In an hour-long phone call on Saturday, Donald Trump pressed Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to overturn Joe Biden’s victory there in the election the president
refuses to concede.
The Washington Post
obtained a tape of the “extraordinary” conversation, which Trump
acknowledged on Twitter.
Amid widespread outrage including calls for a second impeachment, Bob Bauer, a senior Biden adviser,
said: “We now have irrefutable proof of a president pressuring and threatening an official of his own party to get him to rescind a state’s lawful, certified vote count and fabricate another in its place.”
The Post published
the full call.
“The people of
Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” Trump said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”
Raffensperger is a Republican who has become
a bête noire among Trump supporters for repeatedly saying Biden’s win in his state was fair. In one of a number of parries, he said: “Well, Mr President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”
Trump said: “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.”