Although President Donald Trump has long established that he’s not afraid of making controversial public statements, it’s also true that some of the most explosive revelations about his presidency have come from leaks of his phone conversations.
Of course, we can recall that a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky which sought an investigation into the Biden family formed the basis of his impeachment. And almost a year later, recordings of a series of conversations Trump had with veteran journalist Bob Woodward saw him admit to intentionally downplaying the threat of COVID-19 to the American public.
Now, it appears that a recent conversation with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has potentially opened the president up to a new batch of legal troubles.
On January 2, President Trump held an hour-long phone conference with Raffensperger that also involved legal representatives for both parties.
As The Washington Post transcribed , this call saw Trump argue that Georgia’s results for the 2020 presidential election were off by hundreds of thousands of votes.
The call also depicted him explaining how he arrived at that number; he apparently believes that ballots were cast in the name of at least 5,000 dead people in Georgia, that people arrived in the state to influence the vote, that votes for him had been shredded, that 18,000 votes for Biden had been scanned three times, and that Dominion had moved voting machines out of the state.
Once these conspiracy theories were shared, each was either rejected outright by Raffensperger and his lawyer, Ryan Germany, or found to be exaggerated.
For instance, instead of 5,000 dead people being discovered to have voted in Georgia, Raffensperger explained that state investigations revealed only two ballots involved the deceased.
When Trump’s claims were dismissed, he appeared to suggest that both Raffensperger and Germany would face criminal consequences for not agreeing that widespread voter fraud had occurred.
As The Washington Post transcribed, Trump said , “And you are going to find that they are — which is totally illegal — it is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know, what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. And that’s a big risk.”
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But as you can likely surmise from these clips, Trump veered from insulting Raffensperger to flattering him to pleading with him to threatening him with one goal in mind.
Although Trump insisted that he won Georgia by a large margin, he said that he simply wanted Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 extra votes in his favor.
Since Georgia had already certified its electoral results by then, it’s unknown how Raffensperger would have been able to do so without resorting to the very election fraud that Trump has claimed took place.
Indeed, that appears to be the conclusion that Democrats in the House of Representatives have come to as well.
As The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported , Representatives Kathleen Rice of New York and Ted Liu of California wrote a joint letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray that called for an immediate investigation into the president’s conduct.
As they wrote, “As members of Congress and former prosecutors, we believe Donald Trump engaged in solicitation of, or conspiracy to commit, a number of election crimes.”
As their statement continued, “The evidence of election fraud by Mr. Trump is now in broad daylight. Given the more than ample factual predicate, we are making a criminal referral to you to open an investigation into Mr. Trump.”
USA Today reported that the FBI have acknowledged receiving this referral but made no further statements on the matter.
At the time of this writing, it remains unclear as to whether such an investigation will take place.
It also remains to be seen what effect the release of this call will have on Georgia’s upcoming runoff elections.
As The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported , Trump is expected to hold a rally on Monday in support of the two Republican candidates for Senate but briefly floated the idea of abandoning it after the call audio was released.
Although the rally is apparently still set to take place, the question is whether Trump’s statements there will further discourage faith in the runoff elections among his followers.
