Trump's phone call to Georgia' Sec. of State

[homersapien 11,416]

I was going to say "unbelievable" but it's really not.

 

By

Amy Gardner

Jan. 3, 2021 at 12:59 p.m. EST

 

President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions.

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.”

Throughout the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected Trump’s assertions, explaining that the president is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.

 

President Trump walks to the Oval Office after returning from Florida on Thursday. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Trump dismissed their arguments.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

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

At another point, Trump said: “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.”

The rambling and at times incoherent conversation offered a remarkable glimpse of how consumed and desperate the president remains about his loss, unwilling or unable to let the matter go and still believing he can reverse the results in enough battleground states to remain in office.

“There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump said, a phrase he repeated again and again on the call. “There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”

Several of his allies were on the line as he spoke, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a prominent GOP lawyer whose involvement with Trump’s efforts had not been previously known.

In a statement, Mitchell said Raffensperger’s office “has made many statements over the past two months that are simply not correct and everyone involved with the efforts on behalf of the President’s election challenge has said the same thing: show us your records on which you rely to make these statements that our numbers are wrong.”

The White House, the Trump campaign and Meadows did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Raffensperger’s office declined to comment.

Election results under attack: Here are the facts

On Sunday, Trump tweeted that he had spoken to Raffensperger, saying the secretary of state was “unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the “ballots under table” scam, ballot destruction, out of state “voters”, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”

Raffensperger responded with his own tweet: “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true.”

The pressure Trump put on Raffensperger is the latest example of his attempt to subvert the outcome of the Nov. 3 election through personal outreach to state Republican officials. He previously invited Michigan Republican state leaders to the White House, pressured Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) in a call to try to replace that state’s electors and asked the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to help reverse his loss in that state.

His call to Raffensperger came as scores of Republicans have pledged to challenge the Electoral College’s vote for Biden when Congress convenes for a joint session on Wednesday. Republicans do not have the votes to successfully thwart Biden’s victory, but Trump has urged supporters to travel to Washington to protest the outcome, and state and federal officials are already bracing for clashes outside the Capitol.

Growing number of Trump loyalists in the Senate vow to challenge Biden’s victory

During their conversation, Trump issued a vague threat to both Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the secretary of state’s legal counsel, suggesting that if they don’t find that thousands of ballots in Fulton County have been illegally destroyed to block investigators — an allegation for which there is no evidence — they would be subject to criminal liability.

“That’s a criminal offense,” he said. “And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.”

Trump also told Raffensperger that failure to act by Tuesday would jeopardize the political fortunes of David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, Georgia’s two Republican senators whose fate in that day’s runoff elections will determine control of the U.S. Senate.

Trump said he plans to talk about the fraud on Monday, when he is scheduled to lead an election eve rally in Dalton, Ga. — a message that could further muddle the efforts of Republicans to get their voters out.

“You have a big election coming up and because of what you’ve done to the president — you know, the people of Georgia know that this was a scam,” Trump said. “Because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote, and a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative, because they hate what you did to the president. Okay? They hate it. And they’re going to vote. And you would be respected, really respected, if this can be straightened out before the election.”

Trump’s conversation with Raffensperger put him in legally questionable territory, legal experts said. By exhorting the secretary of state to “find” votes and to deploy investigators who “want to find answers,” Trump appears to be encouraging him to doctor the election outcome in Georgia.

But experts said Trump’s clearer transgression is a moral one. Edward B. Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University, said that the legal questions are murky and would be subject to prosecutorial discretion. But he also emphasized that the call was “inappropriate and contemptible” and should prompt moral outrage.

“He was already tripping the emergency meter,” Foley said. “So we were at 12 on a scale of 1 to 10, and now we’re at 15.”

Throughout the call, Trump detailed an exhaustive list of disinformation and conspiracy theories to support his position. He claimed without evidence that he had won Georgia by at least a half-million votes. He floated a barrage of assertions that have been investigated and disproved: that thousands of dead people voted; that an Atlanta election worker scanned 18,000 forged ballots three times each and “100 percent” were for Biden; that thousands more voters living out of state came back to Georgia illegally just to vote in the election.

“So tell me, Brad, what are we going to do? We won the election, and it’s not fair to take it away from us like this,” Trump said. “And it’s going to be very costly in many ways. And I think you have to say that you’re going to reexamine it, and you can reexamine it, but reexamine it with people that want to find answers, not people who don’t want to find answers.”

Trump did most of the talking on the call. He was angry and impatient, calling Raffensperger a “child” and “either dishonest or incompetent” for not believing there was widespread ballot fraud in Atlanta — and twice calling himself a “schmuck” for endorsing Kemp, whom Trump holds in particular contempt for not embracing his claims of fraud.

“I can’t imagine he’s ever getting elected again, I’ll tell you that much right now,” he said.

He also took aim at Kemp’s 2018 opponent, Democrat Stacey Abrams, trying to shame Raffensperger with the idea that his refusal to embrace fraud has helped her and Democrats generally. “Stacey Abrams is laughing about you,” he said. “She’s going around saying, ‘These guys are dumber than a rock.’ What she’s done to this party is unbelievable, I tell you.”

The secretary of state repeatedly sought to push back, saying at one point, “Mr. President, the problem you have with social media, that — people can say anything.”

“Oh this isn’t social media,” Trump retorted. “This is Trump media. It’s not social media. It’s really not. It’s not social media. I don’t care about social media. I couldn’t care less.”

At another point, Trump claimed that votes were scanned three times: “Brad, why did they put the votes in three times? You know, they put ’em in three times.”

Raffensperger responded: “Mr. President, they did not. We did an audit of that and we proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times.”

