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WASHINGTON (REUTERS) – US President Donald Trump pressured Georgia’s top election official to “find” enough votes to reverse his defeat in the southern state, according to a recording of the hour-long media call. Americans on Sunday (January 3).
Saturday’s call was the latest move in Trump’s two-month effort to claim that his loss to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden in the Nov.3 election was the result of widespread voter fraud, a claim that has been widely rejected by the state and federal government. election officials, as well as multiple courts.
Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, came as some of Trump’s allies in the US Congress said they plan to oppose formal certification on Wednesday of Biden’s victory.
The former vice president won by a margin of 306-232 in the Electoral College state by state, and by more than 7 million votes in total.
In the call, which was published by the Washington Post, Trump repeatedly pressures Raffensperger to declare that Trump has won more votes than Biden.
“All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump says, according to the audio of the call. “There’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated.”
The state conducted three separate vote counts, resulting in two official certifications of Biden’s victory. The final results show that Biden won 11,779 more votes than Trump out of the nearly 5 million cast.
Raffensperger and his office general counsel rejected Trump’s claims at all times, telling the president that he relied on debunked conspiracy theories spread on social media about what a fair and accurate election was.
“Mr. President, the challenge you have is that the data you have is incorrect,” says Raffensperger.
The White House declined to comment. Raffensperger’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Bob Bauer, a senior adviser to Biden, said the recording captures “the whole shameful story about Donald Trump’s assault on American democracy.”
“We now have irrefutable evidence that a president pressured and threatened an official in his own party to rescind the legal and certified vote count of one state and fabricate another in its place,” Bauer said.
Trump’s action drew immediate criticism from election law experts and Congressional Democrats who said it could amount to an illegal act.
“Not only pressuring election officials against the law, threatening Raffensperger if he does not comply with Trump’s wishes borders on extortion,” said Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein.
Georgia State University law professor Anthony Michael Kreis said Trump may have violated state and federal laws against soliciting voter fraud.
“If anyone else did this, someone else with the power to influence an election official, I have no doubt that at least a criminal investigation would be opened immediately,” said Professor Kreis, adding that he thought it was unlikely under Georgia prosecutors or the Biden administration.
If Trump were to be prosecuted, he would likely argue that he really believed the elections were rigged against him in elaborate ways, said Professor Justin Levitt, an electoral law expert at Loyola Law School.
Biden’s narrow victory in Georgia was the first by a Democratic presidential candidate in a generation and has raised hopes among Democrats that they could win a pair of U.S. Senate elections in the state on Tuesday, giving his party the control of Congress.
Over the course of the call, Trump alternately cajoles, insults and threatens Raffensperger while trying to convince him to nullify the results.
“We won the election and it’s not fair to take it away from us like that, and it will be very expensive in many ways,” says Trump. “I think you have to say that you are going to reexamine it.”
Since his electoral defeat, Trump has encouraged his supporters to hold raucous street demonstrations that have occasionally escalated into violence.
Raffensperger and other poll workers across the country have faced harassment and threats, and some have gone into hiding for their safety.
“There are riots in Georgia and other places; you are not the only one. We have other states that I think we will talk to each other very soon,” Trump said.
Even if Trump had won all 16 votes from the Georgia Electoral College, he would still have lost the White House to Biden, who will take office on January 20.
Trump’s attorneys have been unlucky in the past two months as they have lobbied officials in Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania and other hotly contested states to reverse their losses.
Trump’s call came days before U.S. Senator Ted Cruz led several of Trump’s allies in a risky attempt to disrupt formal recognition of Biden’s victory when the Electoral College results are posted in Congress on the 6th. from January.
The measure, seen as a largely symbolic protest, challenges Republican Senate leaders, who have argued that the upper house of Congress plays a largely ceremonial role in certifying the results of presidential elections.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch Trump supporter, said in a statement Sunday that Cruz’s insistence on a vote audit committee had “zero chance” of success.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer posted a link to the Washington Post story on Twitter, adding that if Cruz and “his gang” wanted to investigate voter fraud, they should start with Trump’s call with Raffensperger.
Ten former defense secretaries urged Trump to relent, writing in a joint article that the time to question the results had passed and that any effort to involve the US military in the resolution of electoral disputes “would lead us into dangerous, illegal territory. and unconstitutional “. “
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