ATLANTA — A publicist who worked for Kanye West reportedly traveled to metro Atlanta in January to pressure a Georgia election worker as a "loose end for a party that needs to tidy up."
Reuters published bodycam video of an officer observing the publicist meeting the worker, who was in the middle of the storm of former President Donald Trump's election fraud claims, at a Cobb County police station.
The worker, a woman who was seen on video counting ballots at State Farm Arena on Election Night and who became a target of conspiracists insisting the surveillance video showed her removing fraudulent ballots out of hidden "suitcases" and sending them through counting machines multiple times, reportedly resisted the pressure campaign.
Reuters previously reported in detail the immense wave of harassment and threats the worker and her daughter faced after the events at State Farm Arena became Trump's central fixation in Georgia.
The claims were refuted by Georgia election officials and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who said the "suitcase" was actually a normal ballot container. Meanwhile, video reviews later showed the container had been packed and placed under a table when election workers were told counting was done for the night and would resume the next day. It was brought back out from under the table when state officials pressed Fulton County to resume counting.
In the moment, nonetheless, the State Farm Arena video was the fuel to a raging fire of lawsuits, hearings, presidential tweets and wild accusations from fringe websites and social media accounts that Georgia's election results had been manipulated to make Joe Biden the winner.
Amidst all that, Reuters reported, the election worker - who had already been getting threatening strangers showing up at her home for weeks - got a knock on her door on Jan. 4 offering help.
According to Reuters, the knock came from publicist Trevian Kutti, who said she was sent by a "high-profile individual." The news organization obtained police bodycam video of the election worker later meeting with Kutti at a police station in Cobb County.
There, the bodycam shows, Kutti told the worker "we don't want to frighten you" and she had a plan "to move you, to secure you from what may be authorized over the next 48 hours."
"We have probably 48 hours in which to move you," she reiterated, adding that, "I cannot say what specifically will take place."
"I just know that it will disrupt your freedom and...the freedom of one or more of your family members," Kutti told her.
She offered to put her on the phone with a a man she described as a "Black progressive crisis manager" to "let you know exactly what is at stake, what choices you have, whether you would choose or not to deal with us."
Kutti told her she was "not her enemy" before saying: "You are a loose end for a party that needs to tidy up."
At one point, the officer offers to observe the meeting from a closer position if it would make the election worker comfortable, with Kutti appearing to rebuff the offer saying: "Yeah, I want her to be comfortable, but I also want to advise her that there are federal people who are involved here, that I don't know who is connected to who."
"And I really need for her to be as nonchalant as possible with this conversation that we are going to have so that if she does make a decision, she's protected in her decisions," Kutti said.
That is the extent of the meeting that the video shows. The publicist does not specifically name any individuals any any point who might be behind her visit.
Reuters reported that in a speakerphone conversation at the police station, the "Black progressive crisis manager" tried to get her to admit to committing election fraud.
The worker told Reuters that Kutti told her: "If you don't tell everything, you're going to jail."
The worker later Googled Kutti and discovered she was a Trump supporter, whose implication that the worker needed protection within 48 hours indeed proved true.
Not from law enforcement, but from "a mob of angry Trump supporters surround(ing) her home, shouting through bullhorns."
That day was Jan. 6.