Trump sounded at turns confused and meandering. At one point, he referred to Kemp as “George.” He tossed out several different figures for Biden’s margin of victory in Georgia and referred to the Senate runoff, which is Tuesday, as happening “tomorrow” and “Monday.”

His desperation was perhaps most pronounced during an exchange with Germany, Raffensperger’s general counsel, in which he openly begged for validation.

Trump: “Do you think it’s possible that they shredded ballots in Fulton County? ’Cause that’s what the rumor is. And also that Dominion took out machines. That Dominion is really moving fast to get rid of their, uh, machinery. Do you know anything about that? Because that’s illegal.”

Germany responded: “No, Dominion has not moved any machinery out of Fulton County.”

Trump: “But have they moved the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts?”

Germany: “No.”

Trump: “Are you sure? Ryan?”

Germany: “I’m sure. I’m sure, Mr. President.”

It was clear from the call that Trump has surrounded himself with aides who have fed his false perceptions that the election was stolen. When he claimed that more than 5,000 ballots were cast in Georgia in the name of dead people, Raffensperger responded forcefully: “The actual number was two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted.”

But later, Meadows said, “I can promise you there are more than that.”

Another Trump lawyer on the call, Kurt Hilbert, accused Raffensperger’s office of refusing to turn over data to assess evidence of fraud, and also claimed awareness of at least 24,000 illegally cast ballots that would flip the result to Trump.

“It stands to reason that if the information is not forthcoming, there’s something to hide,” Hilbert said. “That’s the problem that we have.”

Reached by phone Sunday, Hilbert declined to comment.

In the end, Trump asked Germany to sit down with one of his attorneys to go over the allegations. Germany agreed.

Yet Trump also recognized that he was failing to persuade Raffensperger or Germany of anything, saying toward the end, “I know this phone call is going nowhere.”

But he continued to make his case in repetitive fashion, until finally, after more than an hour, Raffensperger put an end to the conversation: “Thank you, President Trump, for your time.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/d45acb92-4dc4-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html

[savorytiger 182]

There's some very damning quotes in there. I'd note that I've only heard 4 and a half minutes out of the hour long call. Would be nice to either hear the rest or have a second source verify it.

[homersapien 11,416]

29 minutes ago, savorytiger said:

There's some very damning quotes in there. I'd note that I've only heard 4 and a half minutes out of the hour long call. Would be nice to either hear the rest or have a second source verify it.

I get wanting to hear the full piece, but I don't think a second source is required to "verify" what we heard, unless you think the whole piece is a hoax.

[TexasTiger 12,981]

The crazy part is most Republicans aren’t bothered by it. 

[savorytiger 182]

2 hours ago, homersapien said:

I get wanting to hear the full piece, but I don't think a second source is required to "verify" what we heard, unless you think the whole piece is a hoax.

I just don't want any room for them to try to weasle out of taking action after clear evidence of an actual coup.

[savorytiger 182]

Full call: https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/audio-trumps-full-jan-2-call-with-ga-secretary-of-state/2021/01/03/3f9426f4-7937-4718-8a8e-9d6052001991_video.html

Transcript: https://www.docdroid.net/eEkjVhj/washingtonpostcom-the-post-has-published-trumps-full-phone-call-with-georgia-election-officials-listen-to-the-audio-and-pdf

[CleCoTiger 1,957]

Donald Trump is insane. A full on nutter. 

[wdefromtx 3,159]

25 minutes ago, CleCoTiger said:

Donald Trump is insane. A full on nutter. 

[RunInRed 16,454]

Just wow.  And sad, really.  17 days and counting, goodbye Trump.

[homersapien 11,416]

It’s impeachable. It’s likely illegal. It’s a coup.

Opinion by

Jennifer Rubin

Columnist

Jan. 3, 2021

When President Trump allegedly tried firing special prosecutor Robert S. Mueller III, refused to respond to lawful subpoenas during the investigation into the 2016 election and committed the other acts to obstruct justice documented in the Mueller report, he arguably violated his oath, broke the law and committed impeachable conduct.

When he tried to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (“I would like you to do us a favor though …”) to create dirt to use against now President-elect Joe Biden and stonewalled Congress’s demands for evidence, he again violated his oath, engaged in impeachable conduct and broke the law.

In neither case did Republicans recognize the facts before them. In neither case did they act to remove him. That prologue brings us to his telephone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Saturday.

The Post reports: “President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to ‘find’ enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions.” In the call, Trump asked Raffensperger to change the certified vote that was subject to multiple recounts: “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.”

In fact he threatened him. The Post reports, “During their conversation, Trump issued a vague threat to both Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the secretary of state’s general counsel, suggesting that if they don’t find that thousands of ballots in Fulton County have been illegally destroyed to block investigators — an allegation for which there is no evidence — they would be subject to criminal liability.” Trump, sounding like a mobster as he often does, said, “That’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.” Nice career, there Brad. Shame if anything happened to it.

Laughably, Trump also tried to use the Senate runoff election to pressure Raffensperger. In an incoherent tirade, he insisted, “You have a big election coming up and because of what you’ve done to the president — you know, the people of Georgia know that this was a scam.” He continued: “Because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote, and a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative, because they hate what you did to the president. Okay? They hate it. And they’re going to vote. And you would be respected, really respected, if this can be straightened out before the election.” I have no idea what “vote negative” means or how voters’ anger would jeopardize the Republican Senate contenders. In any event, now that the tape has been revealed, Trump’s conduct will, we should hope, undercut the Republicans.

