Georgia Sec of State Raffensperger Claims Trump’s Direction to ‘Find’ Votes in Georgia was a Threat

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s new book, published Tuesday, is making headlines as the Republican official claims former President Donald Trump pressuring him to “find” votes was a threat. 

Raffensperger made the rounds on cable TV promoting the book and told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Monday night that he wrote the book to “set the record straight. It’s a fact-based book. I’m a structural engineer so I’m good with numbers.”

Raffensperger includes in the book, titled Integrity Counts, a 40-page transcript of the call where Trump asks him to “give [him] a break” and “to find 11,780 votes.” Trump lost Georgia to Joe Biden by 11,799 votes. 

During the call, Trump also suggests Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the secretary of state’s legal counsel, could both be criminally liable if they fail to overturn the election. “That’s a criminal offense,” Trump says. “And you can’t let that happen.”

Raffensperger writes in the book: 

“I felt then—and still believe today—that this was a threat… Others obviously thought so, too, because some of Trump’s more radical followers have responded as if it was their duty to carry out this threat.”

Raffensperger details threats made against himself and his family: 

 “For people to threaten my wife, my daughter-in-law, our family, election workers, poll workers in 75, 80 percent Trump counties in Georgia is absolutely atrocious behavior. If these people’s parents and grandparents saw what they were doing and saying, I think they would take them all out to the woodshed because that’s not how your mom raised you.”  

He also pulls no punches when talking about his fellow Republicans who have echoed Trump’s false allegations that the election was stolen. “When you eat your young and you go after people in your own party who are loyal, traditional Republicans, you are destroying our future as a party,” Raffensperger writes.

Debunking the false allegations Trump won Georgia, Raffensperger explains to Cooper the simple electoral math of how Trump lost:

“28,000 Georgians skipped the presidential ballot, did not vote for anyone. Joe Biden, President Trump, or Joe Jorgenson, but yet they voted down ballot. David perdue, our senator, got 20,000 more votes in metro Atlanta and also in Athens than President Trump did. Our Republican congressman got 33,000 more votes than President Trump. That tells the whole story right there.”