Trump: 'I Just Want to Find 11,780 Votes'

Washington Post has recording of the president's call to Brad Raffensperger
By Luke Roney,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 3, 2021 2:30 PM CST
Trump: 'I Just Want to Find 11,780 Votes'
President Donald Trump   (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

“So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes.” That’s what President Trump said to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Saturday in an “extraordinary” hour-long phone call, the Washington Post’s Amy Gardner reports. The Post has a recording of the call, during which the president alternates from flattery to threats of criminal liability in an attempt to get Raffensperger to pursue unfounded claims of voter fraud in Georgia, which Trump lost to President-elect Joe Biden by 11,779 votes. “Well, Mr. President, the challenge you have is the data you have is wrong,” an “exasperated” Raffensperger told Trump, per the Atlanta Journal Constitution, pushing back on “sham theories” that included ballot stuffing, ballot shredding, and tampering with voting machines. “There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump said, claiming to have won the state by “hundreds of thousands of votes.”

At one point, the president reminded Raffensperger, “you’re a Republican.” Trump also mentioned Tuesday's Senate runoff in Georgia: “Because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote, and a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative.” Fallout from the call spilled onto Twitter on Sunday with Trump tweeting that Raffensperger is “unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the 'ballots under table' scam, ballot destruction, out of state 'voters,' dead voters, and more. He has no clue!” Raffensperger’s tweeted response: “Respectfully, President Trump: What you're saying is not true. The truth will come out.” Legal experts tell the Post that the call put Trump in “legally questionable territory.” From a moral standpoint, law professor Edward B. Foley tells the paper, the call was “inappropriate and contemptible.” (More Election 2020 stories.)

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