Raffensperger Hints Trump Could Face Prosecution over Call to ‘Find’ Votes
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Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger indicated on Monday that President Trump could face prosecution over a Saturday phone call in which he asked Raffensperger to “find” votes to overturn election results in the state.
Trump has repeatedly alleged that Democrats “stole” the election with widespread voter fraud, particularly in Georgia, where Joe Biden won by 11,799 votes.
“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,” Trump told Raffensperger on the call, which was leaked to the Washington Post.
Raffensperger said Monday on ABC’s Good Morning America that his own office would likely not press charges over the conversation due to a potential conflict of interest but left open the possibility that Trump could be prosecuted by the local district attorney.
However, “I understand that the Fulton County District Attorney wants to look at it,” Raffensperger added. “Maybe that’s the appropriate venue for it to go.”
Legal experts have suggested that Trump may have violated a Georgia law prohibiting the solicitation of election fraud, but Raffensperger declined to say Monday whether he thought the prosecution would be succesful.
“I’m not a lawyer. All I know is that we’re going to follow the law, follow the process,” he said. “Truth matters. And we’ve been fighting these rumors for the last two months.”
Trump reportedly asked to speak with Raffensperger 18 times before the Saturday phone call, which was the first direct conversation between the two. The secretary’s advisers decided to record the call.
Trump “is a man who has a history of reinventing history as it occurs,” one of the advisers told Politico. “So if he’s going to try to dispute anything on the call, it’s nice to have something like this, hard evidence, to dispute whatever he’s claiming about the secretary. Lindsey Graham asked us to throw out legally cast ballots. So yeah, after that call, we decided maybe we should do this.”
