President Donald Trump claimed in a recent tweet that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s brother “works for China.”

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

...The consent decree signed by the “Secretary”, with the consent of Kemp, is perhaps even more poorly negotiated than the deal that John Kerry made with Iran. Now it turns out that Brad R’s brother works for China, and they definitely don’t want “Trump”. So disgusting! #MAGA

December 30th 2020

28,967 Retweets121,530 Likes

The tweet appears to be referencing a conspiracy theory that achieved some virality earlier this year, which suggested that Raffensperger is the brother of the CTO of Chinese technology and telecommunications company Huawei, Ron Raffensperger. The conspiracy received traction on social media website Parler, where it was shared by popular pro-Trump accounts:

Brad Raffensperger and Ron Raffensperger don’t appear to have any connection other than sharing the same last name: In a statement to The Dispatch Fact Check, Ron Raffesnperger said there was “no relation” between himself and Brad Raffensperger. A representative for the Georgia Secretary of State’s office told The Dispatch Fact Check that “What President Trump tweeted is not correct.”

According to an obituary for Brad Raffensperger’s mother, Barbara, who passed away in 2018, Brad Raffensperger has four siblings: Jody, Neil, Gwen, and Quentin. No mention of a Ron is made, and none of the viral posts have provided any evidence to support their claim that the two are related. 

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