On January 2, 2021, during an hour-long conference call, U.S. president Donald Trump pressured Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to "find 11,780 votes" and overturn the U.S. election results from the 2020 presidential election. Trump had been defeated by Joe Biden in the election, but refused to accept the outcome, and made a months-long effort to overturn the results. Prior to the call to Raffensperger, Trump and his campaign spoke repeatedly to state and local officials in at least three states in which he had lost, urging them to recount votes, throw out some ballots, or replace the Democratic slate of electors with a Republican slate. Trump's call with Raffensperger was released by The Washington Post and other media outlets the next day, after Trump made a statement about the call on Twitter.
According to the publicly released recording of the call and reports made by multiple news agencies, Trump attempted to pressure Raffensperger into reinvestigating the election results, despite being repeatedly told that there was no electoral error. Trump's repeated efforts to convince Raffensperger to find some basis to overturn the election results were perceived as pleading and threatening. At one point on the call, Trump told Raffensperger, "What I want to do is this. I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state." During the call, Trump falsely suggested that Raffensperger could have committed a criminal offense by refusing to overturn the state's election results. Legal experts have suggested that Trump's behavior and demands could have violated state and federal laws.Multiple sources:
On January 11, the phone call was cited in the article of impeachment in the second impeachment of Donald Trump introduced in the House of Representatives. Raffensperger's office opened a fact-finding and administrative investigation of potential election interference regarding Trump's efforts to overturn the results in Georgia, and Fulton County prosecutors opened a criminal investigation in February of the same year. On August 14, 2023, Trump, along with 18 co-defendants, was indicted in Fulton County on charges including racketeering and fraud. The phone call was a central element of the indictment.
Background
In the 2020 United States presidential election, former Vice President Joe Biden defeated incumbent President Donald Trump. Trump and his campaign falsely claimed that voting fraud had cost him electoral victory in several states, including Georgia. Trump's claims were rejected and found to be baseless by numerous state and federal judges, elected officials, governors, and government agencies, including his own administration's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).Multiple sources:
Trump's attempts to overturn the election cost taxpayers $519 million according to an analysis by The Washington Post, including $488 million in security fees during and after the U.S. Capitol attack, and $2.2 million in legal fees.
Trump's many legal challenges to the election results were unsuccessful, but he repeatedly refused to accept the outcome of the election. Audits and hand recounts revealed no evidence of fraud or any irregularity that would have changed the election results. Biden was officially confirmed the winner of Georgia on November 19.
In November and December, as his lawsuits were repeatedly rejected in court, Trump personally communicated with Republican local and state officials in at least three states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. He talked in person or via phone to state legislators, state attorneys general, and governors, pressuring them to recount the votes, throw out some of the ballots, or get the state legislature to replace the elected Democratic slate of Electoral College members with a Republican slate of electors chosen by the legislature in order to overturn the election results in their states. In December he spoke by phone to the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, and made public demands on the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, both Republicans who had supported Trump in the election. He demanded that they reverse the Georgia election results, threatened them with political retaliation when they did not, strongly criticized them in speeches and tweets, and tweeted that Kemp should resign.
December 23 phone call with chief elections investigator On December 23, 2020, Trump called the chief investigator for the Georgia secretary of state's office, who was then conducting a ballot audit in Cobb County. Raffensperger had ordered the audit in response to allegations of fraud. Trump asked her to scrutinize the ballots and said she would find "dishonesty". The Washington Post reported on the telephone conversation with apparent quotations of Trump's comments to the chief investigator. It based these quotations on an anonymous source purportedly familiar with the call. At the time of its reporting, it emphasized that Trump had instructed the investigator to "find the fraud" and that she would be a "national hero" if she did so. Based on this reporting, some legal experts said that this phone call appeared to be bribery or obstruction on Trump's part. On December 29, the audit ended. Georgia officials concluded that there was no fraud. Trump was unhappy with those results.
Secretary of State Raffensperger acknowledged Trump's December 23 phone call to the chief investigator during a Good Morning America interview on January 4. The Washington Post revealed more details of the phone call on January 9, but did not reveal the name of the chief investigator to protect that person's safety. Other news outlets published similar stories and stated that they had corroborated the story with their own investigations. In the second impeachment against Trump, House managers specifically cited the purported statements to the Georgia investigator as part of the evidence supporting the call for impeachment in their trial brief presented to the United States Senate.
