Donald Trump, in taped call, pressured Georgia official to 'find' votes

I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, said Trump

US President Trump pressured Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find” him enough votes to overturn the presidential election and vaguely threatened him with “a criminal offense” during an hour long telephone call on Saturday, according to an audio recording of the conversation.

Trump, who has spent almost nine weeks making false conspiracy claims about his loss to President-elect Joseph R Biden Jr, told Brad Raffensperger, the state’s top elections official, that he should recalculate the vote count so Trump, not Biden, would end up winning the state’s 16 electoral votes.

“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said during the conversation, according to a recording first obtained by The Washington Post, which published it online Sunday. The New York Times also acquired a recording of Trump’s call.

The president, who will be in charge of the Justice Department for the 17 days left in his administration, hinted that Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the chief lawyer for secretary of state’s office, could be prosecuted criminally if they did not do his bidding.

“You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” the president said during the call. “You know, that’s a criminal — that’s a criminal offense. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”

The effort to cajole and bully elected officials in his own party — which some legal experts said could be prosecuted under Georgia law — was a remarkable act by a defeated president to crash through legal and ethical boundaries as he seeks to remain in power.

© The New York Times 2021

Voice of desperation: Harris on Trump's call
 

Speaking in Georgia on Sunday, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris called Trump's conversation a "baldfaced, bold abuse of power by the president,” The Washington Post  reported. It was certainly the voice of desperation, most certainly that," she said.

Warning to Trump by 10 former Pentagon chiefs
 

In an extraordinary rebuke of Trump, all 10 former secretaries of defense have cautioned against any move to involve the military in pursuing claims of election fraud, argui­ng that it would take the country into “dang­erous, unlawful and uncon­sti­tutional territory.”  AP