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. Because we won the state,” said Trump, who is scheduled to be at a rally in Georgia Monday evening.
In an interview Monday, Raffensperger told The Associated Press that he is confident in Georgia’s general election outcome, despite an electoral college challenge supported by some Republicans in Congress.
“If they support a challenge of the electors for Georgia, they’re wrong, dead wrong,” Raffensperger said. Members of Congress will have to make a decision about the other states, he added, “but in Georgia, we did get it right. I’m not happy with the result, as a Republican, but it is the right result based on the numbers that we saw cast.”
Georgia counted its votes three times before certifying Biden’s win by a 11,779-vote margin.
“President Trump, we’ve had several lawsuits, and we’ve had to respond in court to the lawsuits and the contentions,” Raffensperger told Trump on the call. “We don’t agree that you have won.”
Raffensperger said the White House reached out to his office and he assumed the president wanted to talk about the status of the November election. The secretary of state said his deputy previously met with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows when Meadows was in Georgia last month, but that he hadn’t had any other direct contact with the White House since the general election.
Asked if he felt as if the president was pressuring him to do something illegal, Raffensperger said, “I think he was looking for any kind of advantage he could get, and I just don’t see how he’s going to get it.”
David Worley, a Democratic member of the Georgia State Election Board, sent an email to Raffensperger Sunday night requesting that his office open an investigation into the call.
“To say that I am troubled by President Trump’s attempt to manipulate the votes of Georgians would be an understatement,” Worley wrote.
Worley cited two violations of Georgia law that he said the president might have committed based on his reading of a transcript of the call: conspiracy to commit election fraud and criminal solicitation to commit election fraud.
Once the secretary of state’s office completes an investigation, Worley wrote, the board will determine whether there is probable cause to refer the matter to the state attorney general and Fulton County district attorney.
Audio of the conversation was first posted online by The Washington Post. The Associated Press later obtained the audio from a person on the call.
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 which political party controls the U.S. Senate.
At Trump’s rally in Georgia on Monday night, he is supposed to boost the two Republican candidates in close races. In a rage after the Raffensperger call, Trump floated the idea of pulling out of the rally, which would have potentially devastated GOP chances of maintaining Senate control.
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.
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. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a member of the GOP House leadership team, 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.
Trump said in a tweet Sunday that he had spoken with Raffensperger. He attacked how Raffensperger conducted Georgia’s elections, tweeting, “He has no clue!” and he said the state official “was unwilling, or unable” to answer questions.
Raffensperger’s Twitter response: “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true. The truth will come out.”
Various election officials across the country and Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, have said there was no widespread fraud in the election. Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia, key battleground states crucial to Biden’s victory, have also vouched for the integrity of their state elections. Nearly all the legal challenges from Trump and his allies have been dismissed by judges, including two tossed by the Supreme Court, which has three Trump-nominated justices.
Still, Trump has publicly disparaged the election, raising concerns among Republicans that GOP voters may be discouraged from participating in Tuesday’s runoffs pitting Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler against Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican David Perdue against Democrat Jon Ossoff.
Biden also campaigned in Georgia on Monday. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris stumped in Garden City, Georgia, on Sunday, slamming Trump for the call.
“It was a bald, bald-faced, bold abuse of power by the president of the United States,” she said.
Loeffler and Perdue have largely backed Trump in his attempts to overturn election results. But on Sunday, Loeffler said she hadn’t decided whether to join her Republican colleagues in challenging the legitimacy of Biden’s victory over Trump when Congress meets Wednesday to affirm Biden’s 306-232 win in the Electoral College.
Perdue, who was quarantining after being exposed to the coronavirus, said he supports the challenge, though he will not be a sitting senator when the vote happens because his term has expired. Still, he told Fox News Channel he was encouraging his colleagues to object, saying it’s “something that the American people demand right now.”
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Amy reported from Atlanta. Lemire reported from New York. Additional reporting contributed by Associated Press writers Kate Brumback in Atlanta, Russ Bynum in Garden City, Ga., and Zeke Miller in Washington.
Analysis: With call, Trump shows no limit to his power grab
ATLANTA (AP) — President Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to overturn the 2020 election results — laid out in stark detail in an hourlong weekend phone call with a Georgia election official — are demonstrating his unrestrained determination to maintain a grip on power no matter the consequences for the nation’s democratic traditions.
Trump, in a Saturday phone call, pressed Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the state’s presidential election. The president repeatedly cited disproven claims of fraud and raised the prospect of a “criminal offense” if officials did not change the vote count, according to a recording of the conversation.
