A pair of House Democrats have called on FBI Director Christopher Wren to investigate President Donald Trump’s criminal investigation, when a leaked phone call urged Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Rafansperger to call off his state election.
“Members of Congress and former lawyers, we believe that Donald Trump is involved in a number of election crimes, conspiracies,” Reps. Ted Liu, D-Calif., And Kathleen Rice, D.N.Y. A letter to Ware on Monday. “We ask you to open the President’s immediate criminal investigation.”
During the call, a recording obtained by NBC News, Trump told Rafansperger to “find” enough votes to erase the bid for President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
“So look. I just have to do this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is more than us.” Trump said. “Because we won the state.”
In the phone call, which lasted about an hour, Trump repeatedly pressured Rafensperger to change the franchise while launching a barrage of notorious conspiracy theories against the Republican election official and his staff. Unless the president suggests that the secretary of state should not act in accordance with Trump’s wishes, he may be held accountable.
“The people of Georgia are angry. The people of the country are angry,” Trump said in a call. “And there’s nothing wrong with that. You know, um, you’ve recalculated.”
Ryan Germany, the general counsel for Rafansperger and his office fees, spent the call acknowledging the president’s claims – sometimes telling him that certain allegations of fraud were false.
“Well, Mr. President, the challenge you have is that the data you have is incorrect,” RefencePerg said at one point.
Liu and Rice allege in their letter that “evidence of election fraud by Mr. Trump is now in the wider light.”
The legislators wrote, “Looking beyond the sufficient factual stance, we are giving you a criminal referral to open Mr. Trump’s investigation.”
The president has spent most of the past two months working to overturn the election results, forcing swing state legislators to ignore the total vote in their states and endorsing legal challenges that have drawn sharp criticism from Democrats and some Republicans.
But recordings of his conversation with Rafansperger have provoked a backlash from Trump’s Democratic opponents. Deputy. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D.N.Y., said Sunday that the president’s conduct was “impenetrable,” while Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Said “nothing less than a criminal investigation.”
When asked at a House Democratic Leadership News conference on Monday if action should be taken to summon the House, Caucus chairman Hakim Jeffries, DNY, said he had not read the text of the conversation, but, we did not. Looking back, we are looking forward to the opening of Biden on January 20th. Jeffries stressed that the House Democrats in the new Congress are focused on overcoming the coronavirus epidemic and the economic crisis.
