Trump Demanded Georgia Official ‘Find’ Votes for Him: Wash Post

President Donald Trump called Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to demand that he find just enough votes to overturn Trump’s loss in the state to Joe Biden, theWashington Post reported.

Trump claimed on the call with Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, that he’d won the state by hundreds of thousands of votes and asked the official to find 11,780 ballots to alter the outcome, the newspaper said, citing a recording of thehour-long conversation that took place Saturday.

“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes,” Trump said, according to the newspaper.

The Washington Post said that Trump told Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the secretary of state’s legal counsel, that they would be subject to criminal liability if they don’t find that thousands of ballots in Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta, were illegally destroyed to block investigators. There’s no evidence for the allegation, the newspaper reported.

Since the Nov. 3 election, Trump has maintained a steady stream of unsubstantiated claims that he was the legitimate winner in Georgia and other battleground states, and that Biden only came out ahead because of widespread fraud.

The courts have rejected dozens of Republican-led lawsuits staked on those claims. Biden earned 7 million votes more than Trump and flipped five states that Trump won in 2016, including Georgia, which was once considered a Republican stronghold.

Two recounts in Georgia confirmed that Biden won the state.

Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer for Trump who was on the call, said in a statement that Raffensberger’s office had made claims about the election that aren’t correct, and asked for records showing that Trump’s numbers are wrong, the newspaper reported.

Attorney General William Barr, who stepped down before Christmas, said in early December that the U.S. Justice Department had uncovered no evidence of fraud on a scale that could have changed the outcome of the election.

Congress is required to accept the results of the electoral college. On Jan. 6, both chambers will meet jointly to open and count certificates of electoral votes from the 50 states and the District of Columbia, in alphabetical order.

— With assistance by Mario Parker

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