AC repair inSterling, GA

Gabriel Sterling, a top election official in Georgia who publicly disputed former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of election fraud in the 2020 election, is testifying before the Jan. 6 committee on Tuesday.

Mr. Sterling, along with Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, became a vocal defender of Georgia’s election security in the weeks after the election, even as Mr. Trump and members of his campaign sought to discredit the results and to circulate conspiracy theories that the election had been rigged in favor of Joseph R. Biden Jr.

In the hearing on Tuesday, the committee is expected to focus on how Mr. Trump and those in his inner circle targeted state officials in their quest to overturn elections results in battleground states that Mr. Biden won narrowly. In Georgia, Mr. Biden’s final margin of victory was fewer than 12,000 votes.

Mr. Sterling helped oversee the implementation of Georgia’s voting systems in 2020, including the electronic equipment produced by Dominion Voting Systems, which became the target of outlandish conspiracy theories perpetuated by the Trump campaign. He also helped organize a painstaking recount of Georgia’s nearly five million votes in order to confirm the state’s election results.

Unlike other state-level officials who did not act on Mr. Trump’s false claims, Mr. Sterling repeatedly spoke out against the falsehoods in prominent fashion.

In fiery news conferences after the election, Mr. Sterling confronted Mr. Trump’s false claims, methodically debunking many of the most widespread falsehoods aimed at the election in Georgia. He also accused Mr. Trump of whipping up public resentment toward election officials in his bid to stay in power, and he criticized the former president for refusing to condemn a wave of violent threats against officials.

On Tuesday, Mr. Sterling is expected to speak about how Mr. Trump and those in his orbit disingenuously accused officials in Georgia of failing to secure the election, even after they repeatedly explained that claims of election fraud or voting irregularities were unfounded.

ATLANTA — The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office is taking extra precautions to make sure the election and poll workers are safe and secure.

Monday marked the busiest first day of early voting that the state of Georgia has ever seen. More than 133,000 ballots were cast in-person across the state, smashing the previous record of 71,000 from the 2018 midterm elections.

Interim Deputy Georgia Secretary of State Gabriel Sterling sat down exclusively with Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Mark Winne to explain the new Poll Worker First Response System.

“We’ve launched a new basically tool to help with the protection of poll workers in this new kind of heightened threat environment that we’ve seen,” Sterling said.

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Sterling says the response system was put in place, in part, as a response to threats poll workers received during the 2020 elections, but also to give them a peace of mind.

“We are doing everything we can in Georgia to keep our poll workers safe, keep our voting locations safe to make sure there are no disruptions, so that voting can go through smoothly and safely for everybody,” he said.

If an issue arises, poll workers will get a five digit code, choose their county and get a form to fill out. Once they send in the form, an email will immediately go out to the state elections director, deputy elections director, the county elections director and local law enforcement, if the county has chosen that as an option.

“If you have the guy’s being a jerk, there’s one way to deal with it. If you got a guy who says, ‘I have a bomb and a gun,’ that’s another way you have to deal with it. So we’re gonna try to get as much transparency and information on the front end so the rumors don’t spin out of control,” Sterling explained.

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One of Fulton County’s poll managers, Dan Rauzi, says he will be checking out the new security.

“Our voters are wonderful. We’ve had marvelous voters. We love our voters, but at the same time, we have to make sure that everybody is secure, and that we have a secure environment for people to be able to exercise their right to vote, so I think it will be very helpful,” Rauzi said.

Sterling says that as of Tuesday, 81 of Georgia’s 159 counties had opted in.

“Why would anyone not opt in? Maybe they don’t wanna scare their poll workers, maybe they think, you know, ‘We’re fine,’ maybe they think we have a good enough relationship with our sheriff’s department who are already on site, we don’t need this. Counties run elections, we’re just providing these tools to them,” Sterling says.

Sterling told Winne that on election night in November 2020, vans with returns were followed and one had cars trying to cut it off as it was trying to get to a Fulton County facility.

A spokesperson also says that Fulton County has a whistleblower hotline for all Fulton County employees to report fraud or abuse that has been extended to poll workers.

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A source in the Secretary of State's Office said they are expected to testify on either June 20 or 21.

ATLANTA — Georgia's secretary of state and another high-ranking election official have been subpoenaed by the January 6 House committee and will testify before them later this month.

A source in the Georgia Secretary of State's Office confirmed to 11Alive's Joe Henke on Thursday that Secretary Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer in the office, are expected to give testimony either on June 20 or 21.

The source said Raffensperger and Sterling are the only two officials from the Georgia Secretary of State's Office who have been subpoenaed. The committee's much-anticipated hearings will begin Thursday night.

As Georgia's chief elections officer, Raffensperger has become a central figure into various inquiries into the efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election - with the state at the time a particular fixation of former President Donald Trump.

RELATED: Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger testifies before special grand jury in Trump election probe

The secretary already spent roughly six hours last week in front of a special grand jury that's been convened by the Fulton County district attorney to examine Trump's campaign to assert fraud in 2020.

That case is focused on Raffensperger's now-infamous phone call with Trump in early January 2021, days before the sacking of the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. In that call, Trump was recorded asking Raffensperger to "recalculate" the Georgia vote count because "I just want to find 11,780 votes."

