Georgia voter roll audit finds only 20 noncitizens out of 8 million registered voters
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(ATLANTA) — A comprehensive audit of Georgia’s voter rolls found that just 20 noncitizens were registered to vote on a registration list of over 8 million, according to an announcement Wednesday from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
All 20 of those registrations have been canceled and referred to the authorities for investigation and potential prosecution, Raffensperger said.
An additional 156 registrations were flagged for a “human investigation” that is now underway.
“Georgia has the cleanest voter list in the entire country,” Raffensperger, a Republican, said of the audit. “Georgia can trust in their elections.”
The result of the audit stands in stark contrast to claims being pushed by some Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, that large numbers of noncitizens are going to vote in the 2024 election.
“Our elections are bad,” Trump said at last month’s ABC News presidential debate as part of his criticism of Democrats. “And a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote. They can’t even speak English, they don’t know even know what country they’re in practically, and these people are trying to get them to vote, and that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country.”
Gabriel Sterling, the COO for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, pushed back on people promoting those claims.
“One of the reasons the secretary ordered this noncitizenship audit is to prove to people that — while there are ways that some can potentially get on — it is increasingly rare,” Sterling said Wednesday. “There is no proof that there is this overwhelming number of noncitizens on the rolls.”
The 20 noncitizens found on the voter rolls were located across seven different counties, Sterling said. They were found in part because they had signed affidavits attesting that they were not citizens in order to get out of jury duty.
Sterling said the 20 have been referred to local prosecutors, and that there are some instances “where they probably should be prosecuted, but that’s not our call.”
Sterling also forcefully pushed back on anyone claiming that voting machines are generating fraud in the election, saying there is “zero evidence of a machine flipping an individual’s vote.”
Sterling said they have seen situations where there are “elderly people whose hands shake and they probably hit the wrong button slightly, and they didn’t review their ballot properly before they printed it.”
He directly called out anyone suggesting otherwise, saying, “There is literally zero — and I’m saying this to certain congresspeople in the state — zero evidence of machines flipping votes. And that claim was a lie to 2020 election and it’s a lie now.”
Moses Stewart and Diane Hawkins grieve over the slaying of their son Yusuf Hawkins; Nicole Bengiveno/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images
(BROOKLYN, N.Y.) — When Yusuf Hawkins, a Black 16-year-old, was shot and killed in Brooklyn in 1989 as he went to purchase a car, the crime set off months of angry protests.
Now, the man convicted in Hawkins’ murder, who has been behind bars for nearly 35 years, will get a chance Thursday to prove his innocence with what his defense attorney says is new evidence.
Joseph Fama, who was 18 at the time of the murder, was part of a white mob that chased down Hawkins and three other unarmed Black youths in August 1989 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, according to court documents.
Fama, who is white, was convicted in May 1990 of second-degree murder, first-degree riot, third-degree criminal possession of a weapon, first-degree unlawful imprisonment, menacing and discrimination. All counts were ordered to run concurrently, giving Fama 25 years to life in prison, according to court documents.
“Unfortunately, terribly, Yusuf Hawkins, innocent, innocent man, was killed — let’s just start with that — because he’s Black,” Justin Bonus, Fama’s attorney, told ABC News in a phone interview last week. “My client was not involved with this whole group of kids sitting there waiting for Black guys to come.”
The murder sparked protests against racial violence around New York City at a time when tensions were high. Months earlier, the Central Park Five, a group of Black and Hispanic teenagers, were wrongfully convicted of rape and assault of a white female jogger.
Five witnesses testified that they saw Fama shoot Hawkins, and four more witnesses placed Fama at the scene the night that the teenager was shot three times, according to court documents. Two jailhouse informants testified that Fama admitted to them that he shot Hawkins because he was Black, according to court documents.
“First of all, jailhouse informants, are we going to go by that?” Bonus said to ABC News.
The judge in Fama’s original trial did not allow the father of one of the informants to testify that he believed his son was lying about his claim that Fama confessed that he killed Hawkins. The courts made that decision because the defense failed to lay a foundation for the admission of the evidence during cross-examination of the informant, according to court documents.
According to a motion by Fama’s defense, two of the witnesses, who previously said that they saw Fama kill Hawkins, recanted their testimonies and claimed that they were coerced by investigators to pin the shooting on the defendant.
During the original trial, the court denied the defense’s request to call Frankie Tighe, one of the witnesses who recanted his testimony, to the stand because defense attorneys had already rested their case four days before their request, according to court documents.
Keith Mondello, one of the alleged leaders of the mob that chased Hawkins and who was convicted, provided new evidence that also claimed Fama was not the killer, according to court documents.
