The comprehensive and multifaceted effort by Donald Trump to decertify Joe Biden’s presidential election victory continues unabated.
According to a leaked telephone call obtained by The Washington Post, Trump tried to order Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to go and “find” the requisite number of votes to reverse Biden’s victory in that state. In the November 2020 general election, the state of Georgia, which traditionally is a Republican stronghold, turned blue for the first time in 28 years.
The revelation of the 45th president’s clandestine efforts to change the outcome of Georgia’s results came on Sunday, Jan. 3, 2021, when Raffensperger released the taped telephone call Trump made to him.
According to The New York Times, Raffensperger explained to his advisers that he only wanted the taped calls to be released to the media if Trump publicly misrepresented the contents of their conversation from Saturday, Jan. 2.
When Trump predictably attacked the secretary of state on Sunday in a way that Raffensperger felt was inaccurate, he issued a warning to Trump:
Respectfully, President Trump: What you're saying is not true. The truth will come out https://t.co/ViYjTSeRcC
— GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (@GaSecofState) January 3, 2021
And the truth soon became public. Trump lectured Raffensperger about his duty as a fellow Republican to locate corruption in Fulton County, Georgia, which not so coincidentally is a Democrat- and African American-rich region.
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated,” Trump told Raffensperger during their phone call. The secretary of state, however, rebuffed the president, saying, “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”
Later in the conversation, Trump issued an order to Raffensperger. “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. You should want to have an accurate election. And you’re a Republican,” Trump said on the tape.
Raffensperger refused to budge from his stance that the election he oversaw in Georgia was fair and virtually free from corruption.
“We believe that we do have an accurate election,” Raffensperger said, to which Trump retorted angrily: “No, no you don’t. Not even close. You’re off by hundreds of thousands of votes.”
Flip the page to listen to the entire conversation as obtained by The Washington Post.
