A Republican official claimed that the 2020 election was plagued with voter fraud. Now a judge has ruled that he voted illegally 9 times

A Republican official in Georgia has been found by a judge to have voted illegally nine times even as he pushed former President Donald Trump’s false claims of fraud in connection to the 2020 election.

The first vice chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, Brian Pritchard, has been fined $5,000 for voting and registering to vote while serving a sentence for a felony.

Administrative Law Judge Lisa Boggs backed the State Election Board’s findings in a 25-page ruling on Wednesday, saying that Pritchard voted unlawfully nine times while under extended probation for felonies going back almost three decades.

Following an initial forgery conviction in Pennsylvania in 1996, his three-year probation was revoked thrice – when he moved to Georgia in 1999, as well as in 2002 and in 2004, when a judge set a new sentence of seven years of probation, meaning that Pritchard couldn’t vote in the state until 2011,according to NBC News.

But Pritchard filled out a voter registration form with the Gilmer County’s Board of Elections in 2008.

He also signed a statement saying he was “not serving a sentence for having been convicted of a felony involving moral turpitude”.

In 2008, he cast four ballots in the primary and general elections, as well as runoffs – two years later, in 2010, he cast five ballots in primary, general, and special elections.

Pritchard, a conservative radio host, has testified that “he was not aware of anything that would have prevented him from registering to vote when he signed the application,” adding that he didn’t think three years remained on his probation, court filings reveal.

“Upon careful consideration of the evidence in its totality, the Court does not find the Respondent’s explanations credible or