The subpoena names the Atlanta Hawks, State Farm Arena, and Scott Wilkinson, the executive vice president and chief legal officer of both entities.
The subpoena seeks all recordings taken between midnight Nov. 3 and midnight Nov. 5. The request specifically calls for recordings taken in and around “Room 604,” all elevators that provide access to the floor where that room is located, and all loading docks in the arena.
The plaintiff in the lawsuit, attorney Lin Wood, sent a public Twitter message on Nov. 23 to the defendant, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, citing the subpoena.
“Would someone ask my never-to-be friend Brad Raffensperger @GaSecofState if he has seen this tape of election fraud at State Farm Arena,” Wood wrote. “Several people have seen it. Many more will see it soon. Video camera eye does not lie. How do you spell Election Fraud?”
Wood did not respond to an emailed request for more details. Raffensperger’s office did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Judge Steven Grimberg on Tuesday stayed the discovery in the case in response to a challenge to the subpoena filed by some of the defendants.
“Please note that the court has currently stayed any discovery by either party,” Wilkinson wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.
Wood’s subpoena further demands all documents related to plumbing issues on the premises during the Nov. 3-5 time frame. The request is linked to a pipe that purportedly burst in State Farm Arena on the morning of Election Day. County officials said on the night of Nov. 3 that the plumbing incident caused a two-hour delay to vote counting in a room where absentee ballots were tabulated.
A local attorney who filed a records request about the burst pipe only received a brief text message exchange about the incident describing it as “highly exaggerated … a slow leak that caused about an hour-and-a-half delay” and that “we contained it quickly—it did not spread,” according to a record the attorney, Paul Dzikowski, shared with The Epoch Times.
“As it turns out, there never was a burst pipe or water main, which some news outlets reported,” Dzikowski told The Epoch Times in an email.
“The water inside [State Farm Arena] was caused by a leaking toilet, which, as you know, can be remedied by simply hand-turning off the water supply line to the toilet. In any event, the leak was minimal and was resolved in the early morning hours, well prior to the time the elections staff halted the counting.”
President Donald Trump mentioned the pipe incident in remarks shortly after Election Day.
“In Georgia, a pipe burst in a far away location, totally unrelated to the location of what was happening and they stopped counting for four hours,” the president said.
After a risk-limiting, Georgia certified former Vice President Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election in the state. Trump has not conceded the race and his campaign has said that a lawsuit will soon be filed in Georgia. On Tuesday, the Peach State will begin a recount requested by the Trump campaign.
Trump is also litigating election challenges in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nevada, while a recount is ongoing in two counties in Wisconsin.
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Reporter : Zachary Stieber / Publisher : The Epoch Times PREMIUM
The Election Day incident in Atlanta’s State Farm Arena that was first reported as a burst pipe was an overflowing urinal, a state investigator said Sunday.
Officials in Fulton County said late Nov. 3 that a pipe burst in the arena around 6:07 a.m., causing a delay of several hours in counting absentee ballots. They also referred to the incident as “a water leak.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office opened an investigation into the incident.
Frances Watson, the chief investigator for the office, said in a court filing Sunday that the investigation revealed the water leak “was actually a urinal that had overflowed.”
The overflowing “did not affect the counting of votes by Fulton County later that evening,” she wrote.
Jessica Corbitt, a county spokeswoman, said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times in November that staff members at State Farm Arena notified Fulton County Registration & Elections “of a water leak affecting the room where absentee ballots were being tabulated.”
“The State Farm Arena team acted swiftly to remediate the issue. Within 2 hours, repairs were complete,” she said. “No ballots were damaged, nor was any equipment affected. There was a brief delay in tabulating absentee ballots while the repairs were being conducted. Ballots were not moved outside of the room during this incident (it occurred on the other side of the room from the area where ballots were located.)”
Asked about the results of the investigation on Dec. 7, Corbitt told The Epoch Times via email: “It was the water from the urinal that caused the issue. So our statement stands.”
Asked whether the water leak did, in fact, stem from a burst pipe, she repeated the brief statement.
Dwight Brower, Fulton County’s election chief, told the county’s Board of Commissioners on election night that “there was a pipe that burst in the room where we actually had ballots.”
“Thank goodness that none of those ballots were damaged,” he added.
Ralph Jones, another county official, told the board, “we had a pipe that was busted.”
“We were down for four hours,” from 5:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., Jones said.
Robb Pitts, the Chairman of Fulton County Board of Commissioners, was asked about the incident by lawmakers during a Georgia Senate Government Oversight Committee on Dec. 3.
“That thing has taken the life of his own. There was a water, actually, there was a leak. The floor above where we were counting ballots at State Farm Arena, according to Steve Koonin, CEO of Atlanta Hawks,” he said.
“And it was repaired within two hours. No ballots were damaged. No equipment was damaged. End of story. So how this has gotten to be what it is, I have no idea.”
An inquiry sent to the Hawks about how Koonin learned of the leak, who was responsible for getting it fixed, and whether he was questioned as part of the investigation wasn’t immediately returned.
Pitts said he wasn’t there at the time so he couldn’t answer when asked if the room had been secured when people were asked to leave.
Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez, the Fulton County’s director of external affairs, also said she wasn’t in the arena at the time, but had spoken to staff members who were.
“My understanding is that the workers who were responsible for those ballots never left the room. They were in the room the entire time. They had to stop working for a period of about two hours and that was the reason it was brought up in the first place, is there was a slight delay of a couple of hours where they couldn’t access the entire room, but they did not leave. And the ballots remained in the custody of the sworn workers,” she said.
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