The CBS News “60 Minutes” program found that the call to Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2 was not President Trump’s first attempt to influence the outcome of the state election. Sources told “60 Minutes” that last month the president himself called one of Georgia’s secretary of state investigators.
An informed person on the call said that Trump told the investigator that he would be a “national hero” if evidence of fraud were found. But no evidence was found by the investigator, and days later Mr. Trump would also be rejected by Raffensperger. The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comment from the CBS News unit at the White House.
“60 Minutes” will air Sunday on CBS.
CBS News obtained audio of the January 2 call. According to the audio of the call, the president told 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 Washington Post first reported the content of the call and published the audio. The White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, also participated in the discussion.
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry,” Trump can be heard saying on the audio recording. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you recalculated.”
Raffensperger, a Republican, countered Trump’s suggestion by telling him that “the data you have is wrong.” He also repeatedly told Trump that the election results were accurate and rejected the president’s baseless allegations. Mr. Trump lost the presidential race in Georgia to President-elect Joe Biden by 11,779 votes. Congress registered the votes of the Electoral College and reaffirmed Biden’s victory earlier on Thursday.