President Donald Trump pleaded with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” additional votes to secure a win in the state’s presidential contest during a recently-released phone recording obtained by The Washington Post.
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” the president said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”
During the call, Trump, who for months has alleged that mysterious ballots were added to official tallies and targeted Dominion Voting machines that were used in Georgia, refused to let go of the belief that he could somehow change the results.
President-elect Joe Biden defeated Trump in Georgia by nearly 13,000 votes, becoming the first Democratic presidential nominee to win the state since Bill Clinton in 1992.
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President Donald Trump pleaded with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” additional votes to secure a win in the state’s presidential contest during an hour-long phone call, according to a recording of the conversation obtained by The Washington Post

In the recording, Brad Raffensperger, also a Republican, was subject to a highly intense pressure campaign by Trump, with the president telling the secretary of state that he was taking “a big risk” by not adhering to his demands to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s nearly 13,000-vote statewide win.

During the call, Raffensperger and a general counsel from his office refuted Trump’s questioning of the vote tally, informing the president that the election was secure and that his allegations of widespread voter fraud throughout the state were false.

Trump, unhappy with the direction of the conversation, tried to shift the conversation by questioning the veracity of the overall vote tally.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” the president said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

Raffensperger replied: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”

Later in the conversation, Trump asked Raffensperger for help closing his statewide vote deficit.

“All I want to do is this … I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” he said. “Because we won the state.”