I have never favored prosecuting Trump for his conduct in office. But pressuring a campaign official to change the vote tally is a federal offense, as former Justice Department inspector general Michael Bromwich tweeted Sunday, citing Title 52 U.S. Section 20511. That law states: “A person, including an election official, who in any election for Federal office … knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds, or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, by … the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held” is subject to imprisonment of up to five years.

Threatening Raffensperger with criminal consequences is also arguably extortion. Title 18 Section 875 of the U.S. Code reads: “Whoever, with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, or corporation, any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to injure the property or reputation of the addressee or of another or the reputation of a deceased person or any threat to accuse the addressee or any other person of a crime, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

Alternatively, the state attorney general of Georgia might investigate and bring applicable charges under state law. That would have one clear advantage: Trump cannot receive a federal pardon for state crimes.

There must be a response to a president who exploits his office for the purpose of overthrowing an election. The evidence is on tape. The next attorney general should move forward, if for no other reason, to deter further attempts at such reprehensible conduct. I would suggest impeachment as well, which could include a ban on holding office in the future, but we know already Republicans will defend anything Trump does.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/03/its-impeachable-its-likely-illegal-its-coup/

[AUFAN78 3,926]

IS THE WASHINGTON POST LYING ABOUT THE TRUMP/RAFFENSPERGER CALL?

The Washington Post has gone public with an apparent accusation that President Trump, in a call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, demanded that he invent enough votes to win the state and its electoral votes.

Its headline:

 ‘I just want to find 11,780 votes’: In extraordinary hour-long call, Trump pressures Georgia secretary of state to recalculate the vote in his favor.

And what is reality?  Reality is that Trump did no such thing.  As pointed out by Jeff Dunitz at thelid.com:

Now that you can see the full transcript below what becomes obvious is that Trump was not asking  Raffensberger to cheat or commit voter fraud. He went over each of the claims of miscounting and voter fraud in Georgia and asked the Secretary of State to explain why he didn’t believe them to be legitimate.

Mr. Dunitz’s article provides both an audio of the call and a complete written transcript, so you can check on how intentionally misleading/dishonest, that headline is.

But n the interests of immediately showing you what really happened, here, in its entirety, is Mr. Trump’s opening statement to Secretary of State Raffensperger:

Trump: OK, thank you very much. Hello Brad and Ryan and everybody. We appreciate the time and the call. So we’ve spent a lot of time on this and if we could just go over some of the numbers, I think it’s pretty clear that we won. We won very substantially in Georgia. You even see it by rally size, frankly. We’d be getting 25-30,000 people a rally and the competition would get less than 100 people. And it never made sense.

But we have a number of things. We have at least 2 or 3 — anywhere from 250-300,000 ballots were dropped mysteriously into the rolls. Much of that had to do with Fulton County, which hasn’t been checked. We think that if you check the signatures — a real check of the signatures going back in Fulton County you’ll find at least a couple of hundred thousand of forged signatures of people who have been forged. And we are quite sure that’s going to happen.

Another tremendous number. We’re going to have an accurate number over the next two days with certified accountants. But an accurate number — and that’s people that went to vote and they were told they can’t vote because they’ve already been voted for. And it’s a very sad thing. They walked out complaining. But the number’s large. We’ll have it for you. But it’s much more than the number of 11,779 that’s — The current margin is only 11,779. Brad, I think you agree with that, right? That’s something I think everyone — at least that’s’ a number that everyone agrees on.

But that’s the difference in the votes. But we’ve had hundreds of thousands of ballots that we’re able to actually — we’ll get you a pretty accurate number. You don’t need much of a number because the number that in theory I lost by, the margin would be 11,779. But you also have a substantial numbers of people, thousands and thousands who went to the voting place on November 3, were told they couldn’t vote, were told they couldn’t vote because a ballot had been put on their name. And you know that’s very, very, very, very sad.

 

We had, I believe it’s about 4,502 voters who voted but who weren’t on the voter registration list, so it’s 4,502 who voted but they weren’t on the voter registration roll which they had to be. You had 18,325 vacant address voters. The address was vacant and they’re not allowed to be counted. That’s 18,325.

Smaller number — you had 904 who only voted where they had just a P.O. — a post office box number — and they had a post office box number and that’s not allowed. We had at least 18,000 — that’s on tape we had them counted very painstakingly — 18,000 voters having to do with [name]. She’s a vote scammer, a professional vote scammer and hustler [name]. That was the tape that’s been shown all over the world that makes everybody look bad, you me and everybody else.

Where they got — number one they said very clearly and it’s been reported they said there was a major water main break. Everybody fled the area. And then they came back, [name] and her daughter and a few people. There were no Republican poll watchers. Actually, there were no Democrat poll watchers, I guess they were them. But there were no Democrats, either and there was no law enforcement. Late in the morning, early in the morning they went to the table with the black robe, the black shield and they pulled out the votes. Those votes were put there a number of hours before the table was put there. I think it was, Brad you would know, it was probably eight hours or seven hours before and then it was stuffed with votes.

They weren’t in an official voter box, but they were in what looked to be suitcases or trunks, suitcases but they weren’t in voter boxes. The minimum number it could be because we watched it and they watched it certified in slow motion instant replay if you can believe it but slow motion and it was magnified many times over and the minimum it was 18,000 ballots, all for Biden.

You had out of state voters. they voted in Georgia but they were from out of state, of 4,925. You had absentee ballots sent to vacant, they were absentee ballots sent to vacant addresses. They had nothing on them about addresses, that’s

And you had drop boxes, which is very bad. You had drop boxes that were picked up. We have photographs and we have affidavits from many people.

