We reported last night on a video that many were calling a “smoking gun” video.

The video allegedly showing the poll watchers being told to leave that counting was going to stop, and then election officials continuing to count and pulled out big boxes/cases of ballots from under a desk.

Even Georgia Governor Brian Kemp was bothered by the video and called for answers as well as repeating his call for an audit of signatures on the ballots.

As we reported earlier, officials have now responded to the concerns over the video, claiming that there was nothing untoward going on in the video. Election officials claim that the poll watchers were not told they had to leave and a senior source in Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office said that there was a monitor from their office there the whole time.

Except there are a few problems with that story.

First, the poll watchers who said they were told to leave gave sworn affidavits under penalty of perjury that they had been told to leave according to the Trump campaign team. Also why would they leave otherwise when it was their job to monitor the counting? The only reason they would have left is because they believed, based on what they were told, that the counting had stopped. Yet it had not stopped, it continued.

The “senior source” in Raffensberger’s office said that there was a monitor from their office there the whole time. But in fact, that’s not the case, according to Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system implementation manager. Sterling said there was no monitor there for an 82 minute period. So the claim the monitor was there the whole time is simply not true. But Sterling claimed that there was surveillance video for that period of time.

So you have out and out conflicting stories from the election officials.

Plus, it isn’t sufficient to have video surveillance when observers are entitled to be there. What is that kind of video going to pick up? Especially if people are aware that it’s there and might be able to do things around it? Check out the video I wrote about that Herschel Walker tweeted. The bottom line is they didn’t have the poll watchers who are entitled to be there watching during the count, they continued to count despite knowing they didn’t have those watchers there.

So sorry, if the official response doesn’t reassure me when they appear to contradict the poll watchers and they appear unconcerned about proceeding without the poll watchers.