Brian Pritchard YouTube screengrab from Brian Pritchard YouTube account 2023.
Brian Pritchard, the first vice chairman of the Georgia Republican Party who promulgated bogus claims of rampant voter fraud in the 2020 election, voted illegally nine times while on probation for felony check forgery, according to an administrative judge in the Peach State.
As first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Pritchard must also pay a fine of $5,000. The decision came from Georgia Administrative Law Judge Lisa Boggs. Beyond the fine, he is ordered to be publicly reprimanded by the state’s election board.
Nearly 30 years ago, Pritchard was found guilty of a number of felony check forging charges. USA Today reported that the ruling detailed the charges were tied to a $38,000 construction project. Pritchard’s probation had been revoked several times over the years including in 1999, 2002 and 2004. It was in that year that a judge imposed a new sentence through 2011.
As a convicted felon, Pritchard was barred from casting a ballot.
Boggs’ order reportedly noted that Pritchard lied on voting forms in the years while he was on probation, voting in the Georgia primary and general elections despite his felony conviction.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that when pressed about why this happened, Pritchard had replied: “Do you think the first time I voted I said, oh I got away with it. Let’s do it eight more times?”
Prichard, who is also a conservative radio host, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday though he has historically and steadfastly denied any wrongdoing.
According to the Independent, Boggs said this week there was nothing “credible or convincing” in Pritchard’s claims that he simply forgot he was a convicted felon when he cast his vote.
“At the very least, even if the Court accepts he did not know about his felony sentences, the record before this Court demonstrates that he should have known,” she said.
On Pritchard’s website, Fetch Your News, he aired his grievances about claims that he had voted illegally in a 2022 blog post.
“Yes something happened in Pennsylvania that is of public record. But the Georgia Secretary of States wants you to believe that I knowingly voted while serving a felony sentence. Never happened! I did vote every time they said, but never illegally,” he wrote.
As USA Today noted, Pritchard also used his platform to claim that voter fraud delivered the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden over Donald Trump, a widespread conspiracy theory that has never been proven and that in fact has led to criminal indictments and charges against the former president.
Elsewhere in Georgia this week, an appeals court acquitted a woman sentenced to five years for voting while on probation. As Law&Crime reported, a Texas appeals court found there was not enough evidence to support prosecutors’ claims that she voted illegally intentionally.