Five additional witnesses originally claimed that, after the shooting, Tighe ran around the corner to their location and they heard him say, “Joe Fama just shot a Black kid,” according to court documents.
The defense says they have new evidence that one of those witnesses later recanted their testimony and stated that detectives spoke to him many times and pressured him to accuse Fama, according to the defense’s motion.
On Aug. 23, 1989, at about 9:00 p.m. Hawkins and three of his peers took a subway train from their Brooklyn neighborhood in East New York to Bensonhurst to look at a used car for sale, according to court documents.
The four peers became lost in Bensonhurst and, as they searched for the address of where the used car would be, they came across a group of 20 to 40 white individuals who, coincidentally, were expecting Black and Hispanic men to attend a birthday party in the neighborhood that night, according to court documents.
The party was hosted by an 18-year-old white woman who the men in the neighborhood believed invited Black and Hispanic men to the birthday celebration, according to Bonus. The men gathered in the vicinity of her home, allegedly voiced racist threats and armed themselves with bats, golf clubs and handguns as they allegedly waited for the men of color to come to the party, according to court documents.
The group of men chased Hawkins and his peers when they saw them, according to court documents. The confrontation ended with Hawkins shot. He died a short time later. Fama was sentenced for 25 years to life in prison on June 11, 1990.
The defense claims to have twelve new affidavits from witnesses that allege that Fama did not shoot Hawkins. Some of those witnesses say police pressured them to accuse Fama.
The defense motion focuses on one investigator, former Detective Louis Scarcella, claiming he was “significantly involved with the investigation and procuring witnesses.”
A complaint against Scarcella alleges that nearly 20 homicide convictions associated with the former detective have been vacated and in at least nine of those convictions, Scarcella coerced false confessions or fabricated written confessions from innocent individuals, according to court records.
Joel Cohen, Scarcella’s attorney, told ABC News over the phone that some judges found that Scarcella was involved in improper tactics which led to the convictions of several individuals, but the court only found innocence in one of the overturned cases.
Scarcella didn’t file a response to any of the complaints, according to his attorney.
“Joseph Fama’s motion to vacate his conviction for the racially motivated murder of Yusef Hawkings 32 years ago is flatly contradicted by the overwhelming evidence of his guilt,” Cohen told ABC News in part through a statement. “His lawyer’s claims that the that the “…”murder investigation was led by Detective Louis Scarcella ,” and that Scarcella was “all over the investigation” are reckless and provably false and based in part by the lawyer’s “surmise.”
The DA’s office told ABC News that Scarcella only played a minor role in the investigation and was one of more than 65 investigators working on the case. The defense believes Scarcella was “significantly involved in” the investigation, according to court documents.
The NYPD did not reply to ABC News’ request for a statement.
The DA’s office claims witnesses testified that they saw Fama receive a gun from the individual who Bonus alleges was the actual shooter just before Hawkins’ death.
In Tighe’s recanted statement, he claimed that Fama used a silver handgun in the shooting, but Claude Stanford, one of Hawkins’ peers who was with him the night he was shot, said that the shooter used a black gun and was about 6 feet tall, according to the defense’s motion. Fama was about 5 feet, 8 inches tall at the time, according to court documents.
Fama has already tried twice to appeal his conviction and was denied by the court both times, according to legal documents. This is his third attempt to vacate his conviction.
Fama’s court conference hearing is set for Nov. 21, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.
David DePape in Berkeley, Calif., Dec. 13, 2013. Michael Short/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
(SAN FRANCISCO) — David DePape was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole in the state trial over the hammer attack against Paul Pelosi.
A jury found DePape guilty in June of false imprisonment of an elder by violence or menace, residential burglary, threatening a family member of a public official, dissuading a witness by force or threat and aggravated kidnapping.
Before the sentencing, DePape’s attorneys asked for a new trial. That motion was denied.
DePape was also sentenced to 30 years in prison in May in the federal case, in which he was convicted of seeking to hold former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hostage and attacking her husband with a hammer.
DePape had broken into the Pelosi home in San Francisco looking for Nancy Pelosi, who was not home at the time.
Following the guilty verdict in the state case, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said the conviction ensures that DePape “will face consequences for his heinous crimes against the Pelosi family and our democracy.”
DePape’s public defender, Adam Lipson, said at the time they were disappointed by the verdict.
“I don’t believe that this was a kidnapping for ransom, I think that it’s really unfortunate that he was charged this way,” Lipson told reporters, adding that his client had lived a “very isolated” life and had gotten “wrapped up in a lot of conspiracy theory-type situations.”
DePape did not testify during the three-week state trial. He had pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Paul Pelosi testified that on the night of the attack, DePape woke him by asking, “Are you Paul Pelosi?” and had a hammer and zip ties, according to San Francisco ABC station KGO.
