Raffensperger: Trump ‘attacks people, makes stuff up’ to get what he wants
ATLANTA — For weeks after the 2020 election, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger endured withering insults and accusations from the man with the biggest bully pulpit in the world — then-president Donald Trump.
As he sought to overturn his loss in Georgia, Trump spread lies about election fraud long after the allegations had been investigated and found lacking. He branded Raffensperger an “enemy of the people.” And he ultimately asked the secretary to “find” the 11,780 votes he needed to win.
In hours of testimony unveiled this week, Raffensperger told congressional investigators in detail how he tried to show Trump and others why the voting fraud allegations were wrong. And he offered his thoughts on why Trump refused to accept the truth.
“I think he, somewhere in life, has this learned behavior that if he attacks people, makes up stuff, and disparages them that he’ll get what he wants,” Raffensperger told investigators.
Raffensperger’s testimony is the latest to be released by the U.S. House committee investigating the events that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The panel released its final report last week and continues to release transcripts of hundreds of interviews it conducted during its investigation.
Raffensperger spoke to the committee behind closed doors in November 2021. Investigators quizzed him on a range of topics, including everything from voting fraud investigations, his conversation with U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and, of course, his infamous phone call with Trump two days before the Jan. 6 attack.
Though the interview transcript offers no shocking revelations, it underscores the pressure that Trump and key allies applied to Georgia’s top election official as they sought to overturn the election.
That pressure included letters demanding investigations from top GOP officials and the state’s Republican congressional delegation. It also included a surprise visit to the scene of a
Cobb County signature audit by Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and a Trump call to the lead investigator of the signature audit.
In his testimony, Raffensperger recounted how he responded to each inquiry, explained the findings of each investigation and walked through his call with Trump in almost sentence-by-sentence detail. Among the highlights:
Raffensperger said his deputy Gabe Sterling’s December 2020 prediction that someone would “get killed” because of false election fraud allegations proved prophetic on Jan. 6. At least five people died as a result of the attack. One police officer suffered a stroke the next day, and one Trump supporter was shot and killed by police.
“And I fully support the statements (Sterling) made that day. And, sadly, he was prophetic,” Raffensperger told investigators. “Because people did die.”
Raffensperger tied the events of Jan. 6 directly to Trump’s voting fraud lies.
“People were spun up to just believing the lies that were told to them, and things got out of control,” he said.
By Ilan Ben Zion
JERUSALEM — Benjamin Netanyahu’s incoming hard-line Israeli government put West Bank settlement expansion at the top of its priority list Wednesday, vowing to legalize dozens of illegally built outposts and annex the occupied territory as part of its coalition deal with ultranationalist allies.
The coalition agreements, released a day before the government is to be sworn into office, also included language endorsing discrimination against LGBTQ people on religious grounds, contentious judicial reforms, and generous stipends for ultra-orthodox men who prefer to study instead of work.
The package laid the groundwork for what is expected to be a stormy beginning for the country’s most religious and rightwing government in history, potentially putting it at odds with large parts of the Israeli public, rankling Israel’s closest allies and escalating tensions with the Palestinians.
“What worries me the most is that these agreements change the democratic structure of what we know of as the state of Israel,” said Tomer Naor, chief legal officer of the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, a watchdog group.
“One day we’ll all wake up and Netanyahu is not going to be prime minister, but some of these changes will be irreversible.”
The guidelines were led by a commitment to “advance and develop settlement in all parts of the land of Israel,” including “Judea and Samaria,” the biblical names for the West Bank.
Israel captured the West Bank in 1967 along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem — territory the Palestinians seek for a future state.
Israel has constructed dozens of Jewish settlements home to around 500,000 Israelis who live alongside around 2.5 million Palestinians.