Trump Presses GA Official to 'Find' Votes and 'Recalculate' Election Result

by Causes | 1.3.21

What's the story?

• President Donald Trump pushed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to "find" votes to overturn his defeat to President-elect Joe Biden, according to audio posted Sunday by The Washington Post.

"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."

• Trump lost Georgia by nearly 12,000 votes to Biden. "Finding" 11,780 votes would flip the state to Trump.
• The audio was released shortly after this exchange on Twitter:

What does Trump say in the recording?

A full transcript of the audio can be found here.

The audio recording can be found here.

Throughout the one-hour phone call, which occurred on Saturday, Trump can be heard urging, lambasting, pleading, and threatening Raffensperger to find the votes to overturn his defeat. Here are some excerpts:

• Trump: "The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry. And there's nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you've recalculated."
• Raffensperger: "Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong."

• Trump: "The people of Georgia know that this was a scam, and because of what you've done to the president, a lot of people aren't going out to vote [in the runoffs]. A lot of Republicans are going to vote negative because they hate what you did to the president."

• Trump: "You should want to have an accurate election. And you're a Republican."
• Raffensperger: "We believe that we do have an accurate election."
• Trump: "No, no you don't. Not even close. You're off by hundreds of thousands of votes."

• Trump: “There’s no way I lost Georgia. There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”

• Trump: "The ballots are corrupt. And you are going to find that they are — which is totally illegal, it is more illegal for you than it is for them because you know what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to [German] Ryan, your lawyer. And that’s a big risk."

-Josh Herman