President Donald Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) on Saturday to recalculate the state’s votes from the 2020 presidential election, according to audio of a phone call obtained by the Washington Post.
“I just want to find 11,780 votes which is one more than we have because we won the state,” Trump said.
The president spoke to Raffensperger and his attorney, Ryan Germany, presenting him with data showing he actually won the state of Georgia.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell were also on the line with Trump according to the Post.
“We have won this election in Georgia based on all of this and there’s nothing wrong with saying that Brad,” Trump told him, claiming the final vote count was off by hundreds of thousands of ballots.
Raffensperger denied the president’s numbers were correct.
The Post at first published selected outtakes of the president’s conversation with Raffensperger, before releasing the full audio of the phone call.
“They’re nothing wrong with saying you know, um, that you’ve recalculated,” Trump told Raffensperger.
Raffensperger told Trump flatly that the data he had was wrong.
Trump also questioned him about rumors of shredded ballots in Fulton County and the Dominion voting systems removing and replacing parts of voting machines out of the states.
“You should want to have an accurate election. And you’re a Republican,” Trump said. Raffensperger and his lawyer said he had no evidence of that happening.
“You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” Trump replied. “That’s a criminal offense and you can’t let that happen.”
Trump was frustrated with Raffensperger’s answers, repeatedly urging him to reconsider.
“We won the election and it’s not fair to take it away from us and it’s going to be very costly in many ways and I think you have to say that you’re going to reexamine it,” Trump said.
The president also warned that Georgia Republicans would be furious with him if he failed to act.
He also warned Raffensperger that he would share his Georgia numbers with the people of the state, presumably at his rally Monday night for Georgia Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R) and David Perdue (R) for the runoff election on Tuesday.
“The people of Georgia are angry and these numbers are going to be repeated on Monday night along with others that we are going to have at about that time,” he said.
Trump told Raffensperger he would be “really respected” if he revisited the vote in the state of Georgia and noted that his repeated assurances that the vote was correct were angering his supporters in the state.
“A lot of Republicans are going to vote negative because they hate what you did to the president,” he said.
Story cited here.