I don’t know if you saw the hearings, but you have drop boxes where the box was picked up but not delivered for three days. So all sorts of things could have happened to that box including, you know, putting in the votes that you wanted. So there were many infractions and the bottom line is, many, many times the 11,779 margin that they said we lost by — we had vast I mean the state is in turmoil over this.

Do you see anything that could even remotely be construed as President Trump asking that Secretary of State Raffensperger invent votes?  Or do you see a list-out of areas in which President Trump claims votes were miscounted or invented, that should be corrected?

The Washington Post’s people presumably read the same transcript you just did.  So how could they possibly write that headline?

But, then again, why am I asking?  You know the answer as well as I do.

Bottom line:  The Washington Post, like the New York Times, seems intent on degenerating from a newspaper into a Democrat/left propaganda sheet.

And this headline makes it clear that The Post is accomplishing that goal very effectively.

UPDATE:  I just watched a report on this article on the Today Show.  Not at all surprisingly, they ook the same direction as The Post.

Do these people really think they are journalists?

[CleCoTiger 1,957]

1 hour ago, AUFAN78 said:

IS THE WASHINGTON POST LYING ABOUT THE TRUMP/RAFFENSPERGER CALL?

[big snip]

Nope, they aren't. You just posted an opinion piece that apparently went out of its way to miss the money quote:  “The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

Are you really defending Trump's call? You really think at this point that is what a president should be doing? Do you agree with his continued conspiracy mongering and insanity about the election?

[autigeremt 6,660]

Should anyone really be "shocked" by this? LMAO! The ONLY reason it's even out there is because it's Trump. The DC machine has been swampy for so many years and yet here we are.....acting like this is something new? LMAO! 

 

The only difference between the hard right and the hard left is that eventually they both end up at the same place. 

[AUFAN78 3,926]

55 minutes ago, CleCoTiger said:

Nope, they aren't. You just posted an opinion piece that apparently went out of its way to miss the money quote:  “The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

Are you really defending Trump's call? You really think at this point that is what a president should be doing? Do you agree with his continued conspiracy mongering and insanity about the election?

You posted your opinion. I posted the opinion of an opposing view. Not complicated. 

I was about to post an article on what the president should do or at least what I think he should do. Not that he cares what I have to say. 

[TexasTiger 12,981]

39 minutes ago, autigeremt said:

Should anyone really be "shocked" by this? LMAO! The ONLY reason it's even out there is because it's Trump. The DC machine has been swampy for so many years and yet here we are.....acting like this is something new? LMAO! 

 

The only difference between the hard right and the hard left is that eventually they both end up at the same place. 

Nonsense.  Show where and when this happened before. 

[AUFAN78 3,926]

14 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

Nonsense.  Show where and when this happened before. 

Democrats protested election results in 2000, 2004 and 2016. Damn, it's as if you forgot Russia, Russia, Russia!

[TexasTiger 12,981]

Just now, AUFAN78 said:

Democrats protested election results in 2000, 2004 and 2016. Damn, it's as if you forgot Russia, Russia, Russia!

There’s zero comparison. Any sane person who is halfway informed knows that.

[AUFAN78 3,926]

5 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

There’s zero comparison. Any sane person who is halfway informed knows that.

Hillary Clinton may have behaved properly in public, attending Trump’s inauguration, but her private behavior was appalling. In 2016, she and the Democratic National Committee used intermediaries to hire foreign agents, who concocted false and defamatory stories about Trump “colluding” with the Kremlin to win the election. Those agents weren’t loose cannons. They were doing precisely what they were hired to do. Clinton’s close associates then worked assiduously to feed that false information to the media, the State Department, the Department of Justice, and the FBI, hoping to fuel a federal investigation into Trump-Russia collusion.

At the same time, the FBI not only spied on the Trump campaign, it spied on the newly elected president and his team. Holdover officials continued to do so after Trump was sworn in. Their efforts were profoundly damaging. They deliberately sabotaged the transition of power while publicly undermining the new president’s legitimacy. Theirs was abuse of power on a grand scale.

This effort to delegitimize Trump’s presidency was systematic, sustained, and well-orchestrated. Its overriding aim was to show that Trump did not win the presidency honestly, exactly what Trump himself is now saying about Biden. Democratic lawmakers tipped their hand at Trump’s inauguration, when some five dozen House members, led by civil rights icon John Lewis, refused to attend. Lewis said openly that Trump “is not a legitimate president.” He also refused to attend George W. Bush’s inauguration in 2001.

Boycotts like this are something new and troubling for our democracy. Lewis had every right not to attend, as do pro-Trump representatives this time. That’s their prerogative, but we all pay a price when they exercise it. Their disdain for the rival political party undermines our shared traditions and institutions.

Eschewing civic niceties pales beside the damage done by prolonged, politically inspired investigations. Those were the sulfurous face of the Washington Swamp: James Comey’s FBI; Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his top aide, Andrew Weissmann; anti-Trump leakers in the bureaucracy and White House; and the Democratic House of Representatives. The mainstream media participated actively, eagerly. They hated Trump more than they loved journalism.

They all had the same straightforward goal: showing that Trump was elected only because he sought help from a foreign enemy and received it. How, then, could he possibly be considered a legitimate president?

It was certainly appropriate for Congress and the Department of Justice to see if Russia interfered in the election and if either party received foreign assistance. Fair-minded investigations, including Mueller’s, would have included Hillary Clinton’s campaign payments to foreign investigators, who relied on questionable Russian sources. Mueller never looked into those and never explained why. But, then, these investigations were never really about Russia. They were about Trump, whom Democrats wanted to sink by tying him to Vladimir Putin. Ideally, they would remove him from office. Failing that, they hoped to immobilize his presidency and hurt his chances of reelection.