That was the number of votes the then-president trailed Joe Biden by in Georgia.

“There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump said. “There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”

“Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong,” Raffensperger responded.

It's not yet clear what the Jan. 6 committee will specifically want to ask Raffensperger and Sterling - a key aide of the secretary who became a visible public defender of the integrity of Georgia's results after the election - though it is likely the phone call will be among the subjects raised.

In her opening statement on Tuesday, Jan. 6 select committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney said that “we cannot let America become a nation of conspiracy theories.” The committee later heard testimony from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling that debunked one of former President Donald Trump’s most pervasive election claims — that a suitcase of fraudulent ballots cost him victory in the state in 2020.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who played a central role in Trump’s impeachment hearings and also sits on the committee, handled the questioning of Raffensperger and Sterling, and laid out the essence of Trump’s conspiracy theory about the suitcase.

“This story falsely alleges that sometime during election night, election workers at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Ga., kicked out poll observers. After the observers left, the story goes, these workers pulled out so-called suitcases of ballots from under a table and ran those ballots through counting machines multiple times,” Schiff said. “Completely without evidence, President Trump and his allies claimed that these suitcases contained as many as 18,000 ballots, all for Joe Biden. None of this was true.”

Asserting that video of the counting of votes at State Farm Arena revealed the fraudulent processing of ballots, Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani pressured Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Raffensperger, Sterling and state lawmakers to declare the results invalid in that must-win swing state.

“What did the tape actually show?” Schiff asked Sterling.

“This conspiracy theory took on a life of its own, where they conflated a water main break that wasn’t a water main break and throwing observers out and a series of other things, when it actually showed was Fulton County election observers engaging in normal ballot processing,” Sterling responded. “One of the specific things, one of the things that was very frustrating, was the so-called suitcases of ballots from under the table.”

Schiff played video testimony about the so-called suitcase given to the committee that began with statements by , whom former Attorney General William Barr had instructed to investigate the claims.

THE WOODLANDS, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sterling Infrastructure, Inc. (NasdaqGS: STRL) (“Sterling” or “the Company”) today announced that its subsidiary, Plateau Excavation of its E-Infrastructure Solutions segment, has been awarded a $45 million design-bid-build project by The Joint Development Authority (JDA) of Jasper, Morgan, Newton and Walton Counties in Georgia. The first two phases of site development, which include 500 acres, are located in the East Atlanta Megasite for the Rivian Electric Vehicle (EV) plant.

“We build and service the infrastructure that enables our economy to run, our people to move and our country to grow.”

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The Rivian EV Plant is another major project for Georgia, as the JDA has been instrumental in creating an atmosphere that fosters top-level developments in the area. Previous projects include Takeda (f.k.a. Baxter Pharmaceuticals) and two Meta Data Centers, for which, Plateau has performed the sitework.

This significant project expands Rivian’s EV manufacturing operations and the state of Georgia’s commitment to creating and sustaining a diversified economy. The project is scheduled to run from September 2022 through July 2023.

CEO Remarks “Our unique capabilities to execute large-scale site development projects now enable us to capitalize on the emerging EV manufacturing, onshoring, and industrial opportunities. We are honored to be awarded this noteworthy project that is the single largest industrial investment in Georgia’s history. Being part of a project that improves the economy, creates good-paying long-term jobs, and improves the environment fits perfectly within the Sterling Way,” stated Joe Cutillo, Sterling’s CEO.

About Sterling Sterling operates through a variety of subsidiaries within three segments specializing in E-Infrastructure, Transportation and Building Solutions in the United States (the “U.S.”), primarily across the Southern, Northeastern, Mid-Atlantic and the Rocky Mountain States, California and Hawaii, as well as other areas with strategic construction opportunities. E-Infrastructure Solutions projects develop advanced, large-scale site development systems and services for data centers, e-commerce distribution centers, warehousing, transportation, energy and more. Transportation Solutions includes infrastructure and rehabilitation projects for highways, roads, bridges, airports, ports, light rail, water, wastewater and storm drainage systems. Building Solutions projects include residential and commercial concrete foundations for single-family and multi-family homes, parking structures, elevated slabs and other concrete work. From strategy to operations, we are committed to sustainability by operating responsibly to safeguard and improve society’s quality of life. Caring for our people and our communities, our customers and our investors – that is The Sterling Way.

Joe Cutillo, CEO, “We build and service the infrastructure that enables our economy to run, our people to move and our country to grow.”

Forward-Looking Statements This press release includes certain statements that fall within the definition of “forward-looking statements” under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, including those risks identified in the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Accordingly, such statements should be considered in light of these risks. The forward-looking statements speak only as of the date made, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements for any reason, whether as a result of new information, future events or developments, changed circumstances, or otherwise, notwithstanding any changes in our assumptions, changes in business plans, actual experience or other changes. These cautionary statements qualify all forward-looking statements attributable to us or persons acting on our behalf.

Contacts

Company Contact: Sterling Infrastructure, Inc. Ron Ballschmiede, Chief Financial Officer (281) 214-0777

Investor Relations Contact: The Equity Group Inc. Jeremy Hellman, CFA (212) 836-9626