“He seemed very intent on what he was going to do,” Paul Pelosi said, according to KGO.
DePape apologized for the attack during his sentencing hearing in the federal case.
“I’m sorry for what I did, especially what I did to Paul Pelosi,” he said during the resentencing hearing, according to KGO. “I should have just left the house when I realized Nancy Pelosi wasn’t home.”
A federal jury found DePape guilty in November 2023 of attempted kidnapping of a federal officer or employee, and assault of an immediate family member of a federal official.
After a judge sentenced DePape to 30 years in federal prison in May, the sentencing was reopened when prosecutors noted that the defendant was never formally given the opportunity to address the court during his sentencing. He was again sentenced to 30 years in prison at a subsequent hearing.
DePape admitted during the federal trial that he was looking for Nancy Pelosi to question her about Russian influence on the 2016 election and planned to hold her hostage, but only Paul Pelosi was at their San Francisco home when he broke in on Oct. 28, 2022.
Paul Pelosi said on the stand during the federal trial that DePape repeatedly asked him, “Where is Nancy?”
DePape hit Paul Pelosi, then 82 years old, with a hammer, causing major injuries, including a skull fracture, but told the court that Paul Pelosi was “never my target.”
“I’m sorry that he got hurt,” DePape said during the federal trial. “I reacted because my plan was basically ruined.”
The incident was captured on police body camera video by officers who responded to the scene.
Paul Pelosi was hospitalized for six days following the attack and underwent surgery to repair the skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands.
Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Questions about New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ future in office have begun to swirl as he faces indictment by a federal grand jury amid calls for his resignation.
The indictment, which was announced Wednesday, details five charges, including improper campaign contributions from foreign nationals, wire fraud, and bribery during his time as Brooklyn borough president and NYC mayor.
Adams is the first New York City mayor to be indicted while still in office.
In a recorded speech addressed to New Yorkers on Wednesday night, Adams said he would fight the indictment with “every ounce of my strength and my spirit.” He also said he would not resign as mayor.
But should Adams ultimately heed the growing calls for him to step down, who will take his place?
New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams is next in the line of succession and would become acting mayor. He previously served on the NYC Council representing the 45th District neighborhoods of Flatbush, East Flatbush, Midwood, Flatlands, and Marine Park in Brooklyn from 2010 to 2019.
Williams is a first-generation Brooklyn native of Grenadian heritage, who graduated from the NYC public school system and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Brooklyn College. As public advocate, his duties include serving “as an ombudsman for city government, providing oversight for city agencies, investigating citizens’ complaints about city services and making proposals to address perceived shortcomings or failures of those services,” according to his biography on the city’s official public advocate website.
Williams also previously served as the executive director of NYS Tenants & Neighbors, which describes itself as “a grassroots membership organization working collaboratively with tenants to build and effectively wield power to preserve and protect affordable housing in New York State.”
While serving on the NYC Council, Williams “championed landmark legislation that fundamentally transformed policing in NYC,” according to his official biography, including “ending the abuse of Stop, Question & Frisk in communities of color and creating the NYPD’s Office of Inspector General to investigate unlawful & unethical behavior.”
Additionally, Williams is former co-chair of the NYC Council’s Task Force to Combat Gun Violence and worked with them to reduce gun violence in New York City.
After Williams, the next in the mayoralty line of succession is New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who is running against Adams in the 2025 mayoral race.
Lander is already calling on Adams to resign. “Trust in public institutions — especially City Hall — is essential for our local democracy to function and for our city to flourish,” he posted Wednesday on X, in part. “The hardworking people of New York City deserve a city government and leadership they can trust. Right now, they don’t have it.”
Adams “deserves due process, the presumption of innocence, and his day in court,” Lander’s post continued. “However, it is clear that defending himself against serious federal charges will require a significant amount of the time and attention needed to govern this great city. The most appropriate path forward is for him to step down so that New York City can get the full focus its leadership demands.”
As comptroller, Lander is New York City’s chief financial officer. His official biography describes his role as New York City’s “budget watchdog and chief accountability officer,” including serving as “investment advisor and custodian for the City’s public pension funds.”
His biography cites his success in uncovering through audits “nearly a quarter of a billion dollars underreported in NYC Ferry expenditures, inadequate cost controls in Covid-19 emergency procurement, and the ineffectiveness of the City’s homeless sweeps,” in addition to other initiatives and accomplishments.
Before he was elected as city comptroller in 2021, Lander was a 12-year veteran of the NYC Council, serving the 39th district, representing parts of Brooklyn.
ABC News’ Aaron Katersky contributed to this report.
