Trump pressures Georgia elections chief
WASHINGTON ( AP) — President Donald Trump pressured Georgia's Republican secretary of state to "find" enough votes to overturn Joe Biden's win in the state's presidential election, repeatedly citing disproven claims of fraud and raising the prospect of a "criminal offense" if officials did not change the vote count, according to a recording of the conversation.
The phone call with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Saturday was the latest step in an unprecedented effort by a sitting president to press a state official to reverse the outcome of a free and fair election that he lost. The Republican president, who has refused to accept his loss to Democratic President- elect Biden, repeatedly argued that Raffensperger could change the certified results.
"I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have," Trump said. "Because we won the state."
Georgia counted its votes three times before certifying Biden's win by a 11,779- vote margin, Raffensperger noted.
"President Trump, we've had several lawsuits, and we've had to respond in court to the lawsuits and the contentions," he said on the call. "We don't agree that you have won."
Audio snippets of the conversation were first posted online by The Washington Post. The Associated Press obtained the full audio of Trump's conversation with Georgia officials from a person on the call. The AP has a policy of not amplifying disinformation and unproven allegations. The AP plans to post the full audio as it annotates a transcript with fact check material.
Trump's renewed intervention and the persistent and unfounded claims of fraud came nearly two weeks before he leaves office and two days before twin runoff elections in Georgia that will determine political control of the U.S. Senate.
It also added a level of further intrigue to Trump's rally in Georgia on Monday night — likely the last of his term — in which he is supposed to boost the two Republican candidates. In a rage after the Raffensperger call, Trump floated the idea of pulling out of the rally, which would have potentially devastated the GOP chances in what is expected to be a pair of razor-thin races.
But Trump was persuaded to go ahead with the rally as a stage from which to reiterate his claims of election fraud and to present, as he tweeted Monday, the "real numbers" from the race. Republicans, though, were wary as to whether Trump would focus only on himself and potentially depress turnout by undermining faith in the runoff elections and not promoting the two GOP candidates.
The president used Saturday's hourlong phone conversation to tick through a list of claims about the election in Georgia, including that hundreds of thousands of ballots mysteriously appeared in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta. Officials have said there is no evidence of that happening.
The Georgia officials on the call are heard repeatedly pushing back against the president's assertions, telling him that he's relying on debunked theories and, in one case, selectively edited video.
"It was pretty obvious pretty early on that we'd debunked every one of those theories early on," Raffensperger told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Monday, "but President Trump continues to believe them."
Also during the conversation, Trump appeared to threaten Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the secretary of state's legal counsel, by suggesting both could be criminally liable if they failed to find that thousands of ballots in Fulton County had been illegally destroyed. There is no evidence to support Trump's claim.
"That's a criminal offense," Trump says. "And you can't let that happen."
Others on the call included Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and attorneys assisting Trump, including Washington lawyer Cleta Mitchell. Trump lost the Electoral College to Biden by 74 votes, and even if Georgia, with its 16 votes, were to end up in his column, it would have no impact on the result of the election.
The call was the first time Raffensperger and Trump spoke, though the White House had tried 18 previous times to set up a conversation, according to officials.
Democrats and a few Republicans condemned Trump's actions, including Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a member of the GOP House leadership team who deemed the call "deeply troubling." And Democratic Reps. Ted Lieu of California and Kathleen Rice of New York made a criminal referral to FBI Director Christopher Wray and called for an investigation into the president.