WASHINGTON – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday that he never thought it was appropriate to talk to President Donald Trump about the 2020 election results and that the talks Trump had with him and other election officials, ” can produce a conflict of interest that justifies. investigation.
When asked on ABC’s “Good Morning America” if he had spoken to Trump before a phone call he and the president had on Saturday, Raffensperger said: “I never believed it was appropriate to talk to the president. not to speak. “
The call eventually came after White House staff demanded it, Raffensperger said, adding that he “prefers not to talk to anyone if we’re in a litigation,” a reference to Trump’s lawsuit against Georgia over the election results.
“We took the call and had a conversation. He talked the most, we listened the most, “Raffensperger said. But I wanted to remind myself that the data he has is simply wrong. “
“For the past two months we have been fighting the rumors-a-mole,” Raffensperger added. “And it was very early on that we unleashed each of the theories that were out there, but that President Trump still believes it.”
Raffensperger received the call Saturday afternoon after the White House switchboard made 18 attempts to get him to talk to Trump about the two months since the general election, according to a Republican in Georgia who is familiar with the call.
Officials in Raffensperger’s office picked up the call, and he made it clear to his advisers that he did not want to release a transcript or an audio recording unless Trump attacked officials in Georgia or misrepresented the conversation, according to the source. Before the audio leaked, Trump attacked Raffensperger on Twitter, saying they called and that he did not answer his questions.
Asked if he was experiencing any pressure when Trump had to give him the votes to stop Biden’s victory in Georgia, Raffensperger told George Stephanopoulos on ABC: ‘No, I, we have to follow the process, follow the law. Everything we have done in the last twelve months follows the constitution of the state of Georgia, follows the constitution of the United States, follows the laws of the state. ”
In response to the phone call, the sound of which appeared Sunday, David Worley, a Democratic member of Georgia’s state election council, of which Raffensperger is chairman, asked him to launch an investigation.
Asked if he would do so, Raffenperger said: ‘I believe that because I had a conversation with the president, he also had a conversation with our principal investigator after we audited the Cobb County signing contest last week. done, there may be a conflict of interest, I understand, that the district attorney in Fulton County wants to look at. Maybe this is the right place to go, ”said Raffensperger.
Two House Democrats sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray asking for an investigation into the call.
On the question of whether he will vote for Trump again, Raffensperger said he has always supported Republicans and ‘probably always will’, but that Trump is not on the ballot in 2024, ‘so we’ll have to wait to see what will happen. ”
Julia Jester contributed.