As if we needed anymore proof that Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud were totally bogus, an additional call has surfaced via the Washington Postwhere the president told a chief investigator in Georgia to “find the fraud.”
This call precedes his call to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, who Trump pressured to “find” enough votes to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state. Biden won Georgia by nearly 12,000 votes. In the newly surfaced call, which took place right before Christmas, Trump told the investigator they would be a “national hero” if they found the evidence of fraud.
ABC confirmed with Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs that the call took place: “The secretary and the secretary of state’s office can confirm that the call did happen.”
Trump made the call while Raffensperger’s office was in the middle of conducting an audit of more than 15,000 ballots in Cobb County, an area outside of Atlanta that voted largely for Biden. At the end of December, Raffensperger announced that the audit produced no evidence of fraud.
Democrats are pointing to Trump’s attempt to pressure Georgia officials as support for their argument to remove him from office. An early draft of House’s articles of impeachments references his January call with Raffensperger and claims Trump was “willfully inciting violence against the government of the United States” resulting in the mob that stormed the Capitol building on Wednesday.
Legal scholars think Trump may have broken state and federal laws against election interference during his various calls to Georgia officials. Earlier this month, two democrats asked FBI director Christopher Wray “open an immediate criminal investigation into the president.”
Trump is also being pressured to resign, and there has been a discussion around invoking the 25th amendment to oust the president. Joe Biden will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, so either way we’ve got less than two weeks until Trump is outta here for good.
