In excerpts from Saturday’s incredible one-hour call, Trump blamed his fellow Republican for refusing to falsely say he won the election in Georgia and repeatedly made baseless allegations of electoral fraud.
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there is nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you have recalculated,” Trump said in one part of the call. Raffensperger replied, “Well, Mr. President, the challenge you have is the data you have is wrong.”
In another part, Trump said, “Look. All I want to do is do this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is more than we have. Because we won the state.”
“You would like an accurate election. And you are a Republican,” Trump said at one point.
“We believe we have an accurate election,” Raffensperger said in response, to which Trump replied, “No, no, you do not … Not even close. Hundreds of thousands of votes are down on you.”
The president also claimed during the call that votes in the state had been scanned three times, an allegation that Raffensperger rejected, saying: ‘We did an audit on it and we certainly proved that it was not scanned three times. ‘
The White House declined to comment on CNN.
CNN reached out to Raffensperger.
Officials in Raffensperger’s office recorded the call with Trump on Saturday, according to a source who was on the call and had direct knowledge of the conversation. Raffensperger told his advisers he did not want to release the recording or a transcript of the call unless Trump attacked him or misrepresented the call, according to the source. Trump tweeted the attack on Raffensperger on Sunday morning.
The audio recording was reported by the Post a few hours after Trump said on Twitter that he had spoken by telephone to Raffensperger in an attempt to persuade him to investigate unfounded conspiracy theories about the November vote. According to Trump, Raffensperger refused to do so. In response, Raffensperger on Sunday cryptically conveyed a strong message to the president.
Raffensperger, a Republican and a Trump supporter, has repeatedly refuted Trump’s allegations of voter fraud in Georgia. He oversaw three different versions of the vote and conducted several other reviews of the process. He recently instructed the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to conduct an audit of the signature system in Cobb County that determined the system was 99.9% accurate and revealed no evidence of fraud.
White House staff Mark Meadows, attorney Cleta Mitchell and other Republican allies of the president were also on call.
The call represents Trump’s latest extraordinary attempt to change the results of the race he lost after weeks of legitimate and political efforts by the president, his legal team and Republican allies to overthrow the free and fair election.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer seized the call in a tweet Sunday afternoon, suggesting to Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas that he and his GOP allies should investigate the president for his actions.
Cruz was among the 11 Republican senators who on Saturday announced they would support an objection to the Electoral College’s votes, if one is brought, and propose an Electoral Commission to conduct an ’emergency 10-day audit’ of the election records in to execute the ‘disputed states’. – despite no credible evidence pointing to widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
CNN’s Ryan Nobles contributed to this report.