Albany Times Union

Trump: ‘Find’ more votes for me

President pressures Georgia official to recalculat­e results

- By Amy Gardner

President Donald Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensper­ger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordin­ary one-hour phone call Saturday that legal scholars described as a flagrant abuse of power and a potential criminal act.

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversati­on in which Trump alternatel­y berated Raffensper­ger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequenc­es if the secretary of state refused to pursue Trump's false claims,

at one point warning that Raffensper­ger was taking “a big risk.”

Throughout the call, Raffensper­ger and his office's general counsel rejected Trump's assertions, explaining that the president is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden's 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.

Trump dismissed their arguments.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” he said. “And there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you've recalculat­ed.”

Raffensper­ger responded: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”

At another point, Trump 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.”

The rambling and at times incoherent conversati­on offered a remarkable glimpse of how consumed and desperate the president remains about his loss, unwilling or unable to let the matter go and still believing he can reverse the results in enough battlegrou­nd states to remain in office.

“There's no way I lost Georgia,” Trump said, a phrase he repeated again and again on the call. “There's no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”

Several of his allies were on the line as he spoke, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and conservati­ve lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a prominent GOP attorney whose involvemen­t with Trump's efforts had not been previously known.

In a statement, Mitchell said Raffensper­ger's office “has made many statements over the past two months that are simply not correct and everyone involved with the efforts on behalf of the president's election challenge has said the same thing: Show us your records on which you rely to make these statements that our numbers are wrong.”

The White House, the Trump campaign and Meadows did not respond to a request for comment.

Raffensper­ger's office declined to comment.

On Sunday, Trump tweeted that he had spoken to Raffensper­ger, saying the secretary of state 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 responded with his own tweet: “Respectful­ly, President Trump: What you're saying is not true.”

The details of the call drew demands from congressio­nal Democrats for criminal investigat­ions. Biden's top campaign lawyer, Bob Bauer, said the recording “captures the whole, disgracefu­l story about Donald Trump's assault on American democracy.”

Republican­s, however, were largely silent. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-texas, when asked about the call while campaignin­g in Georgia on Sunday for the two GOP senators who face a runoff Tuesday, dodged the question completely.

Trump's pressure campaign on Raffensper­ger is the latest example of his attempt to subvert the outcome of the Nov. 3 election through personal outreach to state Republican officials. He previously invited Michigan Republican state leaders to the White House, pressured Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in a call to try to replace that state's electors and asked the speaker of the Pennsylvan­ia House of Representa­tives to help reverse his loss in that state.

His call to Raffensper­ger came as scores of Republican­s have pledged to challenge the Electoral College's vote for Biden when Congress convenes for a joint session on Wednesday. Republican­s do not have the votes to successful­ly thwart Biden's victory, but Trump has urged supporters to travel to Washington to protest the outcome, and state and federal officials are already bracing for clashes outside the Capitol.

During their conversati­on, Trump issued a vague threat to both Raffensper­ger and Ryan Germany, the secretary of state's general counsel, suggesting that if they don't find that thousands of ballots in Fulton County have been illegally destroyed to block investigat­ors — an allegation for which there is no evidence — they would be subject to criminal liability.

“That's a criminal offense,” he said. “And you can't let that happen. That's a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.”

Trump also told Raffensper­ger that failure to act by Tuesday would jeopardize the political fortunes of David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, Georgia's two Republican senators whose fate in that day's runoff elections will determine control of the U.S. Senate.

Trump said he plans to talk about the alleged fraud on Monday, when he is scheduled to lead an election eve rally in Dalton, Ga. — a message that could further muddle the efforts of Republican­s to draw out their voters.

“You have a big election coming up and because of what you've done to the president — you know, the people of Georgia know that this was a scam,” Trump said. “Because of what you've done to the president, a lot of people aren't going out to vote, and a lot of Republican­s are going to vote negative, because they hate what you did to the president. OK? They hate it. And they're going to vote. And you would be respected, really respected, if this can be straighten­ed out before the election.”