That’s why, as soon as Democrats won the House in 2018, they ginned up a massive investigation, endorsed by their party’s top elected official, Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That’s why the Mueller team, filled with anti-Trump partisans, refused to release a partial report before the 2018 election, clearing Trump of collusion with Russia. That part of the investigation was already complete. They knew the evidence fell far short of collusion, and they should have informed the public.

Meanwhile, the House investigation, led by Pelosi’s protégé Adam Schiff, was coming up dry, too. Schiff’s House Intelligence Committee secretly interviewed all of Barack Obama’s top officials in law enforcement, intelligence, and national security. Every one of them, testifying under oath, said they had no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. They said something very different before the cameras while Schiff hid their secret testimony for two years. Schiff himself repeatedly told reporters he had conclusive evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. If it exists, it remains as secret today as the formula for Coca-Cola.

These constant investigations, targeting a sitting president with little or no basis, hiding exculpatory evidence, spewing false information to take down political opponents, are noxious. They are not the behavior of a “loyal opposition,” operating within clear constitutional limits. They are the behavior of malignant politicians, journalists, and broadcasters who see their political competitors as enemies. Their actions, combined with the collapse of public trust in our institutions, endangers our constitutional order.

You are right Tex, there is no comparison.

[TexasTiger 12,981]

13 minutes ago, AUFAN78 said:

Hillary Clinton may have behaved properly in public, attending Trump’s inauguration, but her private behavior was appalling. In 2016, she and the Democratic National Committee used intermediaries to hire foreign agents, who concocted false and defamatory stories about Trump “colluding” with the Kremlin to win the election. Those agents weren’t loose cannons. They were doing precisely what they were hired to do. Clinton’s close associates then worked assiduously to feed that false information to the media, the State Department, the Department of Justice, and the FBI, hoping to fuel a federal investigation into Trump-Russia collusion.

At the same time, the FBI not only spied on the Trump campaign, it spied on the newly elected president and his team. Holdover officials continued to do so after Trump was sworn in. Their efforts were profoundly damaging. They deliberately sabotaged the transition of power while publicly undermining the new president’s legitimacy. Theirs was abuse of power on a grand scale.

This effort to delegitimize Trump’s presidency was systematic, sustained, and well-orchestrated. Its overriding aim was to show that Trump did not win the presidency honestly, exactly what Trump himself is now saying about Biden. Democratic lawmakers tipped their hand at Trump’s inauguration, when some five dozen House members, led by civil rights icon John Lewis, refused to attend. Lewis said openly that Trump “is not a legitimate president.” He also refused to attend George W. Bush’s inauguration in 2001.

Boycotts like this are something new and troubling for our democracy. Lewis had every right not to attend, as do pro-Trump representatives this time. That’s their prerogative, but we all pay a price when they exercise it. Their disdain for the rival political party undermines our shared traditions and institutions.

Eschewing civic niceties pales beside the damage done by prolonged, politically inspired investigations. Those were the sulfurous face of the Washington Swamp: James Comey’s FBI; Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his top aide, Andrew Weissmann; anti-Trump leakers in the bureaucracy and White House; and the Democratic House of Representatives. The mainstream media participated actively, eagerly. They hated Trump more than they loved journalism.

They all had the same straightforward goal: showing that Trump was elected only because he sought help from a foreign enemy and received it. How, then, could he possibly be considered a legitimate president?

It was certainly appropriate for Congress and the Department of Justice to see if Russia interfered in the election and if either party received foreign assistance. Fair-minded investigations, including Mueller’s, would have included Hillary Clinton’s campaign payments to foreign investigators, who relied on questionable Russian sources. Mueller never looked into those and never explained why. But, then, these investigations were never really about Russia. They were about Trump, whom Democrats wanted to sink by tying him to Vladimir Putin. Ideally, they would remove him from office. Failing that, they hoped to immobilize his presidency and hurt his chances of reelection.

That’s why, as soon as Democrats won the House in 2018, they ginned up a massive investigation, endorsed by their party’s top elected official, Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That’s why the Mueller team, filled with anti-Trump partisans, refused to release a partial report before the 2018 election, clearing Trump of collusion with Russia. That part of the investigation was already complete. They knew the evidence fell far short of collusion, and they should have informed the public.

Meanwhile, the House investigation, led by Pelosi’s protégé Adam Schiff, was coming up dry, too. Schiff’s House Intelligence Committee secretly interviewed all of Barack Obama’s top officials in law enforcement, intelligence, and national security. Every one of them, testifying under oath, said they had no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. They said something very different before the cameras while Schiff hid their secret testimony for two years. Schiff himself repeatedly told reporters he had conclusive evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. If it exists, it remains as secret today as the formula for Coca-Cola.

These constant investigations, targeting a sitting president with little or no basis, hiding exculpatory evidence, spewing false information to take down political opponents, are noxious. They are not the behavior of a “loyal opposition,” operating within clear constitutional limits. They are the behavior of malignant politicians, journalists, and broadcasters who see their political competitors as enemies. Their actions, combined with the collapse of public trust in our institutions, endangers our constitutional order.

You are right Tex, there is no comparison.

Thanks for proving my point. The FBI investigated Trump and there was ample reason and multiple convictions. They got the Steele dossier from McCain at Lindsey Graham’s urging. But a sitting President has NEVER done what Trump has done. This thread is about a phone call. I know you don’t track well, but at least try to stay on topic.

[AUFAN78 3,926]

4 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

Thanks for proving my point. The FBI investigated Trump and there was ample reason and multiple convictions. They got the Steele dossier from McCain at Lindsey Graham’s urging. But a sitting President has NEVER done what Trump has done. This thread is about a phone call. I know you don’t track well, but at least try to stay on topic.

