Audio of Trump pleading and threatening Georgia’s secretary of state has surfaced, where the sitting president implores Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s victory.
In the hour-long call, Trump said, “There’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”
The Washington Post first acquired a recording of the conversation, where he concurrently criticized Raffensperger, tried to charm him, begged him, and threatened him if the secretary of state declined to help Trump invalidate the elections, even cautioning Raffensperger that he was taking “a big risk.”
During the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel dismissed Trump’s claims and told him that President-elect Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was legitimate. Still, Trump rejected their logic.
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated,” to which Raffensperger responded: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”
Trump also said, “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”
Trump still hasn’t conceded the election to Biden, believing he can reverse the results in some key states, so as to remain in office. Some of his allies were also on the call, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell.
Trump took to Twitter on Sunday, writing that he had spoken with Raffensperger who was “unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the “ballots under table” scam, ballot destruction, out of state “voters”, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”
Raffensperger later responded: “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true.”
Even though the secretary of state is a Trump supporter, he has rejected Trump’s claims of voter fraud in Georgia. Raffensperger has supervised three separate vote recounts and also requested the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to oversee an audit of Cobb County’s signature match system, ultimately concluding the system was 99.9 percent accurate and exposed no proof of fraud.
But Trump is relentless. It appears that on Saturday night, Trump, Meadows, and 50 lawmakers participated in a conference call to chat about their plan to nullify the Electoral College results in Congress on Jan. 6. Earlier that day, almost a dozen Republican senators and senators-elect revealed that they will also oppose counting electoral votes on Tuesday. But Republicans still don’t have the votes to actually override Biden’s victory.
More House Republicans came forward on Sunday, this time releasing a joint statement that showed their support for counting Electoral College results: “We must count the electoral votes submitted by the states.”
Tuesday is a big day for the 2020 election. Georgia is also gearing up for two Senate runoff elections that day, which could very well lead to a Democrat-majority in the Senate.