Trump's conversati­on with Raffensper­ger put him in legally questionab­le territory, legal experts said. By exhorting the secretary of state to “find” votes and to deploy investigat­ors who “want to find answers,” Trump appears to be encouragin­g him to doctor the election outcome in Georgia.

Trump's apparent threat of criminal consequenc­es if Raffensper­ger does not act could be seen as an attempt at extortion and a suggestion that he might deploy the Justice Department to launch an investigat­ion, they said.

“The president is either knowingly attempting to coerce state officials into corrupting the integrity of the election or is so deluded that he believes what he's saying,” said Richard Pildes, a constituti­onal law professor at New York University, who noted that Trump's actions may have violated several federal statutes.

But Pildes said Trump's clearer transgress­ion is a moral one, and he emphasized that focusing on whether he committed a crime could deflect attention from the “simple, stark, horrific fact that we have a president trying to use the powers of his office to pressure state officials into committing election fraud to keep him in office.”

Edward Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University, said that the legal questions are murky, and that it could be difficult to prove that Trump knew he was encouragin­g illegal behavior. But Foley also emphasized that the call was “inappropri­ate and contemptib­le” and should prompt outrage.

“He was already tripping the emergency meter,” Foley said. “So we were at 12 on a scale of 1 to 10, and now we're at 15.”

Throughout the call, Trump detailed an exhaustive list of disinforma­tion and conspiracy theories to support his position. He claimed without evidence that he had won Georgia by at least a half-million votes. He floated a barrage of assertions that have been investigat­ed and disproved: that thousands of dead people voted; that an Atlanta election worker scanned 18,000 forged ballots three times each and “100 percent” were for Biden; that thousands more voters living out of state came back to Georgia illegally just to vote in the election.

“So tell me, Brad, what are we going to do? We won the election, and it's not fair to take it away from us like this,” Trump said. “And it's going to be very costly in many ways. And I think you have to say that you're going to re-examine it, and you can re-examine it, but reexamine it with people that want to find answers, not people who don't want to find answers.”

Trump did most of the talking on the call. He was angry and impatient, calling Raffensper­ger a “child” and said law enforcemen­t officials were “either dishonest or incompeten­t” for not believing there was widespread ballot fraud in Atlanta — and twice calling himself a “schmuck” for endorsing Kemp, whom Trump holds in particular contempt for not embracing his claims of fraud.

“I can't imagine he's ever getting elected again, I'll tell you that much right now,” he said.

He also took aim at Kemp's 2018 opponent, Democrat Stacey Abrams, trying to shame Raffensper­ger with the idea that his refusal to embrace fraud has helped her and Democrats generally. “Stacey Abrams is laughing about you,” he said. “She's going around saying, ‘These guys are dumber than a rock.’ What she's done to this party is unbelievab­le, I tell you.”

The secretary of state repeatedly sought to correct Trump, saying at one point, “Mr. President, the problem you have with social media, they — people can say anything.”

“Oh, this isn't social media,” Trump retorted. “This is Trump media. It's not social media. It's really not. It's not social media. I don't care about social media. I couldn't care less.”

At another point, Trump claimed that votes were scanned three times: “Brad, why did they put the votes in three times? You know, they put 'em in three times.”

Raffensper­ger responded: “Mr. President, they did not. We did an audit of that and we proved conclusive­ly that they were not scanned three times.”

Trump sounded at turns confused and meandering. At one point, he referred to Kemp as “George.” He tossed out several different figures for Biden's margin of victory in Georgia and referred to the Senate runoff, which is Tuesday, as happening “tomorrow” and “Monday.”

 ?? Dustin Chambers / Bloomberg News Service ?? President Donald Trump pressed Brad Raffensper­ger, Georgia's secretary of state, to “find” the votes to give him a win. “There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump said.
Dustin Chambers / Bloomberg News Service President Donald Trump pressed Brad Raffensper­ger, Georgia's secretary of state, to “find” the votes to give him a win. “There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump said.
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