[Trump asked Secretary of State to recalculate vote in phone call.
Republican push to keep Trump in power seems doomed.]
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'I JUST WANT 11,780 VOTES': TRUMP PRESSED GEORGIA TO OVERTURN BIDEN
VICTORY  
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Martin Pengelly, Richard Luscombe
January 3, 2021
The Guardian
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_ Trump asked Secretary of State to recalculate vote in phone call.
Republican push to keep Trump in power seems doomed. _

,

 

In an hour-long phone call on Saturday, Donald Trump pressed Georgia
secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to overturn Joe Biden’s
victory there in the election the president refuses to concede
[[link removed]].

The Washington Post obtained
[[link removed]] a
tape of the “extraordinary” conversation, which
Trump acknowledged
[[link removed]] on
Twitter.

Amid widespread outrage including calls for a second impeachment, Bob
Bauer, a senior Biden adviser, said
[[link removed]]: “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.”

The Post published the full call
[[link removed]].

“The people of Georgia
[[link removed]] are angry, the
people in the country are angry,” Trump said. “And there’s
nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve
recalculated.”

Raffensperger is a Republican who has become a bête noire among
Trump supporters
[[link removed]] for
repeatedly saying Biden’s win in his state was fair. In one of a
number of parries, he said: “Well, Mr President, the challenge that
you have is, the data you have is wrong.”

Trump said: “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.”

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

Trump’s contempt for democracy is laid bare. Once again. On tape. 

Adam Schiff

Trump did not win Georgia, which went Democratic for the first time
since 1992. Its result has been certified
[[link removed]].
Attempts to pressure Republicans in other battleground states have
failed, as have the vast majority of challenges to results in court.

Despite promised objections from at least 12 senators
[[link removed]] and
a majority of House Republicans, Biden’s electoral college victory
will be ratified by Congress on Wednesday and the Democrat will be
inaugurated as the 46th president on 20 January. Trump will then leave
the White House – where he remained, tweeting angrily, all weekend.

Edward B Foley, an Ohio State law professor, told the Post the call
was “‘inappropriate and contemptible’ and should prompt moral
outrage”. In an email to the Guardian, University of Richmond law
professor Carl Tobias said Trump might be “in legal jeopardy after
Biden is inaugurated”.

“For example, if the justice department or US attorneys believe that
Trump violated federal law or if local prosecutors in states, such as
Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, where Trump may have engaged
in similar behaviour with state or local election officials, believe
that Trump violated state election laws, the federal or state
prosecutors could file suit against Trump.”

Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and
Ethics in Washington, went further, calling for Trump to be impeached
a second time, little more than two weeks before he leaves office.

“The president of the United States has been caught on tape trying
to rig a presidential election,” Bookbinder said. “This is a low
point in American history and unquestionably impeachable conduct. It
is incontrovertible and devastating.

“When the Senate acquitted President Trump
[[link removed]] for
abusing his powers to try to get himself re-elected [in February 2020,
regarding approaches to Ukraine for dirt on Biden], we worried that he
would grow more brazen in his attempts to wrongly and illegally keep
himself in power. He has … Congress must act immediately.”

Democratic chairman of the House judiciary committee, Jerry Nadler,
said in a statement that Trump “remains profoundly unfit for
office” and “may have also subjected himself to additional
criminal liability”.

In a tweet
[[link removed]], Adam
Schiff, the lead prosecutor at the impeachment trial, said:
“Trump’s contempt for democracy is laid bare. Once again. On tape.
Pressuring an election official to ‘find’ the votes so he can win
is potentially criminal, and another flagrant abuse of power by a
corrupt man who would be a despot, if we allowed him. We will not.”

Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat elected
[[link removed]] House
speaker for a fourth term, set out strategy for the election
certification in a memo to colleagues.

“Over the years,” she wrote, “we have experienced many
challenges in the House, but no situation matches the Trump presidency
and the Trump disrespect for the will of the people.”

Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, took a shot at Ted Cruz,
the Texas Republican leading calls for an “emergency audit” of the
election.

“You want to investigate election fraud?” the New Yorker tweeted
[[link removed]]. “Start
with this.”

Adam Kinzinger, a Republican congressman from Illinois, tweeted
[[link removed]]: “This
is absolutely appalling. To every member of Congress considering
objecting to the election results, you cannot – in light of this –
do so with a clean conscience.”

 

Stacey Abrams is laughing about you. She’s going around saying,
‘These guys are dumber than a rock’. 

Donald Trump

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Cleta Mitchell, a
Republican lawyer, were also on the call, during which Trump ran
through debunked claims regarding supposed electoral fraud and called
Raffensperger a “child”, “either dishonest or incompetent” and
a “schmuck”. Characteristically, he also threatened legal action.

“You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” Trump
said. “You know, that’s a criminal offence. And you know, you
can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan
[Germany], your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”

Referring to runoffs on Tuesday
[[link removed]] that
will decide control of the Senate, Trump said: “You know, the people
of Georgia know that this was a scam.

“Because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people
aren’t going out to vote, and a lot of Republicans
[[link removed]] are going to vote
negative, because they hate what you did to the president. OK? They
hate it. And they’re going to vote. And you would be respected,
really respected, if this can be straightened out before the
election.”

Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, seeking to
beat
[[link removed]] Democrats
Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, have ranged themselves behind Trump.
But Georgia Republicans fear his attacks could suppress turnout as
Democrats work to boost their own.

Democratic Senate candidate Raphael Warnock bumps elbows with Stacey
Abrams during a rally with Joe Biden in Atlanta. Photograph: Drew
Angerer/Getty Images

Early voting has reached unprecedented levels and on Sunday, former
gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams told ABC’s This Week: “What
we’re so excited about is that we haven’t stopped reaching those
voters. Millions of contacts have been made, thousands of new
registrations have been held. We know that at least 100,000 people who
did not vote in the general election are now voting in this
election.”

Trump told Raffensperger: “Stacey Abrams is laughing about you.
She’s going around saying, ‘These guys are dumber than a
rock.’”

The Democrats [[link removed]] seized
on the call.

“That is a direct attack on our democracy,” Ossoff said, at a
rally in Savannah. “If David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler had one piece
of steel in their spines, one shred of integrity, they would be out
here defending Georgia voters from this kind of assault.”

In a statement, Warnock said: “Senator Loeffler has a responsibility
to speak out against the unsubstantiated claims of fraud, to defend
Georgia’s elections, and to put Georgia ahead of herself. She has
not and never will.”

Perdue and Loeffler did not immediately comment.

Trump told Raffensperger he knew the call wasn’t “going
anywhere”. The state official ended the conversation.

On Twitter, Trump said
[[link removed]] Raffensperger
“was 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!”

Twitter duly applied
[[link removed]] a
disclaimer: “This claim about election fraud is disputed.”

Raffensperger also responded
[[link removed]]:
“Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true.”

_MARTIN PENGELLY
[[link removed]] (_breaking news
and weekend editor for Guardian US) _in New York and RICHARD
LUSCOMBE
[[link removed]] (_freelance
correspondent based in Miami, Florida) _in Miami_

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