Trump Defends ‘PERFECT’ Phone Calls to Georgia As Criminal Inquiry Ramps Up
Paul J. Richards, AFP
Former President Donald Trump is insisting that “BOTH” of his phone calls to Georgia were “PERFECT” and also reminded the public at large that he is a firm believer in ALL CAPS as a device to connote truth, though most reasonable people likely believe the opposite.
At issue? High-profile subpoenas served to former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Sen. Lindsey Graham, and a host of other figures to appear before the special grand jury investigating Trump’s effort to overturn election results in Georgia.
But Trump insists that he had an absolute right to make the calls and then cited a Washington Post report on of the calls that “was given a retraction” by the paper. Trump posted on TruthSocial:
BOTH of my phone calls to Georgia were PERFECT. I had an absolute right to make them &, in fact, the story on the one call was given a retraction, or apology, by the Washington Post because they were given terribly false information about it, & when they heard the actual call, they realized that their story was wrong. Thank you to the W.P. I, as does anyone else (just look at the Democrats!), have the absolute right to challenge the results of an Election.This one, CORRUPT, RIGGED, & STOLEN!
Writing for The Washington Post’s curiously named “Erik Wemple Blog,” Erik Wemple explained the retractions Trump referenced in his signature pithy style:
On Jan. 9, The Post reported that then-President Donald Trump, in a call with Georgia’s lead elections investigator, Frances Watson, had instructed her to “find the fraud.” He mentioned that she could become a “national hero,” reported the newspaper.
In both cases, the quotes were wrong, as The Post has acknowledged in a correction to the story. “Trump did not tell the investigator to ‘find the fraud’ or say she would be ‘a national hero’ if she did so. Instead, Trump urged the investigator to scrutinize ballots in Fulton County, Ga., asserting she would find ‘dishonesty’ there. He also told her that she had ‘the most important job in the country right now,’”reads the correction, in part.
On Wednesday morning CNN New Day co-anchors Brianna Keilar and John Berman discussed the criminal inquiry news out of Georgia, and asked NY Times reporter Maggie Haberman how Trump’s worry over the Georgia probe stacks up against his Haberman-reported anxiety over Attorney General Merrick Garland‘s criminal investigation.
Haberman suggested that Trump is “certainly concerned,” and that he might even be more worried about Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis‘s special grand jury, pointing out that “there is a tape of him in Georgia.”
It’s almost as if Trump’s social media post was designed to prove Haberman’s point.