Nonsense. This thread is about far more than a measly phone call. Thank you for proving my point!

[TexasTiger 12,981]

26 minutes ago, AUFAN78 said:

Nonsense. This thread is about far more than a measly phone call. Thank you for proving my point!

Read the title, moron.

[CleCoTiger 1,957]

17 hours ago, AUFAN78 said:

Democrats protested election results in 2000, 2004 and 2016. Damn, it's as if you forgot Russia, Russia, Russia!

Damn! It's as if you haven't read the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's 1000 page report about Russia. You still think that there was nothing to it, that it was a hoax. You are very ill informed.

[TitanTiger 20,508]

On 1/3/2021 at 1:00 PM, homersapien said:

I was going to say "unbelievable" but it's really not.

 

By

Amy Gardner

Jan. 3, 2021 at 12:59 p.m. EST

 

President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions.

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.”

Throughout the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected Trump’s assertions, explaining that the president is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.

 

President Trump walks to the Oval Office after returning from Florida on Thursday. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Trump dismissed their arguments.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

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

At another point, Trump said: “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.”

The rambling and at times incoherent conversation offered a remarkable glimpse of how consumed and desperate the president remains about his loss, unwilling or unable to let the matter go and still believing he can reverse the results in enough battleground states to remain in office.

“There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump said, a phrase he repeated again and again on the call. “There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”

Several of his allies were on the line as he spoke, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a prominent GOP lawyer whose involvement with Trump’s efforts had not been previously known.

In a statement, Mitchell said Raffensperger’s office “has made many statements over the past two months that are simply not correct and everyone involved with the efforts on behalf of the President’s election challenge has said the same thing: show us your records on which you rely to make these statements that our numbers are wrong.”

The White House, the Trump campaign and Meadows did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Raffensperger’s office declined to comment.

Election results under attack: Here are the facts

On Sunday, Trump tweeted that he had spoken to Raffensperger, saying the secretary of state was “unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the “ballots under table” scam, ballot destruction, out of state “voters”, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”

Raffensperger responded with his own tweet: “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true.”

The pressure Trump put on Raffensperger is the latest example of his attempt to subvert the outcome of the Nov. 3 election through personal outreach to state Republican officials. He previously invited Michigan Republican state leaders to the White House, pressured Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) in a call to try to replace that state’s electors and asked the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to help reverse his loss in that state.

His call to Raffensperger came as scores of Republicans have pledged to challenge the Electoral College’s vote for Biden when Congress convenes for a joint session on Wednesday. Republicans do not have the votes to successfully thwart Biden’s victory, but Trump has urged supporters to travel to Washington to protest the outcome, and state and federal officials are already bracing for clashes outside the Capitol.

Growing number of Trump loyalists in the Senate vow to challenge Biden’s victory

During their conversation, Trump issued a vague threat to both Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the secretary of state’s legal counsel, suggesting that if they don’t find that thousands of ballots in Fulton County have been illegally destroyed to block investigators — an allegation for which there is no evidence — they would be subject to criminal liability.

“That’s a criminal offense,” he said. “And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.”

Trump also told Raffensperger that failure to act by Tuesday would jeopardize the political fortunes of David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, Georgia’s two Republican senators whose fate in that day’s runoff elections will determine control of the U.S. Senate.

Trump said he plans to talk about the fraud on Monday, when he is scheduled to lead an election eve rally in Dalton, Ga. — a message that could further muddle the efforts of Republicans to get their voters out.

“You have a big election coming up and because of what you’ve done to the president — you know, the people of Georgia know that this was a scam,” Trump said. “Because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote, and a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative, because they hate what you did to the president. Okay? They hate it. And they’re going to vote. And you would be respected, really respected, if this can be straightened out before the election.”

Trump’s conversation with Raffensperger put him in legally questionable territory, legal experts said. By exhorting the secretary of state to “find” votes and to deploy investigators who “want to find answers,” Trump appears to be encouraging him to doctor the election outcome in Georgia.

But experts said Trump’s clearer transgression is a moral one. Edward B. Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University, said that the legal questions are murky and would be subject to prosecutorial discretion. But he also emphasized that the call was “inappropriate and contemptible” and should prompt moral outrage.

“He was already tripping the emergency meter,” Foley said. “So we were at 12 on a scale of 1 to 10, and now we’re at 15.”

Throughout the call, Trump detailed an exhaustive list of disinformation and conspiracy theories to support his position. He claimed without evidence that he had won Georgia by at least a half-million votes. He floated a barrage of assertions that have been investigated and disproved: that thousands of dead people voted; that an Atlanta election worker scanned 18,000 forged ballots three times each and “100 percent” were for Biden; that thousands more voters living out of state came back to Georgia illegally just to vote in the election.

“So tell me, Brad, what are we going to do? We won the election, and it’s not fair to take it away from us like this,” Trump said. “And it’s going to be very costly in many ways. And I think you have to say that you’re going to reexamine it, and you can reexamine it, but reexamine it with people that want to find answers, not people who don’t want to find answers.”

Trump did most of the talking on the call. He was angry and impatient, calling Raffensperger a “child” and “either dishonest or incompetent” for not believing there was widespread ballot fraud in Atlanta — and twice calling himself a “schmuck” for endorsing Kemp, whom Trump holds in particular contempt for not embracing his claims of fraud.

“I can’t imagine he’s ever getting elected again, I’ll tell you that much right now,” he said.

