Trump demanded Brad Raffensperger “finds” 11,780 votes to overturn Biden’s election win in a leaked phone call with Georgia’s Secretary of State.
The leaked recording was originally shared by the Washington Post and has since been rebuked by a series of high-ranking officials including Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
In the recorded phone call to Georgia’s Secretary of State, President Trump attempted to find a way to overturn Joe Biden’s election win by encouraging Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.”
“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,” Trump, as heard in the recording, said during the phone call during which he was relying on debunked data and conspiracy theories.
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”
Responding to the President during the one-hour phone call was Raffensperger who said: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”
Throughout the long phone call, Trump repeatedly suggested he won Georgia by saying “there’s no way I lost Georgia” and “we won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”
He also appeared to threaten Raffensperger as he warned he was taking a “big risk” by not trying to overturn Biden’s win in Georgia.
After the leaked recording surfaced, Trump also doubled down on his comments in yet another Twitter tirade.
“Sorry, but the number of votes in the Swing States that we are talking about is VERY LARGE and totally OUTCOME DETERMINATIVE!” the POTUS insisted. “Only the Democrats and some RINO’S would dare dispute this – even though they know it is true!”
He added: “The Swing States did not even come close to following the dictates of their State Legislatures. These States ‘election laws’ were made up by local judges & politicians, not by their Legislatures, & are therefore, before even getting to irregularities & fraud, UNCONSTITUTIONAL!”
After the leaked phone call made rounds on the internet, Biden’s campaign branded Trump’s attempts an “assault on American democracy.”
“We now have irrefutable proof of a president pressuring and threatening an official of his own party to get him to rescind a state’s lawful, certified vote count and fabricate another in its place,” Senior Advisor Bob Bauer expressed.
“It captures the whole, disgraceful story about Donald Trump’s assault on American democracy.”
Taking aim at Trump was also Vice President-elect Kamala Harris who said:
“[He] called the Senate race in Georgia illegitimate … illegal and invalid … suggesting that the people of Georgia are trying to commit a crime.
“They filed six lawsuits — not one, not two — six lawsuits trying to challenge your voice in that election. And they failed every time. And the people’s voice remains standing.”
Replaced!