Page:Materials in Support of H. Res. 24.pdf/48

 The final tally showed that President Trump lost the State of Georgia by 11,779 votes. Georgia’s slate of presidential electors then duly cast their votes on December 14, 2020 in accordance with the Electoral Count Act of 1887. During the post-election period, the Trump campaign and supporters of President Trump filed at least seven lawsuits in Georgia courts seeking to overturn the result in Georgia or otherwise challenge the conduct of the election, all of which were dismissed either by the court or voluntarily by the plaintiff.

Against that background, on the afternoon of January 2, 2021, President Trump convened the call with Secretary Raffensperger. On the call he repeatedly urged the Secretary to accept or investigate claims of voting irregularities. The President insisted, “I think it’s pretty clear that we won. We won very substantially in Georgia.” The Secretary responded, “We don’t agree that you have won,” and explained that “the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong.” With respect to a claim made by President Trump that 5,000 votes were cast in Georgia by people recorded as having died, the Secretary explained that the state had investigated the matter and identified only two such votes. The President asserted that certain ballots were scanned three times. The Secretary responded, “We did an audit of that, and we proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times.” The President and one of his attorneys also asserted that 4,500 voters had cast Georgia ballots after moving out of the state. The Secretary and a Georgia official explained in response that the state had been “going through each of those as well,” and that “[e]very one we’ve been through are people that lived in Georgia, moved to a different state, but then moved back to Georgia legitimately.”

President Trump refused to accept Secretary Raffenberger’sRaffenperger’s [sic] conclusion that he had not won the election. He told the Secretary that “the ballots are corrupt,” that this was “totally illegal” and in fact “more illegal for you than it is for them” because “you’re not reporting it.” “That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense,” he said, and “a big risk to you.” He said that the state was “shredding ballots” and “removing machinery,” and said, “I’m notifying you that you’re letting it happen.” And he told the Secretary, “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.”

President Trump cared only that a state official certify that he won Georgia. He asked the Secretary to belatedly “find” new votes for him—just enough for him to win the state. He did not care about the actual results. He was indifferent to the truth or falsity of the unsupported claims of voting impropriety that he asserted. And to back up his demands, he threatened the Secretary, alluding to the possibility that his government would pursue criminal charges against him if he failed to “find” those votes.

This exchange comes on the heels of a call in late December in which President Trump was reported to have pressured a top Georgia election official, saying the investigator would be a