In March 2021, in the course of the criminal investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis into Trump's attempt to overturn the November 3 election, investigators obtained the audio recording made by the individual Trump was speaking to, from her computer. In response to a public records request, officials made the audio recording available to the press. The Wall Street Journal obtained and published the transcript of the phone call and revealed that the underlying sourcing for the Washington Post reporting, the quotations provided by the anonymous source, was fake. The recording indicated that Trump had emphasized to the investigator that Fulton County and its votes should be the object of scrutiny, but had never told the investigator to "find the fraud" or that the investigator would be a "national hero". Following the Associated Press's reporting of the discovery of the recording, The Washington Post issued a correction to its original article, as did other outlets such as The Hill and the Associated Press. In its correction, the Post said that Trump had been "misquoted". The quotes by Trump were corrected to "[you would] find things that are gonna be unbelievable" and "when the right answer comes out, you'll be praised".
January 2 taped conversation with Raffensperger On January 2, 2021, Trump held a one-hour phone call with Raffensperger. Trump was joined by chief of staff Mark Meadows, trade adviser Peter Navarro, Justice Department official John Lott, law professor John C. Eastman, and attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Cleta Mitchell, Alex Kaufman, and Kurt Hilbert. Raffensperger was joined by his general counsel Ryan Germany. Jordan Fuchs, a Republican operative and chief of staff to Brad Raffensperger, while listening on mute, recorded the phone conversation, while visiting her grandparents in Florida.
On January 3, The Washington Post and other media outlets obtained a recording of this phone conversation.
During the phone call, Trump maintained falsely that he had won Georgia by "hundreds of thousands of votes", insisting that the certified election results were wrong. He said that Raffensperger should "reevaluate" the election's results, citing a variety of different conspiracy theories regarding voting in the state. Raffensperger, in response, answered that the election results in that state were correct and legitimate, and that Trump "had got his data wrong". During his attempts to pressure Raffensperger into changing the election results, Trump said, "I just want to find 11,780 votes", the minimum number needed to overcome Biden's advantage in Georgia. Trump also tried to intimidate Raffensperger, hinting that Raffensperger and his attorney could face a possible criminal investigation. Trump said, "You know, that's a criminal offense. And you know, you can't let that happen. That's a big risk to you."
After the Georgia call, Trump and his team spoke on Zoom with officials in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Release of the tape On January 3 Trump said on Twitter that he had spoken to Raffensperger and that Raffensperger was "unwilling or unable to answer questions" about alleged election fraud and that he "has no clue". Later that day, the recording of the conversation was released to The Washington Post and other media outlets; a local television station said they had obtained it from "government sources".
Raffensperger said he had not initially intended to release the tape, but felt compelled to respond after Trump misrepresented the call on Twitter. He added that the call had been hastily arranged after Trump saw Raffensperger say on Fox News that morning that the election had been fair and honest and that Trump had lost. It was later reported that the White House had made 18 attempts over the previous weeks to get the secretary of state's office on the phone. Raffensperger said he had preferred not to take such calls because his office was in "litigation mode" with the White House, and both sides would need to have their advisers present.
Raffensperger's legal rights Some commentators raised legal concerns regarding Raffensperger's recording and disclosing his phone call with Trump; far right-wing media such as The Gateway Pundit, a prominent conspiracy theory website, specifically wrote that Raffensperger might face an espionage charge. PolitiFact cited legal experts that the content of the phone call was not covered by the Espionage Act, as the conversation had nothing to do with national security.
While there were rumors about a possible lawsuit against Raffensperger for recording the conversation without Trump's consent, the telephone call recording laws for both locations where this conversation was held, namely the state of Georgia and District of Columbia, only require "one-party consent", meaning any participant of a phone call can legally record it without another party's consent. As the conversation was hastily arranged, Raffensperger said that the parties did not establish any non-disclosure agreement before or during the phone call.
Investigations Legal experts said Trump's attempt to pressure Raffensperger could have violated election law, including federal and state laws against soliciting election fraud or interference in elections. Election-law scholar Edward B. Foley called Trump's conduct "inappropriate and contemptible" while the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington called Trump's attempt "to rig a presidential election ... a low point in American history and unquestionably impeachable conduct."