Two Atlanta-area polling workers were fired early Tuesday after election officials said they discovered a number of concerning social media posts by one of the workers ahead of the midterm elections. One post, which was seen by The Washington Post, appears to admit to participating in the 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
The mother and son were removed from a Johns Creek voting site, located to the northeast of Atlanta, just before 7 a.m. after a fellow worker flagged the woman’s online behavior to Fulton County voting officials. People in the Georgia secretary of state’s office were made aware of her online activity as well, county officials said at a press conference.
“They also looked at the social media posts and said that they agreed with the concern,” said Nadine Williams, the interim director of the county’s Board of Registration and Elections, who declined to describe the posts’ content. “You cannot take videos or take photos in an election so that is what brought it to our attention,” she added.
“This decision is in alignment with our commitment to elections integrity,” county spokeswoman Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez said in a statement to HuffPost.
Laura Kronen told The Epoch Times that she was one of the fired poll workers. According to Kronen, she was told that she was removed because of recent posts she made on Twitter. The woman said she suspects the firing actually occurred because she’s politically conservative, however.
“I’m a conservative, I was a [former President Donald] Trump supporter, and I think that they did not want that there,” she told the far-right website.
According to a social media screenshot circulating online and the material seen by The Washington Post, Kronen — who was not identified by the Post — had spoken of being a proud participant in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I stood up for what’s right today in Washington DC. This election was a sham,” the post reads, echoing baseless claims from Trump and his followers that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. “[Former Vice President] Mike Pence is a traitor. I was tear gassed FOUR times. I have pepper spray in my throat. I stormed the Capitol. ... And my children have had the best learning experience of their lives.”
HuffPost could not independently validate the authenticity of the post. A woman identifying herself as Kronen initially agreed to speak with HuffPost but was then not immediately available for comment.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined to comment when reached by HuffPost about whether Kronen is part of the ongoing federal investigation into the 2021 violence or if she was at any point. The department instead pointed to current case materials published online and in federal court documents. A search for Kronen’s name did not return any cases.
Last week, media outlets reported that three men who claimed to be former members of the far-right Proud Boys group were hired as poll workers in Florida’s Miami-Dade County ahead of the midterm elections.
One of the men was later placed on a standby list after the local elections department learned about his participation in the Capitol attack. A second man was also at the Capitol during the violence, though it was unclear whether he entered the building.