The report is the latest example of Trump’s extraordinary efforts to influence Georgia’s electoral authorities while certifying the results, although there is no evidence of widespread election fraud. Trump’s actions caught the attention of Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, as well as a Fulton County District Attorney who launched a criminal investigation.
“When the right answer comes, you will be praised,” Trump told Frances Watson, the chief investigator in the office of Georgia’s secretary of state, in a six-minute conversation on December 23, according to the Journal.
“I won everything but Georgia. And I won Georgia, I know that. A lot. And people know that. And something happened there. Something bad happened,” Trump would have said to Watson during the call.
At the time, Watson was investigating the secretary of state’s office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s audit of more than 15,000 signatures in Cobb County outside Atlanta. The audit results found no evidence of fraudulent votes in the mail and Biden was declared Georgia’s winner in the election.
“I hope you are going back two years instead of comparing each other,” Trump can be heard saying on the conference call. “Because that would just be a signature check that means nothing.”
Trump went on to tell Watson to also examine Fulton County, the state’s most populous county and home to most of Atlanta.
“But if you go back two years and you can get to Fulton, you will find things that will be unbelievable,” said the then president. “The dishonesty we hear about. But Fulton is the main lode.”
Watson replied, “I can assure you that our team and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation are only interested in the truth and finding information based on the facts.”
Ari Schaffer, a spokesman for Raffensperger’s office, told CNN: “This 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 legal votes and investigate any allegations of fraud. This is exactly what we did and how we arrived at the precise final vote count. ”
A Trump spokesman did not respond to a CNN request for comment on the Trump-Watson link.
Investigators on both probes are interested in Trump’s connection to Watson, according to sources familiar with the probes.
Willis made his investigative intentions clear with a round of letters to Georgia state officials in February, asking them to preserve documents relevant to electoral interference while she investigated potential state crimes, including soliciting electoral fraud, conspiracy and extortion.
A source familiar with the Georgia Secretary of State’s investigation confirmed that officials are analyzing two calls made by Trump to his office. One is the January phone call in which Trump pressured Raffensperger to “find” votes to overturn the election results after his defeat for Biden. The other involves Trump’s December 23 call to Watson.
In an earlier statement to CNN on February 9, Trump’s senior adviser Jason Miller said there was nothing “inappropriate or unpleasant” about the Trump-Raffensperger connection.
“If Raffensperger didn’t want to get calls about the election, he shouldn’t have run for secretary of state,” Miller said in the statement.