Emails obtained by the Guardian reveal a behind-the-scenes network of county election officials throughout Georgia coordinating on policy and messaging to both call the results of November’s election into question before a single vote is cast, and push rules and procedures favored by the election denial movement.

The emails were obtained by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) as a result of a public records request sent to David Hancock, an election denier and member of the Gwinnett county board of elections. Crew shared the emails with the Guardian.

Spanning a period beginning in January, the communications expose the inner workings of a group that includes some of the most ardent supporters of the former president Donald Trump’s election lies as well as ongoing efforts to portray the coming election as beset with fraud. Included in the communications are agendas for meetings and efforts to coordinate on policies and messaging as the swing state has once again become a focal point of the presidential campaign.

The communications include correspondence from a who’s who of Georgia election denialists, including officials with ties to prominent national groups such as the Tea Party Patriots and the Election Integrity Network, a group run by Cleta Mitchell, a former attorney who acted as an informal adviser to the Trump White House during its attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

The group – which includes elections officials from at least five counties – calls itself the Georgia Election Integrity Coalition.

Among the oldest emails released are those regarding a 30 January article published by the United Tea Party of Georgia. Headlined “Georgia Democratic Party Threatens Georgia Election Officials”, the article was posted by an unnamed “admin” of the website, and came in response to letters sent to county election officials throughout Georgia who had recently refused to certify election results.

“In what can only be seen as an attempt to intimidate elections officials,” the article began, “the Georgia Democratic party sent a letter to individual county board of elections members threatening legal action unless they vote to certify upcoming elections – even if the board member has legitimate concerns about the results.”

The letter had been sent by a lawyer representing the Democratic party of Georgia to county election board members in Spalding, Cobb and DeKalb counties. Election board members in each of those counties had refused to certify the results of local elections the previous November. In their letter, Democrats sought to warn those officials that their duty to certify results was not discretionary in an attempt to prevent further certification refusals, including in the coming presidential election. In response, the United Tea Party of Georgia took issue with the letter, calling it “troubling” and saying that it was “Orwellian to demand that election officials certify an election even if they have unanswered questions about the vote”.

While the author of the article was not named on the United Tea Party of Georgia’s website, the emails obtained by Crew show that it was Hancock, an outspoken election denier and member of the Gwinnett county board of elections, who has become a leading voice in the push for more power to refuse to certify results.

“All right – I finished the article and posted it,” Hancock wrote in an email the same day he published the article.

Receiving the email were a handful of county election officials who have expressed belief in Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election in 2020, and have continued to implement policies and push for rules based on the belief that widespread election fraud threatens to result in a Trump loss in Georgia in November. They include Michael Heekin, a Republican member of the Fulton county board of elections who refused to certify results this year; his colleague Julie Adams, who has twice refused to certify results this year and works for the prominent national election denier groups Tea Party Patriots and the Election Integrity Network; and Debbie Fisher of Cobb county, Nancy Jester of DeKalb county and Roy McClain of Spalding county – all of whom refused to certify results last November and who received the letter Hancock took issue with.

By 4 February, Hancock apparently hadn’t received much feedback from his article, and again shared it with the group.

“[N]o comments at all on the Democratic party of Georgia article. I guess it just wasn’t picked up by anyone important,” he wrote in an email to the group at 10.53pm that Sunday night, following up five minutes later with a link to the article. “I think the message needs to get out, so share as you feel led.”

Democrats and election experts have cited Georgia court cases dating back to 1899 dictating certification as a “ministerial”, not discretionary, duty of county election officials. At a Monday gathering of state-level election officials from several swing states, Gabe Sterling, a deputy to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, warned county election officials that they could be taken to court for refusing to certify results in November.

The communications also show members of the group coordinating on messaging regarding their false claims of widespread voter fraud. Ahead of a December meeting of the group, Adams, using her TeaPartyPatriots.org email address, sent an agenda that included an item about a “New York Times reporter traveling to several counties in Georgia”. Another agenda noted that the Federalist, a rightwing publication, was seeking “freelance writers (no experience needed)”.

The group has heard from speakers at their meetings that include the state election board member Dr Janice Johnston, an election denier who smiled and waved to the crowd at Trump’s 3 August rally in Atlanta in which he praised her and two other Republicans on the board as “pit bulls” “fighting for victory”. One agenda also noted that Frank Schneider, an election denial activist who has challenged the eligibility of more than 31,000 Georgia voters, would speak at a meeting. Other speakers at the group’s meetings include Garland Favorito, perhaps the state’s most prominent election denial activist who constantly pressures the state election board to launch investigations into supposed election fraud as well as to implement policies and rules he and others frequently submit. (In a separate release of emails obtained by the Guardian, Favorito is seen scheduling a July lunch with the state election board’s chair, John Fervier, a moderate Republican who has voted against recent denier-based rules passed by his Republican colleagues.)

Another meeting speaker was Salleigh Grubbs, the chair of the Cobb county Republican party, who successfully petitioned the state election board to adopt a rule that gives county election officials more power to refuse to certify election results. Amanda Prettyman, an election denier who spoke about election conspiracies at a 2022 Macon-Bibb county election board meeting, has also spoken at meetings of the group, as have Lisa Neisler, an election denier whose X profile contains a photo of Trump supporters at a rally on 6 January before the attack on the Capitol, and Victoria Cruz, a Republican who ran for a county commission seat in May but lost.

The emails back up previously released emails showing Hancock coordinating with Johnston on two rules passed by the state election board that give county election officials more power to refuse to certify results, as well as ongoing voter purges that Democrats have said are a violation of the National Voter Registration Act. Those emails also show Hancock’s initial response to the letter from Georgia Democrats warning county election officials like himself that they have a legal duty to certify results.

