Georgia’s leading election official on Monday systematically rejected and dismantled the inaccurate allegations made by President Trump and his allies about the election, calling it ‘Monday’ counter-disinformation. ‘ The press conference by Gabriel Sterling took place a few hours after two House Democrats called on the FBI to launch a criminal investigation into President Trump’s explosive call with Georgia Secretary Brad Raffensperger for possible violations of federal and state election laws.
“It’s all easy, provably false. Yet the president keeps going,” Sterling said as he went through the various baseless and false allegations about Dominion systems and countless votes one by one.
California Congressman Ted Lieu and New York Congresswoman Kathleen Rice made their request in a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray on Monday after the sound of Trump’s hour-long call to Raffensperger was obtained and Sunday through several news outlets, including CBS News, obtained and published. In the call, the president put the secretary of state under pressure to “find 11,780 votes” to reverse his loss in Georgia’s presidential election.
“The evidence of election fraud by Mr. Trump is now clear to day,” the two Democrats wrote. “The prima facie elements of the above crimes have been met.”
Lieu and Rice, both former prosecutors, believe the president “committed or conspired to commit a number of election crimes”. The couple cited two federal laws that they believe Mr. Trump has violated, as well as one law in Georgia on the recruitment of election fraud.
In the course of their conversation, Mr. Trump told Raffensperger: “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is more than we have. Because we won the state.”
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” the president said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you recalculated.”
Elected President Joe Biden has Mr. Trump was defeated in Georgia by 11,779 votes, and the ballots in the state were counted three times in all, with the victory of Mr. Pray every time.
The president repeatedly claimed in the call that he had won the election in Peach State and suggested that ballot papers in Fulton County be shredded. The president also claims that Dominion Voting Systems, a provider of election technology, is removing or tampering with machinery.
Raffensperger and his general councilor Ryan Germany, who also had calls, repeatedly pushed back against Trump’s allegations, while the Secretary of State claimed that the state’s election results were ‘accurate’.
“Mr. President, the challenge you have is that the data you have is wrong,” Raffensperger told the president.
Since November 3, election day, Raffensperger’s office has received 18 telephone calls from the White House. However, the call on Saturday was the first call the foreign minister has made since the election day with Mr. Trump did.
Mr. Trump’s comments have raised questions about whether he can come under legal scrutiny.
Raffensperger told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Monday that his office will not investigate as it could be a conflict of interest, but he believes the district attorney in Fulton County “wants to look into it.”
“Maybe this is the right place to go,” he said.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said in a statement that she found the call disturbing and quoted news reports that the lone Democrat in the state election council was asking the constituency to investigate the call, after which the council could refer the matter to Willis’ office. . and the Attorney General.
“As I promised the Fulton County voters last year, I will apply the law as a district attorney without fear or favor. Anyone who commits a violation of Georgian law in my jurisdiction will be held accountable,” she said. “Once the investigation is completed, this matter, like all cases, will be handled by our office based on the facts and the law.”
Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, said it was very possible the president was violating federal law and likely violating Georgia state law.
“It’s mostly about what the president honestly believes at this point, and the only choices are not huge,” he told CBS News. “So he understands the reality and knows that there are not 11,800 ballot papers sitting somewhere that are Trump votes and that have not been counted in records and audits, in which case he has committed a crime. If he is the true nature of the world understands he can discern facts, he has probably committed a crime. ‘
But, “if he does not, then we have a CEO who is still in power for 16.5 days and who cannot reliably distinguish between fact and fiction based on the information he receives,” Levitt continued .
“It’s not a great consolation prize,” he said, adding that there was “enough” in Mr. Trump with Raffensperger ‘which alarmingly indicates that the president cannot know from fiction what he bought in his own conspiracy theories. . “
Levitt suggested that the president and chief of staff of the White House, Mark Meadows, who made the call, may also have broken a 1871 law on criminal conspiracies to undermine civil rights if they agreed that the purpose of the call was to see if we can convince him. to compile a false score. ‘
“If Meadows knows if he can distinguish the difference between fact and fiction and he has the same goal as the president, then that’s all that conspiracy requires,” he said.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who headed the Justice Department under President Obama, tweeted on Sunday that those who listened to the sound of Mr. Trump listens, ‘this federal criminal law’ should be considered, and he contains an image of a law that says that any person in a federal election who “knowingly and willfully deprives, deceives or tries to seduce the inhabitants of a state” to deprive or defraud a fair and impartial election process by … obtaining, deciding or tabulating ballot papers known by the person to be materially false, fictitious or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held, a fine of up to five years would be imposed.
Adam Brewster contributed to this report