He also took aim at Kemp’s 2018 opponent, Democrat Stacey Abrams, trying to shame Raffensperger with the idea that his refusal to embrace fraud has helped her and Democrats generally. “Stacey Abrams is laughing about you,” he said. “She’s going around saying, ‘These guys are dumber than a rock.’ What she’s done to this party is unbelievable, I tell you.”

The secretary of state repeatedly sought to push back, saying at one point, “Mr. President, the problem you have with social media, that — people can say anything.”

“Oh this isn’t social media,” Trump retorted. “This is Trump media. It’s not social media. It’s really not. It’s not social media. I don’t care about social media. I couldn’t care less.”

At another point, Trump claimed that votes were scanned three times: “Brad, why did they put the votes in three times? You know, they put ’em in three times.”

Raffensperger responded: “Mr. President, they did not. We did an audit of that and we proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times.”

Trump sounded at turns confused and meandering. At one point, he referred to Kemp as “George.” He tossed out several different figures for Biden’s margin of victory in Georgia and referred to the Senate runoff, which is Tuesday, as happening “tomorrow” and “Monday.”

His desperation was perhaps most pronounced during an exchange with Germany, Raffensperger’s general counsel, in which he openly begged for validation.

Trump: “Do you think it’s possible that they shredded ballots in Fulton County? ’Cause that’s what the rumor is. And also that Dominion took out machines. That Dominion is really moving fast to get rid of their, uh, machinery. Do you know anything about that? Because that’s illegal.”

Germany responded: “No, Dominion has not moved any machinery out of Fulton County.”

Trump: “But have they moved the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts?”

Germany: “No.”

Trump: “Are you sure? Ryan?”

Germany: “I’m sure. I’m sure, Mr. President.”

It was clear from the call that Trump has surrounded himself with aides who have fed his false perceptions that the election was stolen. When he claimed that more than 5,000 ballots were cast in Georgia in the name of dead people, Raffensperger responded forcefully: “The actual number was two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted.”

But later, Meadows said, “I can promise you there are more than that.”

Another Trump lawyer on the call, Kurt Hilbert, accused Raffensperger’s office of refusing to turn over data to assess evidence of fraud, and also claimed awareness of at least 24,000 illegally cast ballots that would flip the result to Trump.

“It stands to reason that if the information is not forthcoming, there’s something to hide,” Hilbert said. “That’s the problem that we have.”

Reached by phone Sunday, Hilbert declined to comment.

In the end, Trump asked Germany to sit down with one of his attorneys to go over the allegations. Germany agreed.

Yet Trump also recognized that he was failing to persuade Raffensperger or Germany of anything, saying toward the end, “I know this phone call is going nowhere.”

But he continued to make his case in repetitive fashion, until finally, after more than an hour, Raffensperger put an end to the conversation: “Thank you, President Trump, for your time.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/d45acb92-4dc4-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html

We haven't had a President the last four years.  We've had a mob boss.

[CleCoTiger 1,957]

17 hours ago, AUFAN78 said:

Hillary Clinton may have behaved properly in public, attending Trump’s inauguration, but her private behavior was appalling. In 2016, she and the Democratic National Committee used intermediaries to hire foreign agents, who concocted false and defamatory stories about Trump “colluding” with the Kremlin to win the election. Those agents weren’t loose cannons. They were doing precisely what they were hired to do. Clinton’s close associates then worked assiduously to feed that false information to the media, the State Department, the Department of Justice, and the FBI, hoping to fuel a federal investigation into Trump-Russia collusion.

At the same time, the FBI not only spied on the Trump campaign, it spied on the newly elected president and his team. Holdover officials continued to do so after Trump was sworn in. Their efforts were profoundly damaging. They deliberately sabotaged the transition of power while publicly undermining the new president’s legitimacy. Theirs was abuse of power on a grand scale.

This effort to delegitimize Trump’s presidency was systematic, sustained, and well-orchestrated. Its overriding aim was to show that Trump did not win the presidency honestly, exactly what Trump himself is now saying about Biden. Democratic lawmakers tipped their hand at Trump’s inauguration, when some five dozen House members, led by civil rights icon John Lewis, refused to attend. Lewis said openly that Trump “is not a legitimate president.” He also refused to attend George W. Bush’s inauguration in 2001.

Boycotts like this are something new and troubling for our democracy. Lewis had every right not to attend, as do pro-Trump representatives this time. That’s their prerogative, but we all pay a price when they exercise it. Their disdain for the rival political party undermines our shared traditions and institutions.

Eschewing civic niceties pales beside the damage done by prolonged, politically inspired investigations. Those were the sulfurous face of the Washington Swamp: James Comey’s FBI; Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his top aide, Andrew Weissmann; anti-Trump leakers in the bureaucracy and White House; and the Democratic House of Representatives. The mainstream media participated actively, eagerly. They hated Trump more than they loved journalism.

They all had the same straightforward goal: showing that Trump was elected only because he sought help from a foreign enemy and received it. How, then, could he possibly be considered a legitimate president?

It was certainly appropriate for Congress and the Department of Justice to see if Russia interfered in the election and if either party received foreign assistance. Fair-minded investigations, including Mueller’s, would have included Hillary Clinton’s campaign payments to foreign investigators, who relied on questionable Russian sources. Mueller never looked into those and never explained why. But, then, these investigations were never really about Russia. They were about Trump, whom Democrats wanted to sink by tying him to Vladimir Putin. Ideally, they would remove him from office. Failing that, they hoped to immobilize his presidency and hurt his chances of reelection.

That’s why, as soon as Democrats won the House in 2018, they ginned up a massive investigation, endorsed by their party’s top elected official, Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That’s why the Mueller team, filled with anti-Trump partisans, refused to release a partial report before the 2018 election, clearing Trump of collusion with Russia. That part of the investigation was already complete. They knew the evidence fell far short of collusion, and they should have informed the public.

