Fox’s Jonathan Turley Tells Hannity Trump Made a ‘Natural Argument’ With Demand To ‘Find’ Votes in Georgia

Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley told Sean Hannity on Monday night that former President Donald Trump made a “natural argument” when telling Georgia state officials to help him “find” the votes needed to overturn the presidential election result in the state in the wake of the 2020 election.

Hannity and Turley discussed the highly publicized and controversial phone call from Jan. 2, 2021 in the wake of new charges against Trump regarding his efforts to overturn the election. Turley’s argument appeared to stand stand in stark contrast to a tweet he put out immediately after learning about the phone call on Jan. 3, in which he called Trump’s forceful request to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “breathtaking.” Raffensperger later characterized Trump’s behavior on the phone call as a “threat.”

“When somebody talks about a real belief in their heart that he believes he won by 400,000 votes. That was on that phone call transcript. and another 8000 votes here and another 17,000 votes here. And then it’s, what, 11,780, I believe, was. That’s all I need. That’s hardly an indictment of the president saying, well, you get me 11,780. I really think I want 400,000 more than you’re counting. I think that is an overall or overarching argument he’s making, no? How do you interpret it?” Hannity asked after offering his own favorable take on Trump’s conduct.

“Well, no, I did interpret the call as suggesting that I don’t need many votes in a recount to change the outcome. It was a natural argument to make. This was essentially like a settlement call,” Turley said, adding:

And state officials were pushing back, I think, in good faith, saying, look, we looked at it. We don’t see those votes. And Trump basically responded, If you do a state recount, I don’t need many votes. You just need to find 11,000 and this entire election turns over. Now we can all debate what was in Donald Trump’s mind. But is that really the basis of a criminal case? Is that what you want for future cases? Elections have been challenged in this country in virtually every election.

I’ve covered elections for various networks, probably the last ten or so elections, or it seems that many and every single one which we would chart and track the challenges coming from the losing party. We never accused them of committing a crime about it. So the question here is, what do you have to distinguish this case that won’t create that chilling effect?

On Jan. 3, 2021, Turley wrote on Twitter, “Telling Raffensperger to “find” the votes on the Saturday before the certification is breathtaking.”

“I am as mystified by the request as I am the logic. Such an opportunistic move to secure the 16 electoral votes would not work to change the outcome,” he added linking to a Washington Post article titled, “‘I just want to find 11,780 votes’: In extraordinary hour-long call, Trump pressures Georgia secretary of state to recalculate the vote in his favor.”

On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, Turley published an op-ed on FoxNews.com arguing that the phone call does not show criminal behavior on Trump’s part.

Turley explained to Mediaite in a statement that his tweet was based on “errors” in the Washington Post report on the phone call. “I have repeatedly criticized Trump for both his Ukrainian and his Georgia calls. I did so this week. I have long disagreed with the former president’s rhetoric,” Turley wrote in his statement, adding:

The tweet cited in the article was from Jan. 3, 2021 based on the Washington Post account, which indicated that Trump told the officials to just “find” the votes. The transcript presented a sharply different context and meaning. The next day, I gave interviews on those differences and I then ran a column stating that the transcript shows a clear alternative meaning. I later wrote on the errors in the Post account of the calls. To its credit, the Post admitted the errors in its original story. I stated, as I have continued to state, that reasonable people can disagree on that meaning.

I continued to criticize the call (as I did this week) but stressed that the transcript offers a viable and compelling defense. I made that observation the same week as the cited tweet. There was no change or recent evolution of my views on the call. I actually later wrote a column on the errors in the Post account of the calls.

Putting aside my statement the next day in light of the transcript, there is also a difference between criticism of the language and the view of language as part of a criminal case. After reading the full transcript, I concluded that that defense is strong and that Trump was referring to what he needed to overcome the deficit in votes. Any “evolution” that occurred was limited to the span of a few hours between the erroneous Post article and my view of language in context the next day. (Notably, there was no article on how the Post’s view of the call “evolved”). I have maintained the same position on the call after my first response to the original (later corrected) Post article.

Trump’s phone call with Raffensperger figures prominently in the Georgia indictment as does “the fake elector scheme and a September 2021 letter he sent to Raffensperger again urging him to decertify the state’s 2020 vote,” noted CNN.

Watch the clip above via Fox News.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated with a statement from Turley and additional context related to his Jan. 3, 2021 tweet.