Grand Jury Testimony From Senator David Perdue Suggests Gov. Brian Kemp Halted Investigation Into 2020 Election
"If the governor doesn’t want to investigate, we’re not going to investigate."
On August 24th, 2023, Donald Trump surrendered himself to authorities at the Fulton County Jail. What followed was the most infamous mugshot of all time. He had just been indicted on racketeering and other charges related to the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.
The case of State of Georgia v. Trump, et al. - which was manufactured by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her lover Nathan Wade - was ultimately dismissed on November 25th, 2025. Even after its dismissal, the case is providing us with more context of what actually happened (and what didn’t happen) surrounding the 2020 election.
Last month, Judge Scott McAfee lifted a protective order on the special grand jury transcripts from the case of State of Georgia v. Trump, et al.
One particular transcript contains a concerning claim made by former U.S. Senator David Perdue.
On September 6, 2022, Sen. Perdue sat for a transcribed interview in front of the Grand Jury. He was examined by Nathan Wade, among others.
After initial pleasantries, Wade asked Sen. Perdue whether he agreed that investigations by the Secretary of State’s Office, the GBI, and “numerous investigations” - showed nothing illegal happened at the State Farm Arena on election night in 2020.
Perdue responded, “I agree that an investigation happened, yes.”
Wade fired back:
“I just want to flesh out, for the grand jury, what you mean because it’s a simple question. Did the GBI investigate those claims?”
“Not to my knowledge. Not to my satisfaction,” Perdue responded.
When Wade asked if Perdue had “reason to believe that the GBI would not have conducted a satisfactory investigation,” the response from Perdue was shocking.
Senator Perdue claimed to have received a phone call in November 2021 from Vic Reynolds, then-Director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI). Reynolds told Perdue, “We’re not going to investigate. The governor wants me to tell you why we’re not going to investigate.”
Perdue revealed that in May of 2021, Reynolds was presented with evidence of ballot harvesting. “…Video evidence and cell phone evidence, along with testimony and bank records that are corroborated…” Perdue stated that Reynolds “looked at that and said it was compelling [enough] to be investigated.”
Perdue would go on to reveal that the reason Reynolds gave him for not investigating the compelling evidence was because Reynolds was “a team player. If the governor doesn’t want to investigate, we’re not going to investigate.”
Perdue would conclude his answer by stating for the record that then-GBI Director Vic Reynolds was later “promoted to Superior Court Judge of Cobb County,” an appointment made by Governor Brian Kemp in August 2022, just one month before this testimony was given.
According to Perdue, Vic Reynolds saw evidence of ballot harvesting that was compelling enough to open an investigation, but Reynolds did not open an investigation because he wanted to be a “team player” for Brian Kemp, the man who would promote him to be a Superior Court Judge less than a year later.
And he wouldn’t be the first person promoted to a Superior Court judgeship that was involved in election investigations.
Toward the end of the testimony, another attorney present, Donald Wakeford, asked Senator Perdue a follow-up question regarding the claim:
“You said that although Mr. Reynolds had received evidence that he felt was compelling enough to open an investigation, that he was not going to investigate because the governor had told him not to?”
“That’s one of the things he said, yeah,” Perdue responded.
Perdue clarified that there had been two whistleblowers who had come forward and testified regarding ballot harvesting in Georgia. One claimed to have corroborative evidence, including bank statements of payments for what he said he did.
“They had video evidence of that, corroborating what he said he did, and they had cell phone evidence that backed up what he said he did,” Perdue claimed.
Reynolds told Perdue that without the witness, they could not move forward. Perdue inquired whether Reynolds could get him whistleblower protections.
The Backstory
The evidence that was presented to Reynolds and also viewed by Senator Perdue stems from a presentation made by True the Vote in May 2021.
According to a follow-up letter by Reynolds, the data presented identified “279 cellphones which had made multiple trips to within 100 feet of a voter drop box.” Other documents provided tied those specific cell phones to various organizations through geolocation.
Reynolds continued:
What has not been provided is any other kind of evidence that ties these cell phones to ballot harvesting; for example, there are no statements of witnesses and no names of any potential defendants to interview. Saliently, it has been stated that there is “a source” that can validate ballot harvesting. Despite repeated requests, that source has not been provided to either the GBI or to the FBI.
