish speaking neighbourhood. Go ahead. - Southbound. H9HTX-Mobile is on the way with the Eagle crew. (gentle music) - [Rosario] Eagle Eye has returned as Eagle AI.

Utilising artificial intelligence to modernise Klan style challenges.

A group of wealthy Christian nationalists has launched Operation Checkmate, a secret plan to use Eagle AI to challenge 280,000 voters in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Wisconsin.

- They said that my address, there was a problem with my address, which it shouldn't be because I'm in the same county. (dramatic music)

- [Greg] The issue was Black voting.

- Whites figured out that there were other less violent ways to achieve the same ends and the 15th amendment, which expressly forbid anyone being kept from voting because of their colour.

Well, how do you get around that? Later in the Jim Crow period, of course, you've got the infamous jellybean jar. If you were able to guess how many jelly beans are in the jar, then you can vote.

When white people come in to register, you never ask them for their poll tax receipt. You don't ask them to read the constitution.

That's exclusively done to Black people. - [Rosario] The 15th amendment's protection of Black voting rights came to an end when in 1876, Southern White Democrats cut a deal with Northern Republicans to have Congress overturn the presidential election.

- When the election of 1876 took place, the eventual winner who was Rutherford B. Hayes, who was a Republican, was behind in the popular vote.

And he was also behind in the electoral college. So competing slates of electors, Democrats and Republicans, it was gonna be up to Congress to decide which of those was legitimate.

- [Rosario] The election came down to one man as it would a century and a half later.

- And this man was going to single-handedly decide who the president was going to be. We saw Mike Pence in that situation recently who said, "One man shouldn't decide the presidency."

(hinges squeaking) - [Speaker] I need to speak to you for a second. - Okay? - You're not gonna believe this, it's insane.

It's crazy. They heard the word Mike Pence. They stopped the whole interview. They said we can't film. And they said, you know, we gotta protect our new corporate donors on our board.

- Welcome to the 2022 Trustees gala. - We're especially grateful for the support of Chick-fil-A the Home Depot Foundation.

- [Rosario] A who's who of Georgia's corporate elite whose histories are protected by the Georgia Historical Society. - Georgia Power. - Georgia Power.

That's the company where I did an investigation of racketeering, political bribery and corruption, and suspected murder.

Nice guys. So this is the guy. - Yeah. Gotta protect them. CEO of Georgia Pacific. - You know, that's Koch Industries, Koch brothers.

- Ladies and gentlemen, to induct the 2022 Georgia Trustees. Please welcome. - Oh God. - [Rosario] And here's the man who appointed them all.

- The honourable Brian Kemp.

- Governor Brian Kemp is preparing to sign a number of bills into law that will impact every student across the state. - Yeah, does a few things here.

It would speed up the process to ban books. Make it easier- - House Bill 1084 bans the teaching of divisive concepts. It ensures all of our state and nation's history is taught accurate.

- Shh. (dramatic music) - [Rosario] No child in Georgia will have to learn that the Klan elected their governors.

No child in Georgia will have to learn that Mr. Kemp's wealth came from Africans brought here in chains.

- Shh. - [Rosario] Or watch this film in school. - Shh.

- [Crowd] USA! - [Rosario] Kemp was not the first to threaten teachers for teaching history. - [Crowd] USA! - As president I was proud to issue the world's first ban on critical race theory in September of 2020.

- [Rosario] Which Biden revoked his first day in office.

Following Georgia, other states are passing so-called divisive concept laws, notably states that passed new vote suppression laws.

(dramatic music)

- The dynasties that have ruled America are not about to give up their rule. It's about their power and their privileges, and they're not gonna let voters take it away.

And they're prepared to stop those voters by any means necessary.

- [Gamaliel] It hurts me, it bothers me when someone says, "It doesn't matter whether I vote or not."

I'm just worried.

- Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, to fame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.

- [Crowd] Boo!

(lively music) - Law enforcement is going to their houses in places of employment and making people afraid to go out and exercise their rights.

- [Officer] Open and clear, we have a visual. (lively music) Repeat, we have a visual. - And today to come out and not be able to vote.

It bothers me to my core.

(police office talking indistinctly) (lively music)

- Who's vote, my vote.

Not his. (people cheering) - We're seeing, you know, Civil War part two.

- Time to do something, time to do something. If we don't get it back in November. - The good news is that there's a new south rising.

(singing in scales) There is a new south rising. We are building a base of people who actually believe in America that is more just and more equitable.

That is literally gonna make a shift. (singing in scales) We are a new generation From the ones who have gone before He's calling us into freedom Let my people go Wade in the water we dey Wade in the water children Wade in the water God said he's gonna trouble the water

Wade in the water - I got to see some of the worst and ugliest aspects of America, at the same time some of the greatest.

I got to see people that had nothing, eventually have something. I got to see what Martin said when he said, little black boys and little white girls walk hand in hand together.

They're getting married now. The face of our nation, the thought process is changing. Yes, there are those that resent this, but that too shall pass.

We just have to know that as a nation we're stronger and better than all of that.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] Water used to come through here. High, real high.

They would throw blacks over here. (dramatic music) I do believe that the spirits is crying out for justice from the grave.

I say, when I grow up, I would like to come here

and try to dig up those bones as old black folk can give them a proper burial. - [Rosario] But spirits drowned will rise.

America is a haunted house and our ruling dynasties have gone to war with its ghosts, the ghosts of our history.

Until America hears these spirits, neither they nor we will be set free.

For the first time in Georgia history, any voter can challenge an unlimited number of other voters and stop their ballots from being counted.

Furthermore, the Republican Party has a history of suppressing votes by removing millions from voter rolls; and by simply tossing millions of provisional ballots in the trash at the end of election night, citing their red state election laws as justification.

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