Page:CTRL0000034600 - Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021).pdf/25

25 investigative activity about this allegation in Georgia?

That's essentially what he's saying, yes.

All right. So then David Bowdich brings this to you for resolution, and you respond, Mr. Donoghue, with the last email in the chain, essentially saying go forth and do the interviews. Can you explain to us sort of what your position was when this conflict arose between ECB and the FBI agents in Georgia who were asked to do these interviews?

Right. So, if I'm remembering this allegation correctly, this had to do with the State Farm Arena and Fulton County ballots. And there was some allegations being made in, I believe, in civil litigation but also just generally out there in the media that there was a video that showed, in fact, that ballots, apparently fraudulent ballots, had been smuggled into State Farm Arena, and that, after the observers were sent away in some nefarious way, that these fraudulent ballots were then processed, and that somehow impacted the outcome of the election in Georgia.

The ballots were available, obviously, at State Farm. The video was out there on the internet. There were various people involved, and the Attorney General and the U.S. attorney and at some point Dave Bowdich all looked at this, and we determined that we could do a brief investigation to determine whether any of that could possibly be true, particularly given how close the election was in Georgia.

And so FBI decided to go ahead and do limited interviews of the witnesses, review of the videotape, that sort of thing. And I think they were going to work this one in conjunction with the Georgia Secretary of State's Office. That was fine. That was entirely up to FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office as to who they were going to work these cases with, if anyone.

But, again, you see this playing out where PIN says, well, we don't want you to go