The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports the Trumpified mpified Georgia Election Board has quietly hired an election denier to be the board’s official state investigator, even as Trump’s grip on the state becomes less guaranteed.Jason Frazier is a MAGA activist who has challenged the registrations of thousands of Fulton County voters and who cheered as Trump’s politicized FBI raided a county ballot warehouse in January, reports AJC writer Caleb Groves. Critics were quick to ridicule the new hire.“It’s shocking that an allegedly nonpartisan board would hire a political operative with a years-long record of baselessly accusing counties of wrongdoing to then turn around and ‘investigate’ these same counties,” said Sara Tindall Ghazal, the board’s only Democrat. “The majority members of the State Election Board appear determined to double-down on their MAGA credentials, foment public distrust in our elections and further marginalize themselves into irrelevance.”Frazier is now in a position to officially investigate the same election processes he has spent years criticizing as a private citizen, said AJC, but the board “was quiet about his hiring.”Board executive director James Mills announced that the agency has hired part-time investigators during a May 14 meeting but never mentioned the new hires by name. The AJC reports Frazier’s name later appeared on a list of taxpayer-funded agency staffers on the board website.“The hiring was apparently so sensitive that Vice Chair Janice Johnston suggested the board could file a complaint against The Atlanta Journal-Constitution after being made aware the AJC was seeking records related to Frazier’s hiring,” reports Groves.“Should we file an ethics complaint? But I don’t know who to file it against, other than the, I don’t know, the AJC or an unknown leaker,” Johnston said.Mills did not respond to an emailed request to identify the agency’s new hires. Rather than answer, Johnston responded to the AJC’s questions by demanding who had given the info to the press. Georgia First Amendment Foundation board member Richard T. Griffiths said the election board’s reluctance to make public the details of Frazier’s hiring is concerning.“At a time when the public is concerned about transparency of the elections and the integrity of the elections process, the total activity of the elections board should be available to the public and that includes hirings,” said Griffiths. “If the elections board is not providing the basics that all state agencies are required to provide, what does that say to the public about whether they can trust the board to make sensitive decisions about the elections process?”The hiring comes at a time when President Donald Trump’s grip on many states is in question. The last time Trump lost the state of Georgia in 2020 his approval average was 46.4 percent, with Biden’s approval a modest 47 percent.Trump’s aggregate approval in Georgia recently clicked in at a low of 37 percent.