The Washington Post has obtained an audio tape of a phone call where Trump insists he won the state and threatened vague legal consequences.

Throughout the call, Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected Trump’s assertions, explaining that the president is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.

Here are excerpts from the call; 

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

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

Trump: 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.”

There’s no way I lost Georgia… There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”

So tell me, Brad, what are we going to do? We won the election, and it’s not fair to take it away from us like this. And it’s going to be very costly in many ways. And I think you have to say that you’re going to reexamine it, and you can reexamine it, but reexamine it with people that want to find answers, not people who don’t want to find answers.”

On Sunday, Trump tweeted that he had spoken to Raffensperger, saying the secretary of state was

“unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”

I spoke to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday about Fulton County and voter fraud in Georgia. He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the “ballots under table” scam, ballot destruction, out of state “voters”, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2021

Raffensperger responded with his own tweet:

“Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true.”

The Post reports that during their conversation, Trump issued a vague threat to both Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the secretary of state’s general counsel. He said that if they don’t find that thousands of ballots in Fulton County have been illegally destroyed to block investigators (an allegation for which there is no evidence) they would be subject to criminal liability.

Trump: “That’s a criminal offense And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.”

You have a big election coming up and because of what you’ve done to the president — you know, the people of Georgia know that this was a scam…

Because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote, and a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative, because they hate what you did to the president. Okay? They hate it. And they’re going to vote. And you would be respected, really respected, if this can be straightened out before the election.”

Trump did most of the talking on the call. He was angry and impatient, calling Raffensperger a “child” and “either dishonest or incompetent” for not believing there was widespread ballot fraud in Atlanta. Twice he called himself a “schmuck” for endorsing Kemp, whom Trump holds in particular contempt for not embracing his claims of fraud.

The secretary of state repeatedly pushed back, saying,

“Mr. President, the problem you have with social media, that — people can say anything.”

Trump: “Oh this isn’t social media.

This is Trump media. It’s not social media. It’s really not. It’s not social media. I don’t care about social media. I couldn’t care less.”

Trump claimed that votes were scanned three times:

“Brad, why did they put the votes in three times? You know, they put ’em in three times.”

Raffensperger: “Mr. President, they did not. We did an audit of that and we proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times.”

Trump realized that he was failing to persuade anyone of anything, saying toward the end,

“I know this phone call is going nowhere.”

Hopefully, it will go somewhere as evidence in a criminal trial of an ex-POTUS. But it’s all normalized now… Nothing. Will. Happen.

“Serial Killer Jaywalks”

Listen.

(via WaPo)