Georgia’s top electoral authority on Monday systematically rejected and dismantled inaccurate allegations made by President Trump and his allies about the election, calling it “anti-disinformation Monday”. Gabriel Sterling’s press conference came just hours after two House Democrats asked the FBI to open a criminal investigation into President Trump’s explosive connection with Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, for possible violations of federal and state election laws. .
“This is all easily, probably false. However, the president persists,” said Sterling, as he examined, one by one, the various unfounded and false claims about Dominion’s voting systems and countless ballots.
Congressman Ted Lieu of California and Congresswoman Kathleen Rice of New York placed their order in a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray on Monday after the audio of Trump’s hour-long call to Raffensperger was obtained and published by several media on Sunday, including CBS News. On the call, the president pressured the secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes” to reverse his defeat in Georgia’s presidential election.
“The evidence of electoral fraud by Trump is now in broad daylight,” wrote the two Democrats. “The prima facie elements of the above crimes have been fulfilled.”
Lieu and Rice, both former prosecutors, believe the president “was involved in soliciting or conspiring to commit a series of electoral crimes”. The pair cited two federal laws that they believe violated Trump, as well as a Georgia state law on requesting electoral fraud.
In the course of the conversation, Mr. Trump said to Raffensperger: “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.”
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry,” said the president. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you recalculated.”
President-elect Joe Biden defeated Trump in Georgia by 11,779 votes, and the ballots cast in the state were counted a total of three times, with Biden’s victory confirmed each time.
The president repeatedly stated in the phone call that he won the election in Peach State and suggested that the ballots were destroyed in Fulton County. The president also said that Dominion Voting Systems, a supplier of electoral technology, was removing or tampering with machines.
Raffensperger and his general counsel Ryan Germany, who was also on the call, repeatedly resisted Trump’s claims, with the secretary of state saying the results of the state elections were “accurate”.
“Mr. President, the challenge you have is that the data you have is wrong,” Raffensperger told the president.
Since November 3, election day, Raffensperger’s office has received 18 calls from the White House. The call on Saturday, however, was the first call the Secretary of State had made with Trump since election day.
Trump’s comments raised questions about whether he could be subject to legal scrutiny.
Raffensperger told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Monday that his office would not open an investigation as it could be a conflict of interest, but he believes the Fulton County prosecutor “wants to take a look”.
“Perhaps it is the appropriate place for this to happen,” he said.
Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis said in a statement that she considered the so-called “disturbing” and cited reports that the only Democrat on the state electoral council has asked the electoral division to investigate the summons, after which the council can refer the case to Willis’s office and the state attorney general.
“As I promised voters in Fulton County last year, as a public prosecutor, I will apply the law without fear or favor. Anyone who violates Georgia law in my jurisdiction will be held responsible, ”she said. “As soon as the investigation is completed, this matter, like all matters, will be dealt with by our office based on the facts and the law.”
Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, said it is “very possible” that the president violated federal law and probably violated state law in Georgia.
“The majority depends on what the president honestly believes at the moment, and the only options are not good,” he told CBS News. “So either he understands the reality and knows that there are 11,800 ballots somewhere that are Trump votes and not counted in recounts and audits, in which case he committed a crime. If he really understands the true nature of the world, if he can discern fact from fiction, he probably committed a crime. “
But, “if he doesn’t, then we have an chief executive who is still in power for 16.5 days who cannot safely distinguish between fact and fiction based on the information he receives,” continued Levitt.
“It’s not a big consolation prize,” he said, adding that there is “a lot” in Trump’s connection to Raffensperger “which is alarmingly indicative that the president can’t distinguish fact from fiction, that he bought his own conspiracy theories. . “
Levitt suggested that the White House president and chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who was on the call, may also have broken an 1871 law on criminal conspiracies to subvert civil rights if they agreed that the purpose of the call “was to see if we can convince them you to make a false count. “
“If Meadows knows, if he can distinguish between fact and fiction and has the same goal as the president, that’s all the conspiracy requires,” he said
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who led President Obama’s Justice Department, tweeted on Sunday that those who hear the audio of Trump’s call should “consider this federal criminal status” and included an image of a law that states that any person in a federal election who “intentionally deprives, defrauds or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of an electoral process conducted in a fair and impartial manner, by … obtaining, casting or tabulating votes that are known for their person is materially false, fictitious or fraudulent under the laws of the state in which the election is held “would be fined or imprisoned for up to five years.
Adam Brewster contributed to this report