Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger speaks during a news conference on Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2020, in Atlanta. On Jan. 2, President Trump called Raffensperger to try to get him to create new election results that would show Trump winning. Raffensperger, a Republican, said no.
Brynn Anderson / AP Photo
Brynn Anderson / AP Photo
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger speaks during a news conference on Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2020, in Atlanta. On Jan. 2, President Trump called Raffensperger to try to get him to create new election results that would show Trump winning. Raffensperger, a Republican, said no.
Brynn Anderson / AP Photo
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger speaks during a news conference on Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2020, in Atlanta. On Jan. 2, President Trump called Raffensperger to try to get him to create new election results that would show Trump winning. Raffensperger, a Republican, said no.
An angry President Trump pushed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, to overturn the state’s presidential results, and appeared to at least partly blame him for what could be lower turnout in Tuesday’s runoff elections that will decide control of the U.S. Senate, according to a recording of a phone call obtained by Georgia Public Broadcasting.
“The people of Georgia know that this was a scam, and because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote [in the runoffs],” Trump said in the remarkable Saturday call. “A lot of Republicans are going to vote negative because they hate what you did to the president.”
County, state and federal judges and public officials of both political parties, and election experts, have concluded the 2020 election was free and fair. Yet seven Pennsylvania Republican congressmen signed on to a lawsuit filed in the U.S. Supreme Court that aimed to overturn the will of the more than 81 million voters who elected Joe Biden president over incumbent Donald Trump.
The seven are:
The Supreme Court declined to hear arguments in the lawsuit, filed by the state of Texas, because it said Texas was not able to show it was harmed by how Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia conducted their elections.
Two justices — Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — noted they believe the high court is obligated to hear any case filed directly to it, as this one was. But both said they would not have granted Texas the relief it sought.
Those seven congressmen, joined by Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R, 11th District), say they will not vote to support Pennsylvania’s electors on Jan. 6, despite the state’s legal certification of those electoral votes on Dec. 14 and despite multiple courts having dismissed election-challenge cases for reasons including lack of evidence and lack of standing to sue.
He added: “You would be respected if this thing could be straightened out before the election.” Trump lost the state by nearly 12,000 votes to President-elect Joe Biden.
Raffensperger and a lawyer for his office told Trump his assertions were wrong and refused the President’s demands. Biden beat Trump by more than 7 million votes and won 306 electoral college votes to Trump’s 232. States certified their results on Dec. 14. Congress will count the votes Jan. 6, formalizing Biden’s victory. Biden will be inaugurated Jan. 20.
More than 3 million Georgians have already voted in the two Jan. 5 runoffs that pit incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue against Democrat Jon Ossoff and incumbent GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler against Democrat Raphael Warnock.
Before Tuesday, advance turnout has lagged in heavily Republican parts of the state. Trump suggested Raffensperger was responsible for the drop in GOP enthusiasm, while the secretary of state has said the White House and state lawmakers spreading misinformation is to blame.
On Sunday morning, Trump railed against Raffensperger on social media, retweeting baseless claims of election fraud and stating that Georgia’s top election official was “unwilling, or unable, to answer questions” about alleged problems in the state.
But the audio recording of the hourlong call details that Raffensperger and representatives of the secretary of state’s office continued to patiently knock down some of the more inflammatory claims made by Trump and other top Republicans who allege hundreds of thousands of votes were illegally counted.
“Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong,” Raffensperger said at one point. “We have to stand by our numbers; we believe our numbers are right.”
Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, told Raffensperger he was hopeful that in a “spirit of cooperation and compromise” there would be some way to find a path forward to overturn Georgia’s certified election results that were confirmed both by a full hand audit and a machine recount.
“We don’t agree that you have one,” Raffensperger said.
An attorney for the secretary of state’s office told the president on the call that state investigators, law enforcement and the courts looked into claims of illegal votes and found no evidence of widespread fraud that would overturn Trump’s narrow loss.
But the president was undeterred.
“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 stated at one point. “Flipping the state is a great testament to our country; it’s a testament that they can admit to a mistake. A lot of people think it wasn’t a mistake, it was much more criminal than that. But it’s a big problem in Georgia and it’s not a problem that’s going away.”
Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true. The truth will come out https://t.co/ViYjTSeRcC
— GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (@GaSecofState) January 3, 2021
Sometimes, your mornings are just too busy to catch the news beyond a headline or two. Don’t worry. The Morning Agenda has got your back. Each weekday morning, host Tim Lambert will keep you informed, amused, enlightened and up-to-date on what’s happening in central Pennsylvania and the rest of this great commonwealth.