As it exists, the data, while curious, does not rise to the level of probable cause that a crime has been committed. For the GBI to get the same CSLI information you provided, we would need to obtain a search warrant based on such probable cause. We cannot make that showing with what has been provided.
Reynolds’s claim of “repeated requests” is refuted by Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True The Vote.
In a statement to Badlands Media, Engelbrecht wrote:
Vic Reynold’s description of what happened with the investigation is untrue. We met once with Vic Reynolds and his team in the Governor’s office in early 2021, where we walked them through our initial findings. After that meeting, we made repeated attempts to re-engage with the GBI and never received a response.
The FBI offered to assist by hosting a secure database so the GBI and other law enforcement agencies could access the information and preserve chain of custody across the states involved. They were clear, however, that they were not conducting an investigation and did not collect evidence. Given what followed, it’s unclear there was ever a genuine effort on their part.
The next time Mr. Reynolds surfaced was when a letter he wrote and addressed to us appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. We did not receive the letter at the time it was published; when we later did, we responded directly to the Governor.
The suggestion that this stalled because we failed to provide an informant’s name simply isn’t accurate. We were shut out early, and as public pressure mounted, the focus shifted to blaming us rather than examining the evidence. At no point was there a serious effort to ask the kinds of questions a real investigation requires.
Senator Perdue’s explanation of his conversation with Reynolds, and Reynolds’ alleged remark that he’s “a team player,” and that “if the governor doesn’t want to investigate, we’re not going to investigate,” is compelling given the statement from Engelbrecht.
Senator Perdue was the incumbent senator in the 2020 election but failed to reach the 50 percent threshold against Jon Ossoff, despite winning by 90,000 votes. That election runoff was conducted on January 5, 2021, where Ossoff won by 55,000 votes.
The “victories” of Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock gave Democrats control of the U.S. Senate and Joe Biden a “trifecta” in the federal government.
An Interesting History of Failing Up
Reynolds isn’t the first Georgia official to be involved in 2020 election investigations and later receive an appointment to a judgeship.
Nor is he the second.
He is the third.
Following the 2020 election, around November 17, 2020, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger claimed that an audit of five counties was performed by Pro V&V, a voting systems testing lab.
Pro V&V is not a certified auditing firm, and their involvement in any post-election audit would be a direct conflict of interest, since they were responsible for certifying the equipment prior to the election.
Raffensperger claimed that Cobb, Douglas, Floyd, Morgan, Paulding, and Spalding counties were the subject of the Pro V&V audits.
Below are open records request responses from three of those counties.
Further, the memo from Jack Cobb, President of Pro V&V, to Michael Barnes of the Secretary of State’s Office, that was acknowledging the Secretary of State’s request for Pro V&V to perform the audit was dated 7/16/2021.
This was more than eight months after the audit had allegedly been performed.
Metadata for the image confirmed it was created on 7/16/2021 on Jack Cobb’s device.
According to Georgia resident Bob Coovert, who facilitated the open records requests, Raffensperger included the “results” of this “audit” in a 10-page letter to the U.S. Congress following a December 22, 2020 promise to investigate “250 credible cases of fraud” with “the whole of government.”
Coovert claims he took evidence of 28 instances of fraud to Governor Brian Kemp and worked with Evan Meyers, Gov. Kemp’s executive deputy counsel. Meyers then referred it to then-Inspector General Scott McAfee.
IG McAfee said he could only go after one allegation: the claims that an audit never took place. Coovert claims that when he gave McAfee the evidence that the audits didn’t take place in the six counties mentioned, McAfee stopped talking to Coovert.
He claims he also went to Alison Sosebee, then a district attorney in the Appalachian Circuit, and shared the information with her. She also stopped talking to him following the presentation of evidence.
Both McAfee and Sosebee are now Superior Court judges appointed by Governor Kemp.
Badlands Media articles and features represent the opinions of the contributing authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Badlands Media itself.
Badlands Media will always put out our content for free, but you can support us by becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter. Help our collective of citizen journalists take back the narrative from the MSM.
Trump won 2020, as a convicted/pardoned J6er, by Boasberg, I know how corrupt the government is! I appreciate the continued efforts of Badlands to shine the light on these corrupt, criminal politicians. They all need to be removed and a new constitutional republic established.❤️🇺🇸💪🏻
Kemp is as corrupt as the day is long.