Trump Defends ‘Perfect’ Phone Call With Georgia Secretary of State After Prosecutor Calls for Grand Jury to Investigate
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Former President Donald Trump issued a statement on Thursday defending his Jan. 2, 2021 phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger as having been “perfect” — more perfect even than his call with the Ukrainian president, which got him impeached the first time.
Trump called Raffensperger, down nearly 12,000 votes in the Peach State following the 2020 election, and held an hour-long conversation in which Trump flat out asked the election official to find enough votes for him to be declared the winner.
“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said, in a conversation that was caught on tape. “Because we won the state.”
Trump had called while contesting the election results in Georgia to ask Raffensperger to help him close the deficit, and claimed he was down because of voter fraud.
The conversation remains a source of controversy, as investigations continue into whether or not the call was criminal in nature.
CNBC reported Thursday that a prosecutor asked a judge in Atlanta asked to “impanel a special grand jury to investigate efforts by then-President Donald Trump to sway the outcome of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia after results showed President Joe Biden won that state.”
Trump issued a statement in which he defended the call:
My phone call to the Secretary of State of Georgia was perfect, perhaps even more so than my call with the Ukrainian President, if that’s possible. I knew there were large numbers of people on the line, including numerous lawyers for both sides. Although I assumed the call may have been inappropriately, and perhaps illegally, recorded, I was not informed of that. I didn’t say anything wrong in the call, made while I was President on behalf of the United States of America, to look into the massive voter fraud which took place in Georgia.
Trump also called a potential investigation into the phone call a witch hunt:
Just last week, it was further determined that they are looking into ballot harvesting in Fulton County, after supposedly watching tapes of it actually taking place. This alone could be tens of thousands of votes. What this Civil Special Grand Jury should be looking into is not my perfect phone call, but the large scale voter fraud that took place in Georgia. Then they would be doing a great job for the people. No more political witch hunts!