Meanwhile, the House investigation, led by Pelosi’s protégé Adam Schiff, was coming up dry, too. Schiff’s House Intelligence Committee secretly interviewed all of Barack Obama’s top officials in law enforcement, intelligence, and national security. Every one of them, testifying under oath, said they had no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. They said something very different before the cameras while Schiff hid their secret testimony for two years. Schiff himself repeatedly told reporters he had conclusive evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. If it exists, it remains as secret today as the formula for Coca-Cola.

These constant investigations, targeting a sitting president with little or no basis, hiding exculpatory evidence, spewing false information to take down political opponents, are noxious. They are not the behavior of a “loyal opposition,” operating within clear constitutional limits. They are the behavior of malignant politicians, journalists, and broadcasters who see their political competitors as enemies. Their actions, combined with the collapse of public trust in our institutions, endangers our constitutional order.

You are right Tex, there is no comparison.

I'm amazed that you find any merit in that narrative. Again, I suggest you take up the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's final report. Nearly nothing you believe is true.

[CoffeeTiger 5,154]

18 hours ago, AUFAN78 said:

Hillary Clinton may have behaved properly in public, attending Trump’s inauguration, but her private behavior was appalling. In 2016, she and the Democratic National Committee used intermediaries to hire foreign agents, who concocted false and defamatory stories about Trump “colluding” with the Kremlin to win the election. Those agents weren’t loose cannons. They were doing precisely what they were hired to do. Clinton’s close associates then worked assiduously to feed that false information to the media, the State Department, the Department of Justice, and the FBI, hoping to fuel a federal investigation into Trump-Russia collusion.

At the same time, the FBI not only spied on the Trump campaign, it spied on the newly elected president and his team. Holdover officials continued to do so after Trump was sworn in. Their efforts were profoundly damaging. They deliberately sabotaged the transition of power while publicly undermining the new president’s legitimacy. Theirs was abuse of power on a grand scale.

This effort to delegitimize Trump’s presidency was systematic, sustained, and well-orchestrated. Its overriding aim was to show that Trump did not win the presidency honestly, exactly what Trump himself is now saying about Biden. Democratic lawmakers tipped their hand at Trump’s inauguration, when some five dozen House members, led by civil rights icon John Lewis, refused to attend. Lewis said openly that Trump “is not a legitimate president.” He also refused to attend George W. Bush’s inauguration in 2001.

Boycotts like this are something new and troubling for our democracy. Lewis had every right not to attend, as do pro-Trump representatives this time. That’s their prerogative, but we all pay a price when they exercise it. Their disdain for the rival political party undermines our shared traditions and institutions.

Eschewing civic niceties pales beside the damage done by prolonged, politically inspired investigations. Those were the sulfurous face of the Washington Swamp: James Comey’s FBI; Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his top aide, Andrew Weissmann; anti-Trump leakers in the bureaucracy and White House; and the Democratic House of Representatives. The mainstream media participated actively, eagerly. They hated Trump more than they loved journalism.

They all had the same straightforward goal: showing that Trump was elected only because he sought help from a foreign enemy and received it. How, then, could he possibly be considered a legitimate president?

It was certainly appropriate for Congress and the Department of Justice to see if Russia interfered in the election and if either party received foreign assistance. Fair-minded investigations, including Mueller’s, would have included Hillary Clinton’s campaign payments to foreign investigators, who relied on questionable Russian sources. Mueller never looked into those and never explained why. But, then, these investigations were never really about Russia. They were about Trump, whom Democrats wanted to sink by tying him to Vladimir Putin. Ideally, they would remove him from office. Failing that, they hoped to immobilize his presidency and hurt his chances of reelection.

That’s why, as soon as Democrats won the House in 2018, they ginned up a massive investigation, endorsed by their party’s top elected official, Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That’s why the Mueller team, filled with anti-Trump partisans, refused to release a partial report before the 2018 election, clearing Trump of collusion with Russia. That part of the investigation was already complete. They knew the evidence fell far short of collusion, and they should have informed the public.

Meanwhile, the House investigation, led by Pelosi’s protégé Adam Schiff, was coming up dry, too. Schiff’s House Intelligence Committee secretly interviewed all of Barack Obama’s top officials in law enforcement, intelligence, and national security. Every one of them, testifying under oath, said they had no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. They said something very different before the cameras while Schiff hid their secret testimony for two years. Schiff himself repeatedly told reporters he had conclusive evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. If it exists, it remains as secret today as the formula for Coca-Cola.

These constant investigations, targeting a sitting president with little or no basis, hiding exculpatory evidence, spewing false information to take down political opponents, are noxious. They are not the behavior of a “loyal opposition,” operating within clear constitutional limits. They are the behavior of malignant politicians, journalists, and broadcasters who see their political competitors as enemies. Their actions, combined with the collapse of public trust in our institutions, endangers our constitutional order.

You are right Tex, there is no comparison.

Sorry, but no. There is NO comparison between Democrats boycotting Trumps inauguration or investigating wrongdoing (which is congresses job), and what is happening now where Donald Trump, as president, and dozens of Republicans are actively  doing everything they can to declare the election null and void and unconstitutionally give Trump another term. Democrats have NEVER done anything even remotely as brazen as this. Yes, in the past there have been a handful of Democratic lawmakers who would object to the counting of the electoral votes or grumble about the election outcome, but they were few in number and the overturning of the election was NEVER endorsed by the national Democratic party or the Democratic president or nominee. NEVER has a democratic nominee refused to accept the results of an election and openly campaigned for state legislators and courts to overturn the election.