Day 1446: "No way." - a podcast by Matt Kiser

1/ Trump pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” him enough votes to overturn the state’s presidential election results. Trump told Brad Raffensperger in an hourlong phone call, which also included Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and legal advisers, “We have won the election in Georgia based on all of this. And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, Brad.” Raffensperger pushed back, telling Trump “the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.” Trump, however, continued to push his debunked theories of election fraud, like “stuffed ballot boxes,” and, at one point said: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.” Trump later added: “So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.” At one point, Trump warned that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk” by not pursuing his false claims and threatened him with “a criminal offense.” Throughout the call, Trump repeated that “There’s no way I lost Georgia […] There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.” Trump lost to Biden by 11,779 votes. Since the election, there have been 18 attempted calls from the White House to the Georgia secretary of state’s office. An intern monitoring the line, however, thought the calls were a prank and hung up. (Washington Post / Atlanta Journal-Constitution / New York Times / NPR / Politico)

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  [LISTEN] The full transcript and audio of the call between Trump and Raffensperger.

  
  


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  The 37 most outrageous lines from Trump’s call with the Georgia secretary of state. (CNN)

  
  


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  All 10 living former Defense secretaries said the “time for questioning the results” of the 2020 election has passed and warned that involving the U.S. military in election disputes would take the country into “dangerous” territory. (Washington Post / Axios)

  
  

2/ Trump’s call to Georgia’s secretary of state may have violated laws that prohibit interference in federal or state elections. Brad Raffensperger said that while it was unlikely his office would open an investigation into the call with Trump, he suggested that a criminal probe could still be launched by an Atlanta-area district attorney. Raffensperger added, “I understand that the Fulton County district attorney wants to look at it. Maybe that’s the appropriate venue for ...

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