In a phone call in December with Chief Investigator of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office, former President Donald Trump insisted he won Georgia’s presidential election, telling the investigator that “the country is counting on” an audit that has been launched to determine if the signature verification process the ballots by mail were done correctly in the state’s third largest county, according to a newly published audio recording obtained by The Wall Street Journal.
“This country is counting on it because it is very interesting … I won everything but Georgia, you know, and I won Georgia – I know it – for a long time, and people know it, and you know, something happened there I mean, something bad has happened, “Trump said to chief investigator Frances Watson, according to the six-minute recording of the call.
The ex-president continues to say to Watson: “When the right answer comes, you will be praised. … People will say, great, because it is – that is what it is about, the ability to check and do is right because everyone knows that is wrong. “
The existence of this new audio recording comes amid a criminal investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the November elections in Georgia, which he lost by 11,779 votes. At the heart of that investigation, which was launched by the Fulton County Attorney’s office last month, is a one-hour call that Trump had with Raffensperger on January 2. In that connection, Trump spewed out unfounded conspiracy theories and falsehoods about the election and begged Raffensperger to “find” the exact number of votes he needed to win Georgia. Trump denied any wrongdoing and his impeachment lawyers contested that he “acted improperly on that phone call anyway”.
A Trump spokesman did not respond to ABC News’s request for comment.
Raffensperger announced on December 14 that investigators in his office, in coordination with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), would conduct an audit of the correspondence of missing voting envelope signatures, saying that there were specific and credible allegations that the correspondence of signatures were not made correctly by election officials in the June primaries. A total of 15,118 absentee voting envelopes, which is where voters sign, were randomly selected to be audited.
The audit was completed on December 29, and investigators found only two ballots that should not have been accepted as they were and should have gone through the “cure” process. But the GBI director also made it clear that neither ballot was fraudulently issued.
According to the recording, Watson assured Trump that his team and GBI are “only interested in the truth and in finding, you know, finding information based on the facts”.
ABC News previously reported on the existence of this call in January. At that time, a source familiar with the matter said that Trump told Watson to “find the fraud” and that she would be a “national hero” for that. These exact words are not spoken in the audio recording of the call. In a later conversation, this source told ABC News that this is how Watson interpreted the president’s words and how she described the call to that source.
When the call was first reported, ABC News did not identify the investigator because the source who shared the details of the call asked Watson to remain anonymous due to the threatening environment facing election officials. In this recording, however, Trump identifies her by name.
ABC News contacted Watson to comment on the call and the audio recording, but received no response. However, ABC’s affiliate in Atlanta, WSB, also obtained the recording and spoke exclusively to Watson.
“It was something that was not expected and, as I mentioned in the call, I was shocked that he took the trouble to do that,” Watson told Mark Winne of the WSB.
She also said that she did not feel pressured and that the investigating agency had requested the call.
In a statement, Raffensperger’s spokesman, Ari Schaffer, said: “This phone call is just another example of how public comments from Secretary Raffensperger’s office also reflect what was said in individual conversations: We would follow the law, we would count all the legal items to vote and investigate any allegations of fraud. This is exactly what we did and how we arrived at the precise final vote count. “
In the recording of the call, Trump mentions Watson meeting with his team leader, Mark Meadows, and Watson indicates that this happened the day before the call. ABC News previously confirmed that Meadows was in Cobb County trying to watch the audit taking place on December 22. Raffensperger’s assistant, Jordan Fuchs, said at the time that he did not allow Meadows to enter the room where investigators were working, but he did allow him to. to stay at the door.
Trump talks a lot during this conference call, sometimes rambling about his electoral victories in other states, like Florida, Ohio, Alabama and Texas, which implies that these victories are evidence that his defeat in Georgia was impossible.
“Whatever you can do, Frances, it would be – it is a great thing. It is an important thing for the country, so important. You have no idea, it is so important. And I thank you very much,” he said, according to the record.
Towards the end of the call, Trump asked Watson if investigators will be working until Christmas, saying, “Because you know we have this 6 date, which is a very important day.”
January 6 was the day that Congress counted electoral votes, the last step in the process of certifying the victory of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
That morning, Trump told a crowd of supporters at a rally: “I know everyone here will soon be marching to the Capitol building to make their voices heard in a peaceful and patriotic way. … We fight like hell. What if you don’t. ” fight like the devil, you will no longer have a country. “
It didn’t take long for a crowd of Trump supporters and violent extremists to invade the U.S. Capitol, overtaking the police to infiltrate the country’s government headquarters, forcing lawmakers and then Vice President Mike Pence to seek safety while the rebels tried obstruct Congress and Pence from fulfilling their constitutional duty to assert Biden’s victory.