Trump urges Georgia election official: “Find” votes for me – Politics –



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The incredible phone call:


The incredible phone call: “Find me 11,780 votes.”
© AP

Controversial phone call: Donald Trump is trying two and a half weeks before the end of his term in office to continue to overturn the result of the US presidential election by all means.

In a phone call, he urged Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is responsible for elections in the US state of Georgia, to “seek” votes for him so that he is ultimately the winner. The vice president-elect of the United States, Kamala Harris, accused Trump of abuse of power. Many other Democrats, and some Republicans, also condemned the president’s actions.

“I just want to find 11,780 votes …”

The Washington Post first reported on the phone call between Trump and Raffensperger, a Republican. “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 said in the recording, which was made available in its entirety to the AP news agency. .

The conversation raises questions about whether Trump violated election laws, said Rebecca Green of William and Mary Law School. Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said Trump displayed “objectionable and potentially illegal behavior.”

Biden narrowly won in Georgia

According to Georgia’s certified election result, Biden won there on November 3 by a narrow margin of 11,779 votes. The votes were counted twice, once at Trump’s request. Several demands from the Trump camp against the election outcome failed. Raffensperger said in Saturday’s phone call that election control had already reacted to the allegations in court. “We do not agree that they have won.”

Trump’s accusations invalidated

In the hour-long phone call, Trump made a series of well-known and now invalidated accusations, like the fact that hundreds of thousands of ballots suddenly appeared in Fulton County and helped his Democratic rival Joe Biden to victory. In fact, only mail-in votes that tended to Biden were counted later.

Trump also threatened Raffensperger and his attorney Ryan Germany with criminal consequences if they did not confirm that thousands of Fulton County district ballots had been destroyed. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that this happened. “It is a crime. And they cannot allow that to happen,” Trump told the two. Also on the conference call were Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and several Trump attorneys, including Cleta Mitchell. “He has no idea,” Trump wrote on Twitter about Raffensperger. It is about “not wanting or not being able” to answer questions about irregularities in the elections.

“What you say is not true”

All of the fraud allegations brought by Trump and his supporters have removed the courts, election officials and even Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, who resigned in December. The Supreme Court of the United States, for which Trump himself nominated three conservative judges, has twice dismissed complaints about alleged irregularities in the elections. Raffensperger wrote on Twitter: “With all due respect, President Trump, what you say is not true. The truth will come out.”

Bob Bauer, a Biden adviser, described the audio recording as “incontrovertible evidence” that Trump is trying, through pressure and threats, to cancel a legal election result to “produce another in its place.” “(The sound recording) tells the whole shameful story of Donald Trump’s attack on American democracy.”



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