ATLANTA (AP) – President Donald Trump has slammed Georgia’s election chief and pleaded to block Joe Biden’s victory in the state, suggesting in a phone call that the official would “find” enough votes to give Trump the victory .
The conversation on Saturday was the final step in an unprecedented attempt by a sitting president to pressure a civil servant to reverse the outcome of a free and fair election he lost. The renewed intervention and the persistent and unfounded allegations of fraud by the first president who lost the re-election in almost 30 years come almost two weeks before Trump leaves office and two days before the two-party debate in Georgia that will determine Senate control.
Trump confirmed in a tweet on Sunday that he had spoken to Georgia’s secretary of state Republican Brad Raffensperger the day before.
Audio clips of the conversation were posted online by The Washington Post. A recording of the call was later obtained by The Associated Press from a person who was on the call.
The president, who refused to accept his loss to the elected Democratic president, is at one point told by Raffensperger: ‘All I want to do is. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is more than we have. Because we won the state. ”
According to Georgia’s certified election results, Biden won the November 3 election by 11,779 votes.
The White House referred questions to Trump’s re-election campaign, which did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday. Raffensperger’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Bob Bauer, Biden’s senior adviser, said the survey was “irrefutable evidence” of Trump putting an official in his own party under pressure and threatening to revoke a state’s legitimate, certified score and another in to fabricate its place. ‘
“It captures the whole, shameful story about Donald Trump’s assault on American democracy,” Bauer said.
At another point in the conversation, it appears that Trump Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the legal adviser to the Secretary of State, are threatening by suggesting that both could be held criminally liable if they do not find that thousands of ballot papers in Fulton County were illegally destroyed. There is no evidence to support Trump’s claim.
“This is a criminal offense,” Trump said. And you can not make it happen.
Trump has repeatedly attacked how Raffensperger managed Georgia’s election, without proving that the state’s 16 election votes were wrongly given to Biden.
“He has no idea!” Trump tweeted from Raffensperger, saying the civil servant was “unwilling or unable” to answer questions about a series of allegations about the handling of the ballot and the voters being hacked by judges and election officials.
Raffensperger’s Twitter response: “With respect, President Trump: what you say is not true. The truth will come out. ”
There was no widespread fraud in the election, which was confirmed by a series of election officials across the country, as well as Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr. Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia, the key battlefield states crucial to Biden’s victory, also testified to the integrity of the election in their states. Nearly all of the legal challenges facing Trump and his allies have been dismissed by judges, including two thrown out by the Supreme Court, which include three Trump-nominated judges.
The end of the Senate pits Senator Kelly Loeffler against Democrat Raphael Warnock and Senator David Perdue against Democrat Jon Ossoff. With the Senate at stake, the candidates and outside groups who support them have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the contests, and Georgia has collapsed with television commercials, e-mails, phone calls and door-to-door attempts.
Loeffler said she did not decide to challenge with Republican colleagues the legitimacy of Biden’s victory over Trump. The Democratic candidates whose victory Tuesday would help clear away roadblocks for the new government’s agenda awaited a visit to the Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign.
Trump has persisted in attacking top Republicans of Georgia over his election loss in the state, raising fears that his words could keep some Republicans away from the polls.
“I believe we will win on Tuesday because of the grassroots level, the unprecedented kinetic energy in Georgia at the moment,” Ossoff told CNN’s “State of the Union.” He said: “In Georgia, it feels like we are on the verge of a historic victory.”
Loeffler, when asked about the side of the growing group of Senate Republicans who want to challenge the College of Elections score, said she ‘looks at it very carefully, and I was one of the first to say: everything is up the table.’ She told Fox News Sunday that I’m fighting for this president because he fought for us. He’s our president and we’re going to make it a fair election. ”
Warnock, the senior pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, who continued to preach while performing for his office, apparently referred to the ending in a message delivered Sunday. He told viewers remotely because of the pandemic that they were “on the verge of victory” in their lives if they accepted that God had already equipped them with the ability to overcome their adversaries.
“If God is with you, you can defeat giants,” Warnock said. The service ended early by encouraging Georgians to vote Tuesday. “It is so important that your voice is heard at this crucial moment in our country,” he said. “I would not be so bold as to tell you who to vote for.”
Loeffler was appointed to fill a vacancy when Republican Johnny Isakson resigned his seat, and she will be in the Senate next week, winning or losing until the election is certified. Perdue’s seat will be temporarily vacant after his term expires at the end of six years.
Harris would be in Savannah Sunday afternoon. Trump and Biden are planning last-minute personal efforts to mobilize voters after more than 3 million people voted early.
The president continues to create turmoil for Loeffler and Perdue by questioning Biden’s narrow victory in Georgia and the reliability of the state’s electoral systems.
Trump also tweeted that the government of Georgia, Brian Kemp, and Lieutenant General Geoff Duncan, also Republicans, “did less than nothing. They are a disgrace to the great people of Georgia! ”
The president last week called on Kemp to resign; the governor dismissed it as a ‘distraction’.
Despite the attacks, Loeffler said she believes voters will heed Trump’s expected plea during his upcoming visit that they should turn out.
“He will say the same thing to the voters: you have to vote from Georgia because it is too important,” Loeffler said.
Perdue, who is in quarantine after being exposed to a staff member with the coronavirus and will not appear with Trump at Monday’s meeting, said he would have joined the Senate election challenge if he had been in Washington. “I encourage my colleagues to object to it. “This is something the American people are demanding at the moment,” he told the Sunday Morning Futures on Fox News Channel.
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Superville reported from Washington.