“When you have a moment, I would really appreciate your opinion on this incredible letter from an attorney for the Democratic party of Georgia regarding voting to certify an election,” Hancock wrote to Favorito on 4 January. “I guess they are trying to prepare for the 2024 elections? I don’t see how this stands – if the [board of elections] has no choice but to certify an election, then why require them to vote to certify the election?”

Whether or not the House settlement is fully approved, Georgia’s colleges and universities can begin paying their athletes for their name, image and likeness immediately.

On Tuesday, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed an executive order that prohibits the NCAA or any athletic conference from punishing schools that directly compensate student-athletes for their NIL.

Currently, the NCAA does not allow schools to directly pay their athletes for the rights to their NIL use. However, the organization has agreed to remove the edict as part of a pending settlement that is still working its way toward court approval.

In a joint statement emailed to Sportico, Josh Brooks and J Batt, the respective athletic directors for Georgia and Georgia Tech, expressed their thanks to the governor for signing the order. “In the absence of nationwide name, image and likeness regulation, this executive order helps our institutions with the necessary tools to fully support our student-athletes in their pursuit of NIL opportunities, remain competitive with our peers and secure the long-term success of our athletics programs,” they said in the statement.

Georgia has joined Virginia in explicitly allowing colleges to compensate athletes for their NIL—a concept that is contemplated in the proposed but not-yet-approved settlement between the NCAA and attorneys for athletes to resolve the House, Carter and Hubbard antitrust litigations.

The Georgia law is less transformative than it might have been before the proposed settlement and before the NCAA announced it would no longer enforce amateurism restrictions in the context of NIL. The NCAA took that step during the spring after U.S. District Judge Clifton Corker, in Tennessee and Virginia v. NCAA, issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the NCAA from enforcing rules that preclude college athletes and recruits from negotiating compensation for NIL with collectives and boosters.

As the NCAA moves toward a model where colleges in power conferences can directly pay college athletes for media rights, ticket sales sponsorships and NIL, the Georgia law seems to codify a concept that will soon be in play.

The Georgia law is also consistent with U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken’s concerns about restricting NIL opportunities for college athletes. She stressed in a recent hearing that she would not approve a settlement that takes away NIL opportunities for college athletes. The settlement currently contemplates a distinction between NIL deals that draw from use of athletes’ right of publicity versus those deals that are connected to collectives and boosters and appear to be more in line with pay-for-play. One proposed mechanism to enforce that distinction is the use of fair market value analysis in review of NIL deals. Whether that distinction can be consistently and logically applied is a source of industry debate.

It’s possible Wilken could cite the Georgia law in further deliberations with the attorneys. The parties have until Sept. 26 to send her a revised settlement. Should the settlement collapse or be rejected, the cases would return to the docket.

Kemp’s order comes as the University of Tennessee, an SEC rival of the defending football champion Georgia Bulldogs, announced that it will tack on a “talent fee” onto football tickets next season to help fund its revenue-sharing pool for athletes.

‘Family values’ bill is adopted despite being denounced by the president, rights groups and the European Union.

Georgian politicians have approved the third and final reading of a law on “family values and the protection of minors” that would impose sweeping curbs on LGBTQ rights.

The bill, adopted on Tuesday, would provide a legal basis for authorities to outlaw Pride events and public displays of the LGBTQ rainbow flag, and to impose censorship of films and books.

It also bans gender transition, adoption by gay and transgender people, and nullifies same-sex marriages performed abroad on Georgian territory.

In a vote boycotted by the opposition, politicians from the ruling Georgian Dream voted 84 to 0 to approve the bill along with related amendments to a number of other laws.

Leaders of the governing Georgian Dream party say it is needed to safeguard “traditional moral standards” in Georgia, whose deeply conservative Orthodox Church is highly influential.

Tamara Jakeli, director of the campaign group Tbilisi Pride, said the bill, which also restates an existing ban on same-sex marriage and bans gender reassignment surgery, would likely force her organisation to close its doors.

“This law is the most terrible thing to happen to the LGBT community in Georgia,” Jakeli, 28, told the Reuters news agency. “We will most likely have to shut down. There is no way for us to continue functioning.”

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, whose powers are mostly ceremonial, has been a critic of Georgian Dream and indicated that she will block the bill.

However, Georgian Dream and its allies have enough seats in parliament to override her veto.

LGBTQ rights are a fraught topic in Georgia, where polls show broad disapproval of same-sex relationships, and the constitution bans same-sex marriage.

Participants in Tbilisi’s annual Pride marches have come under physical attack by anti-LGBTQ protesters in recent years.

The issue has become more prominent ahead of the upcoming October 26 election, where Georgian Dream is seeking a fourth term in office and is campaigning heavily against LGBTQ rights.

The governing party, whose top candidate for the election is billionaire and former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, has deepened ties with neighbouring Russia as relations with Western countries have soured.

Earlier this year, it passed a law on “foreign agents” that European and United States critics said is authoritarian and Russian-inspired. Its passage prompted some of the largest protests that Georgia has seen since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Opinion polls suggest the party, which in 2014 passed a law banning anti-LGBTQ discrimination before later pivoting to more conservative positions, remains Georgia’s most popular, though it has lost ground since 2020, when it won a narrow majority in parliament.

In one governing party advertisement aired on Georgian television, Pride director Jakeli’s face is shown alongside the words: “No to moral degradation”.

The European Union has said the bill’s adoption would have “important repercussions” on EU-hopeful Tbilisi’s European integration path and “will place further strain on EU-Georgia relations”.

“The EU recalls that Georgia’s accession process is de facto halted and urges the authorities to recommit to the EU integration path,” the EU has said.