Trump heard telling official to ‘find’ votes

WASHINGTON: United States President Donald Trump pressured Georgia’s top election official to ‘‘find’’ enough votes to overturn his defeat in the southern state, according to a recording of the hourlong call published by US media yesterday.

The call on Sunday was the latest move in Trump’s twomonth effort insisting that his loss to Democratic Presidentelect Joe Biden in the November 3 election was the result of widespread voter fraud, a claim that has been widely rejected by state and federal election officials and 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 plan to object to the formal certification of Biden’s victory on Thursday.

The former vicepresident won by a margin of 306232 in the statebystate Electoral College, and by more than 7 million votes overall.

On the call, which was released 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.

‘‘There’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated.’’

The state conducted three separate ballot counts, resulting in two official certifications of Biden’s victory.

Final results show Biden won 11,779 more votes than Trump out of nearly 5 million cast.

During the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel reject Trump’s assertions and tell the president that he was relying on debunked conspiracy theories spread on social media about what was a fair and accurate election.

‘‘Mr President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong,’’ Raffensperger says.

Bob Bauer, a senior adviser to Biden, said the recording captured ‘‘the whole, disgraceful story about Donald Trump’s assault on American democracy’’.

Trump’s action drew immediate criticism from electionlaw experts and congressional Democrats who said it could amount to an illegal act.

Georgia State University law professor Anthony Michael Kreis said Trump may have violated state and federal laws against soliciting election fraud.

‘‘If any other person did this — someone else with power to leverage over an election official — there is no doubt in my mind that at the very least a criminal investigation would be opened right away,’’ Kreis said, adding that he thought that was unlikely in Trump’s case.

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 US Senate runoffs in the state tomorrow, giving their party control of Congress. — Reuters