State senator recalls 2020 meeting with Trump team 'was like getting a bomb dropped on my life'

A December 2020 meeting of the Georgia Senate attended by Sen. Elena Parent was mentioned on page 12 of this week's federal indictment of former President Donald Trump.

Trump was charged Tuesday in a Justice Department investigation into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, a frantic but ultimately failed endeavor that culminated in the riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, 2021.

The indictment includes a 7-hour Georgia Senate hearing on Dec. 3, 2020 in which Trump's legal team, including former Trump counsel Rudy Giuliani, foisted allegations of fraud and misconduct on the state's election process — one of 48 mentions of Georgia. 

GPB's Stephen Fowler reported at the time that Parent and fellow lawmakers were repeatedly told false claims by Trump's team, namely that Georgia's election results — which showed Joe Biden winning by approximately 12,000 votes over Trump — were illegitimate and needed to be tossed.

“I did my job the way I do every day," Parent told GPB Thursday. "And this issue is just so high-profile and so many people across the country had been taken in by these lies, that it was like a bomb got dropped on my life."

Parent said she had been unaware Giuliani would attend the Senate Judiciary subcommittee meeting to advocate for Trump, but that his presence made clear the gravity of the situation.

"I understood right away the seriousness of the issue and the fact of how high-profile it was," she said. 

In a Dec. 5, 2020, social media post, she wrote: "... I publicly questioned the validity of [Donald Trump's] fraud allegations. Since then, I've received a torrent of abuse, attacks & death threats. It's time to ask ourselves, 'Is this who we are? Is this who we want to be?'"

Parent and her family received death threats for weeks because of her questions during the meeting, she said, with Newsweek reporting that a far-right internet messaging board posted photos of Parent and misidentified her as an election worker, with comments calling for her to be killed. 

She said the death threats tapered off after a couple of weeks, and focus turned to the Jan. 6 protest at the U.S. Capitol. 

Meanwhile, this summer a Fulton County grand jury is expected to issue indictments soon in a separate case involving efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election.