WATCH: Stacey Abrams claims she 'never denied' her election loss to Gov. Brian Kemp

During a recent interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, Stacey Abrams claimed once again that she “never denied” the outcome of the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, which she lost to Governor Brian Kemp.

Contrary to that claim, however, Abrams has repeatedly called into question the legitimacy of that election, even going so far as to suggest it had been “stolen."



“Is there any scenario under which you would concede that you lost, publicly, in 2018?” Burnett asked.

“I acknowledged that I was not the governor,” Abrams replied, citing the beginning of her post-election speech. “What I said is that the process denied access to too many voters.”

Abrams added that she has “never denied the outcome,” but has “always questioned the process and the access.”

“Outcome is about who wins,” she continued, “and no one is entitled to victory, not even myself. I’ve never been unclear about the fact that I did not win the race.”

As Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler reports, however, while Abrams did acknowledge in her post-election speech that Kemp was the new governor, she did not concede.

“This is not a speech of concession because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper,” she said at the time.
In the months that followed, Abrams remained steadfast that the election was “not free and fair,” on numerous occasions suggesting that she had actually won.

“I did win my election, I just didn’t get to have the job,” she told Color of Change’s Rashad Robinson.

Speaking in London in 2019, Abrams stated that Kemp “got to be the contestant, the referee and the scorekeeper — and shockingly, he won, or at least that’s what he tells us.” 

“I know in my heart of hearts, we won,” she added, a statement she echoed at the National Action Network convention later that year. During that same convention, she even went so far as to suggest that the election had been “stolen.”

Abrams has attempted to quell pushback by claiming that she only meant that the election was stolen from Georgia voters, and that she won in exposing that.

“My full language was that it was stolen from the voters of Georgia,” she told Texas’ Sen. Ted Cruz in 2021. “We do not know what they would have done, because not every eligible Georgian was permitted to participate fully in the election.”

Leading Democrats, many of whom continue to slam Trump for his similar baseless lies about the legitimacy of the 2020 election, have come out in defense of Abrams.

In 2021, for example, Sen. Elizabeth Warren claimed that Kemp was “sitting in Stacey Abrams’ chair.”

Biden's press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also claimed in 2020 that "Brian Kemp stole the gubernatorial election from Georgians and Stacey Abrams."

The facts of the matter are that Kemp won 50.2 percent of the votes, thereby legally electing him governor of Georgia.

He and Abrams are set to face off once again in November, and according to the latest polls, a repeat of 2018 is likely.