Trump has ventured into uncharted and dangerous territory since his Nov. 3 defeat, becoming the first president who lost an election to try to hang onto his office by rejecting the will of the voters and casting aside results of the Electoral College enshrined in the Constitution.
Trump’s refusal to concede, undermining the democratic tradition of a peaceful transfer of power and hindering the transition to a Biden administration, is particularly risky for the nation when it is grappling with a surging pandemic that has killed more than 350,000 Americans. Paying little heed to the virus in recent weeks, the president has largely abdicated day-to-day governing to instead focus on his efforts to cling to power.
On the phone call, Trump peddled anew conspiracy theories, disinformation and outright lies, insisting that he won Georgia despite multiple recounts that show the contrary. He repeatedly argued that Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, could change the certified results.
“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said. “Because we won the state.”
Biden won Georgia by 11,779 votes.
The call showcased Trump’s evolution since Nov. 3. At first, he privately accepted that he had been beaten even as he publicly protested, hoping to show his loyal supporters that he was still fighting while eyeing his own future, politically and financially.
But as the weeks have gone on, Trump has embraced the narrative that his victory was stolen. His shrinking inner circle is now largely populated by those peddling conspiracy theories. The president lives in a media echo chamber made up of conservative television and social media voices amplifying his claims of fraud.
Asked if he felt like the president was pressuring him to do something illegal, Raffensperger told The Associated Press on Monday: “I think he was looking for any kind of advantage he could get, and I just don’t see how he’s going to get it.”
Raffensperger added that Georgia’s presidential votes were counted three times — first right after the election, then in an audit that hand tallied the results and finally in a machine recount at Trump’s request.
“If they support a challenge of the electors for Georgia, they’re wrong, dead wrong,” Raffensperger said. Members of Congress will have to make a decision about the results in the other states, he added, “but in Georgia, we did get it right. I’m not happy with the result, as a Republican, but it is the right result based on the numbers that we saw cast.”
Trump’s renewed intervention and his persistent and unfounded claims of fraud come nearly two weeks before he leaves office and in the leadup to twin runoff elections in Georgia on Tuesday that will determine political control of the U.S. Senate.
It also added intrigue ahead of Trump’s rally in Georgia on Monday night — likely the last of his term — in which he stumped for the two Republican candidates. In a rage after the Raffensperger call, Trump floated the idea of pulling out of the rally, which could been devastating to GOP chances in what are 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 worried that Trump might focus on himself and depress turnout by undermining faith in the runoff elections and not promoting the two GOP candidates.
In the end, Trump split his time rehashing many of the same debunked grievances he made days earlier in the Raffensperger call, while also urging his supporters to swamp the polls on behalf of Sen. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in races he said would determine the “fate of our country.”
Trump also signaled he had no intention of dropping his election challenges even after Wednesday’s counting of the electoral votes, urging the crowd to watch for new revelations over the next “couple weeks” and vowing: “They’re not taking this White House. We’re going to fight like hell, I’ll tell you right now.”
Raffensperger reiterated his frustration with disinformation that has proliferated since the election, much of it emanating from the Oval Office. He expressed fears that Trump’s baseless claims would not only undermine the democratic process but could hurt Republicans’ chances. People wonder about the best way to vote after false information has caused them to distrust both absentee ballots and the state’s voting machines, he said.
“That is not a good message for you to ever get out to your base,” he said.
Egged on by Trump, a dozen Republican senators have announced that they would support up to 100 House colleagues in challenging the Electoral College certification process on Wednesday. Wary of Trump’s Twitter account and hold over their party’s base, many other Republicans were slow to speak out, allowing the president to sow doubt for weeks and undermine Biden’s legitimacy with much of the population.
Among those who spoke out Monday, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a member of the GOP House leadership team, deemed the president’s call “deeply troubling.” GOP Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said the call was “a new low in this whole futile and sorry episode.” He commended election officials “who have discharged their duties with integrity over the past two months while weathering relentless pressure, disinformation, and attacks from the president and his campaign.”
Audio snippets of the conversation were first posted online by The Washington Post. The AP 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. It annotated a transcript of the call with fact check material.
Various election officials across the country and Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, have said there was no widespread fraud in the election. Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia, battlegrounds crucial to Biden’s victory, have also vouched for the integrity of their state elections.
Nearly all the legal challenges from Trump and his allies have been dismissed by judges, including two tossed by the Supreme Court, which has three Trump-nominated justices.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — Jonathan Lemire has covered the White House and politics for The Associated Press since 2013. Kate Brumback has reported from Atlanta for the AP since 2008.
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Lemire reported from New York. Associated Press writers Jeff Amy in Atlanta, Kevin Freking in Dalton, Georgia, and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.