Tape shows Trump asked Georgia official to 'find' votes for him after loss

Washington - In a recorded conversation released on Sunday, Trump pressures Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to overturn his election defeat there

The release on Sunday by US media of a stunning audio tape in which President Donald Trump pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to overturn his election defeat there to Democrat Joe Biden sent shockwaves across Washington.

The tape, a rebel push by scores of Republican lawmakers to challenge Biden’s electoral win later this week, a pair of runoff elections in Georgia to decide control of the US Senate and expected pro-Trump protests in Washington are combining to set the stage for a fiery week in American politics.

Lawmakers got back to work on Sunday on Capitol Hill, where Democrat Nancy Pelosi was narrowly reelected as speaker of the House of Representatives, but the real political fireworks are to come later in the week.

Following the release of the recording, Democrats and a few Republicans heaped scorn on the outgoing president, who fired off a tweetstorm of unsubstantiated claims of fraud in the November 3 election.

The taped conversation between Trump and fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, first obtained by The Washington Post, includes vague threats by Trump that Raffensperger and another official could face “a big risk” if they failed to take moves toward overturning Biden’s victory.

“There’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated” the vote tally, Trump is heard saying on the tape. “You’re off by hundreds of thousands of votes.”

Raffensperger is heard responding: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”

Biden won the long Republican-leaning state by fewer than 12,000 votes — a narrow margin, but one that has remained unchanged through a series of recounts and audits.

“The current margin is only 11,779. Brad, I think you agree with that, right?” Trump says. “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes.”

Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected Trump’s assertions throughout, and told the president that he was relying on debunked conspiracy theories spread on social media about what was a fair and accurate election, according to the audio excerpts and the newspaper’s account.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” Trump said, according to audio of the call published online by the Post. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

“So look. 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,” Trump said in the recording, insisting that there was “no way” he lost in Georgia.

The White House declined to comment. Raffensperger’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Making Trump’s call more surprising is the fact that even a hypothetical reversal in Georgia, which has 16 Electoral College votes, would not overturn victory by Biden, who won by a margin of 306 to 232.

Ahead of the release of the audio, Trump tweeted about the call, saying that Raffensperger “was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more.”

Raffensperger tweeted back, also ahead of the release of the audio, saying: “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true. The truth will come out.”

After the release, the White House declined to comment.

Democrats reacted furiously.

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris slammed it as “the voice of desperation” and a “bald-faced, bold abuse of power by the President of the United States” during a rally in Savannah, Georgia.

One moderate Republican, Congressman Adam Kinzinger, tweeted: “This is absolutely appalling. To every member of Congress considering objecting to the election results, you cannot — in light of this — do so with a clean conscience.”

It was unclear what impact the tape’s release might have on the twin runoff elections in Georgia on Tuesday, which will decide who controls the US Senate.